Supreme Court upholds Indiana’s strict voter ID law
WASHINGTON (IPS/GIN) — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled April 28 to uphold a controversial state law that Democrats and a number of national civil rights groups believe could undermine the right of tens of thousands of poor and minority voters to cast ballots. The decision may have major implications for the general election in November: Six of the court’s nine justices ruled that Indiana’s voter-identification law, which requires all voters to produce a government-issued photo identification at their polling places, did not violate the Constitution, as Democratic politicians and a number of national civil rights organizations had argued.
Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens asserted that the state had a “valid interest” in preventing voter fraud and that, “on the basis of the record that has been made in this litigation, we cannot conclude that the statute imposes ‘excessively burdensome requirements’ on any class of voters.” Noting that the law was passed by the Republican-dominated legislature and signed by the state’s Republican governor, Stevens noted that “simply because partisan interests may have provided one motivation for the votes of individual legislators” did not invalidate other justifications for the law.
But three of the justices disagreed. “Indiana’s ‘Voter ID law’ threatens to impose a nontrivial burden on the voting right of tens of thousands of the state’s citizens, and a significant percentage of those individuals are likely to be deterred from voting,” wrote Justice David Souter, who also noted that the state had failed to offer evidence that voter fraud of the kind the law was purportedly designed to address was a significant problem.
Democrats also decried the majority’s conclusion. “The court’s decision today places obstacles to the fundamental rights of American citizens — especially the poor, the elderly, and individuals with disabilities — to participate in the electoral process,” said Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.
Democrats are particularly concerned because unprecedented numbers of voters — particularly younger voters, who historically have been least likely to take part in elections — are turning out for the party’s primaries this year, mostly driven by the excitement generated by Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign and the certainty that they will be able to vote for the first African American or the first woman presidential candidate of one of the two major U.S. parties. The party is hoping that this enthusiasm will produce a record turnout, which tends to favor Democrats, in November.
The April 28 decision marked the judicial culmination, at least for now, of a raging controversy between Republicans, who have claimed that vote fraud is a significant problem in many parts of the U.S., and Democrats, who argue that Republicans are using voter-ID laws to suppress turnout, particularly of poor, racial minority, and elderly voters, who are more likely to vote for the Democratic Party.
In 2005, Indiana’s then Republican-dominated state legislature approved the nation’s most restrictive voter-ID law, which also created the basis for a similar but slightly less restrictive Georgia law that was passed by its legislature the following year.
The Indiana law requires voters to present government-issued photo identification, normally a driver’s license or a passport, to election monitors when they show up at their polling places.
Several organizations, including the Indiana Democratic Party, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the NAACP immediately challenged the law, arguing that it imposed undue burdens on eligible voters who lacked the required ID. Studies have found that 10 to 13 percent of eligible voters don’t own the kinds of ID currently required by Indiana, said Justin Levitt, a counsel at the Brennan Center for justice at New York University’s School of Law, which filed a “friend of the court” brief in the Indiana case.
One 2007 Indiana study found that 13.3 percent of registered voters in that state lack the required ID, including more than 18 percent of registered Black voters and over 20 percent of voters aged 18 to 34.
“Millions of eligible voters don’t have the ID these laws require — senior citizens who don’t drive, students, the disabled, low-income people — all of whom have the right to vote,” said Kathryn Kolbert, president of People for the American Way Foundation, a liberal civil rights group, which also filed a supporting brief in the case. “These laws are intended to suppress voter turnout.”
While Republicans insist that such laws are intended only to prevent voter fraud, they have been hard put to provide evidence that in-person voting — as opposed to absentee voting, where some fraud has taken place — has been a problem in recent years.
Royal Masset, former political director for the Texas Republican Party, noted in an interview with the Houston Chronicle last year that it is an “article of religious faith that voter fraud is causing us to lose elections.” He told the newspaper that he personally didn’t agree with that assessment, but added that requiring photo ID could reduce legitimate Democratic voting enough to effectively add 3 percent to the Republican vote.
Indiana is one of more than 20 states that have passed restrictive voter-ID laws, although Indiana, Georgia, and to a somewhat lesser extent Florida are by far the most restrictive. In some states, for example, photo ID could be satisfied by student cards, credit cards, or employer-issued ID; in other states, utility bills or rent receipts may be sufficient. Levitt said he did not expect other states to pass Indiana-like legislation before the November elections, but the April 28 decision “makes it likely that the identification laws in Indiana, Georgia, and Florida will be in effect in November and will keep otherwise eligible voters — well into the thousands and maybe tens of thousands — from voting.”
Levitt and the ACLU noted that three of the justices, including Stevens, who voted to uphold the law in the face of a direct constitutional challenge, left open the possibility they could change their minds in a case brought by an eligible voter who was actually prevented from voting because of its ID requirements. Evidence of dozens of such denials has been collected in recent elections in both Indiana and Georgia, although it is impossible to know how many voters without the required ID stayed home rather than try to cast their ballots, Levitt said.
—Jim Lobe
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