Disenfranchise Away
Posted on Tuesday, May 6, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/bcdr/Editorial/61541/
Six justices of the U. S. Supreme Court dealt a major blow to voting rights and fair elections when they upheld an Indiana law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. This 2005 law supposedly combats fraud, but plaintiffs argued rightly that it makes voting harder for poor, elderly and disabled citizens without photo IDs.
The controlling opinion in the case upheld the law on grounds that were narrow, but still troubling: Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by two other justices, wrote that the plaintiffs’ evidence was not strong enough to invalidate the ID rule as unconstitutional on its face. Stevens did leave open the possibility that a future plaintiff might be able to prove actual harm from the law. But what good is that ? If voters are turned away on election day, a court can’t go back afterward and let them have their say.
The ruling is likely to frustrate certain constitutional challenges to laws that impede access to the polls. And it may further embolden legislators to seek partisan advantage by jimmying a state’s electoral rules. The Indiana law passed in a party-line vote in a Republican-dominated legislature.
It is no coincidence that Republican state legislators across the country have suddenly happened upon the supposed threat of voter fraud. In this era of 50-50 politics, one party gains a major advantage if it can pick off a small sliver of voters. And photo ID laws have the effect of discouraging groups of voters who are presumed to lean Democratic. Despite this partisan tilt, the ID laws might still be helpful if there were an epidemic of so-called “ in-person” voting fraud. But as Stevens concedes, “ The record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history. ” Indeed, in a nation of more than 300 million, Stevens identifies one case in which a person managed to vote by impersonating someone else. One case. Meanwhile, as Justice David Souter pointed out in his dissent, Indiana has experienced absentee ballot irregularities — which the supposed anti-fraud law does nothing to address. The result could have been even worse. In a separate opinion, three justices dismissed as “ irrelevant, ” as Justice Antonin Scalia put it, the possibility that the ID law might pose a heavy burden for some voters. His logic would permit all manner of obstacles to voting, as long as a state could gin up some minimally plausible rationale. Scalia has it backward. Voting is a fundamental right. ID rules should be no more stringent than is necessary to keep the voting process secure and orderly. That’s what Indiana had — until partisan legislators saw an opening and exploited it. And now the nation’s high court has gone along.
— The Boston Globe