The Supreme Court upholds voter photo ID law

The United States Supreme Court rejected a challenge to Indiana’s voter identification law, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, despite the fact that the law could quite possibly disenfranchise thousands of qualified voters.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Court was known for expanding the rights of citizens in our country. But with its recent decision, a disturbingly partisan change seems to be brewing, that could potentially spread like a virus from state to state across the country.

Past decisions by the highest Court in the land prevented selected disenfranchisement such as “districting schemes” that were specifically designed to reduce the influence of urban, minority voters, with the results being fair and equal treatment for all of our citizens. It also rightly struck down poll taxes and literacy tests designed solely to prevent African-Americans from voting. These were decisions made by the Supreme Court that enhanced our democracy.

But the current Court seems to have lost its way and has fallen off the historical path of fairness which is the constitutional right of all Americans. Past rulings were written to make elections equal and fair to all, while also expanding citizen participation, not diminishing it with arbitrary technicalities. This decision has been labeled by many as the mostly sharply partisan by the Court since its 2000 Bush v. Gore voting rights blunder.

The Indiana photo identification legislation requires that voters present specific government-issued identification, such as driver’s licenses or passports, which include expiration dates, as proof of identity at the polls. College or employee identification cards, or other forms acceptable in the past, can no longer be used as valid proof of identity at the voting booth.

This would certainly affect specific groups of voters in particular. The disabled, the elderly, the poor and the young, who may not have either driver’s licenses or passports, would be required to get an acceptable identification card, which would entail paying fees for official documents such as birth certificates in order to then purchase an official government identification card. This is a costly inconvenience to these voters.

The fact of the matter is that the 2005 Indiana voter ID law was unnecessary to begin with. The Court’s majority opinion even stated that “the record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history,” according to the L.A. Times. So in order to fix a non-existent problem, a real problem has been created that may well disenfranchise thousands of qualified voters.

Many Democratic leaders believe that the Republican-dominated Indiana state legislature had purposely concocted this law, which was in turn signed by the state’s Republican governor, specifically to keep what could be deemed groups likely to vote Democratic when they cast their ballots at the polls from voting.

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,” as was reported in the New York Times.

The Times also reported that three justices disagreed. Justice David Souter stated that “Indiana’s Voter ID law threatens to impose a non-trivial 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.” Souter also pointed out that the state had failed to offer any evidence that voter fraud of the kind the law was designed to address was a significant problem.

In fact, this is clearly a partisan issue in that it is only Republicans who are reportedly unduly distressed about voter fraud being committed during in-person voting. By making it more difficult for even a small percentage of qualified Democratic voters to be able to cast their ballots, it could potentially swing the vote in the wrong direction and favor a Republican instead. This could be the real reason for trumping up the necessity of this particular type of government-issued identification.

Democrats are rightly concerned that Republicans are using new voter identification regulations to suppress voter turnout in the upcoming fall election, where unprecedented numbers of new voters, particularly young voters, will turn out in huge numbers to vote for the first woman or first African-American who will become president of the United States.

Across the country there are millions of registered, qualified voters who do not possess the government-approved identification that this type of law requires — senior citizens who do not drive or travel abroad, students who cannot afford to drive, as well as some low-income people, not to mention the disabled who are unable to drive or travel.

A law that impedes qualified citizens from their constitutional right to vote is clearly wrong for America and a potential disaster for our democracy.

ABOUT THE WRITER
Carol Jensen is a long-time Barstow resident, graduating from Kennedy High School and Barstow College, where she was an English instructor for many years. Much of her time now is spent writing political and social commentary. She may be contacted at cajensen49@msn.com.