January 9, 2008
Editorial
The Court and Voter IDs
From the early indications, Americans are feeling enthusiastic about their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. The Supreme Court should encourage, not frustrate, that enthusiasm when it hears a challenge today to a harsh voter identification law adopted by Indiana. The law aims to be an anti-fraud measure, but its main impact will be to disenfranchise large numbers of registered voters. The court should not let it stand.
The idea of asking voters for ID may not sound unreasonable, but the devil is in the exclusionary details. Before the 2005 law, Indiana voters simply had to sign in at the polls and their signatures were compared to the ones on file. Now voters must present a current government-issued photo ID, generally a drivers license.
The impact of that requirement falls unequally. Poor people, racial minorities and the elderly are especially unlikely to have drivers licenses or other forms of ID required under the law. A study in Georgia, which enacted its own voter ID law, found that black voters were more than 83 percent more likely than whites not to have drivers licenses or state-issued ID. Hispanics were nearly twice as likely not to have them.
Another problem is that such laws are often applied in a discriminatory way. A study in New Mexico found that Hispanic voters were significantly more likely than non-Hispanics to be asked to show the legally required ID.
In-person voter fraud is extremely rare, and there is no evidence of it occurring in Indiana. It says a lot about the Legislatures motives that it did not apply the new ID rules to the kind of voting where there has been documented fraud: absentee voting. It is also not a coincidence that the people likely to be disenfranchised are from groups that vote disproportionately Democratic. Voter ID laws have been pushed across the country by Republicans. Despite the anti-fraud talk, the inescapable conclusion is that the laws are an attempt to shave a few percentage points off of a Democratic turnout.
This should not be a difficult case to decide. The court has ruled that the right to vote is so important that the Constitution requires that restrictions on it be given a strict review. The question the court must ask is whether the exclusions are necessary to promote a compelling state interest. Given that in-person voter fraud appears nonexistent in Indiana, there is no compelling interest here.
Even if there were a genuine concern, there are plenty of less-restrictive alternatives, as the courts put it, to keep the process both clean and fair: requiring signatures, allowing poll watchers to challenge voters and imposing severe criminal penalties for anyone who tries to vote fraudulently.
Unfortunately, the court may be inclined to view this case through a political prism. If that happens, it may break down along the same 5-4 fault line that it did in Bush v. Gore. That would be terrible for both the court and the nation. The justices can strike a blow for their own reputation and for democracy by standing up for an obvious principle: that the right to vote cannot be taken away to serve the electoral purposes of a political party.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Editorial
The Court and Voter IDs
From the early indications, Americans are feeling enthusiastic about their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. The Supreme Court should encourage, not frustrate, that enthusiasm when it hears a challenge today to a harsh voter identification law adopted by Indiana. The law aims to be an anti-fraud measure, but its main impact will be to disenfranchise large numbers of registered voters. The court should not let it stand.
The idea of asking voters for ID may not sound unreasonable, but the devil is in the exclusionary details. Before the 2005 law, Indiana voters simply had to sign in at the polls and their signatures were compared to the ones on file. Now voters must present a current government-issued photo ID, generally a drivers license.
The impact of that requirement falls unequally. Poor people, racial minorities and the elderly are especially unlikely to have drivers licenses or other forms of ID required under the law. A study in Georgia, which enacted its own voter ID law, found that black voters were more than 83 percent more likely than whites not to have drivers licenses or state-issued ID. Hispanics were nearly twice as likely not to have them.
Another problem is that such laws are often applied in a discriminatory way. A study in New Mexico found that Hispanic voters were significantly more likely than non-Hispanics to be asked to show the legally required ID.
In-person voter fraud is extremely rare, and there is no evidence of it occurring in Indiana. It says a lot about the Legislatures motives that it did not apply the new ID rules to the kind of voting where there has been documented fraud: absentee voting. It is also not a coincidence that the people likely to be disenfranchised are from groups that vote disproportionately Democratic. Voter ID laws have been pushed across the country by Republicans. Despite the anti-fraud talk, the inescapable conclusion is that the laws are an attempt to shave a few percentage points off of a Democratic turnout.
This should not be a difficult case to decide. The court has ruled that the right to vote is so important that the Constitution requires that restrictions on it be given a strict review. The question the court must ask is whether the exclusions are necessary to promote a compelling state interest. Given that in-person voter fraud appears nonexistent in Indiana, there is no compelling interest here.
Even if there were a genuine concern, there are plenty of less-restrictive alternatives, as the courts put it, to keep the process both clean and fair: requiring signatures, allowing poll watchers to challenge voters and imposing severe criminal penalties for anyone who tries to vote fraudulently.
Unfortunately, the court may be inclined to view this case through a political prism. If that happens, it may break down along the same 5-4 fault line that it did in Bush v. Gore. That would be terrible for both the court and the nation. The justices can strike a blow for their own reputation and for democracy by standing up for an obvious principle: that the right to vote cannot be taken away to serve the electoral purposes of a political party.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
From Mr. Denton:
Asking voters for ID's other than their voter registration card is being used by Republicans to deny voters all over. In Texas I know of no law that requires anyone to show any other ID than a Voter Registration Card. If you are asked for one ask the person to show you the law that requires that and if he/she cannot then demand he call the Voter Registrar's office and have them read the law to you and the person demanding another ID. Immediately file a complaint against that person because he/she could have turned away qualified voters.
And according to Mary Beth Harrell:
You're absolutely correct - there is no law requiring photo i.d. for voters in Texas. I was at a meeting of the Salado Dems before xmas and someone had the same thing happen to them. What they're trying to do at the voting booth is illegal.
SEND letters to the editor of your local paper about the "fraud" being committed on our voters at the polls by partisan folks staffing the polls.
Sounds like a good topic for the Belton Journal column as we get closer to March 5 primaries.
SEND letters to the editor of your local paper about the "fraud" being committed on our voters at the polls by partisan folks staffing the polls.
Sounds like a good topic for the Belton Journal column as we get closer to March 5 primaries.
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