Posted on 04/29/2008 9:12:56 AM PDT by The_Republican
Congressional Democrats and minority groups assailed Monday’s Supreme Court decision upholding Indiana’s photo-ID law as an affront to voting rights, but political realities in the states suggest that the ruling could have relatively limited impact nationwide.
Only three states — Indiana, Florida and Georgia — currently require voters to show government-issued photo IDs before stepping into the voting booth. Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas are considering similar requirements, but it’s not clear whether they can adopt them before the November elections.
Democratic insiders fear that a number of states, particularly in the Midwest and South, will copy the Indiana law now that the Supreme Court has upheld it.
“There’s the concern for our side that it can spread, other states can do what Indiana did,” said a Democratic strategist. “You may see a lot more of this now.” (No Shi* Sherlock)
But Neil Bradley, director of the Voting Rights Project for the American Civil Liberties Union, noted that only states with both Republican-controlled legislatures and Republican governors have been able to implement photo ID laws, creating a de factor partisan limit on the number of places where such requirements may be imposed.
“That situation doesn’t change by today’s opinion,” Bradley said. “So you’re not going to have like 20 states that are going to do it.”
In its 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court upheld a 2005 Indiana law requiring photo IDs for voters. Under the law, a voter who shows up at the polls without a photo ID can cast a provisional ballot to be counted only if, within the next 10 days, the voter shows a photo ID to the local county clerk.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said the decision is “a body blow to what America stands for — equal access to the polls.” (Chuckie Speaks)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the ruling “disappointing,” saying the decision “places obstacles to the fundamental rights of American citizens—especially the poor, the elderly, and individuals with disabilities—to participate in the electoral process.” (Bride of Chuckie Speaks)
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said the majority “failed to protect access to the ballot box for some of the most vulnerable Americans,” and argued that the Justice Department, under President Bush, has employed “the specter of purported ‘voter fraud’ for political advantage.”
“They do so at the expense of vulnerable communities and have excluded millions of elderly, low-income, disabled, and minority voters, even though in-person voter fraud has been proven time and time again to be a myth,” Leahy said. (Really Millions?)
With Indianans heading to the polls on May 6 in a contested Democratic presidential primary, minority groups were particularly outraged by the Supreme Court decision, arguing that huge blocs of voters potentially face disenfranchisement next month and again in the fall because they cannot meet the ID requirements.
“The voting process needs to as unencumbered as possible, and requiring a photo identification disenfranchises those citizens who might otherwise never have a need for identification--particularly in rural, poor, and minority communities,” said Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. “This is a violation of our voting rights – and a deliberate attack on democracy.” (Who is this "Our" you are referring to? These "Our" don't have a Valid ID?)
John Payton, president and executive director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, offered a similar concern. “I think what we know from this opinion, what we can be confident of, is perhaps tens of thousands of eligible African-American voters will not be allowed to vote this year because this law has been upheld. That’s particularly disturbing because this is one of the most important election cycles we’ve ever seen in this country.”
Republicans, for their part, were uniformly positive about Monday’s ruling. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said the decision will give Americans “renewed faith in their government’s ability to conduct fair and honest elections.”
House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), whose state saw its photo ID law struck down by a state court, was similarly ebullient.
“By a convincing majority of six-to-three, the Supreme Court today affirmed a principle the American people have overwhelmingly supported for some time: asking citizens to produce a simple form of identification before voting is neither unreasonable nor unconstitutional – and if it helps impede voter fraud, absolutely necessary to ensure the basic integrity of the democratic process,” Blunt said in a statement.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices John Paul Stevens and Anthony Kennedy said that Indiana’s compelling interest in preventing voter fraud outweighed the burden the law places on voters. Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said the photo ID requirement was “minimal and justified” and called Democratic efforts to overturn the law “irrelevant.”
In their dissent, Justices David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued that the Indiana law “threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting right of tens of thousands of the state’s citizens,” a “significant percentage” of whom would “likely” be deterred from voting. Justice Stephen Breyer said the law “imposes an unconstitutional burden” on voters without driver’s licenses or other former of ID.
Lawmakers from both parties became personally involved in the case as it wound its way through the federal courts, with Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Ind.), Robert Brady (D-Pa.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) filing petitions to overturn it. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who tried to push through a photo ID requirement during a 2006 debate on immigration, filed a brief in support of the law.
No problem. The Demwits will just vote absentee ballot.
Absentee ballots are far, far, far easier to correlate via computer - which is why the Dems are worried.
The democrats are such obvious, lying, manipulatve crooks that it makes me hurl.
Fact is the Democrats were given two years to come up with a single individual adversely affected by the law and could not find one.
Fur Sur, ol' Chuckey there wouldn't be a US Senator today if New York guaranteed the rights of lawful voters to have their votes count.
Actually, if half the laws on the books up there were enforced, Chuckey would probably be on death row in Terre Haute Indiana at a federal facility waiting on his gurney ride.
No one is saying that people can't vote. Only that poll workers are legally able to ask for a driver's license to verify a person's address.
Only those who are lying or cannot obtain a driver's license legally have anything to worry about.
The dead, on the other hand, will have a much more difficult time voting now.
They also need to time stamp the votes to prevent leftist poll workers from voting for voters that did not show up after polls close.
It rather scares the democRATS when the number of times an individual can vote is limited to a number close to 1.
Wadda gal!
What......these groups of people don't have IDs? Wow.....who knew?
Plus, they really are scrutinized. In the last general election, a poll worker stated that the absentee ballot from a
local donk official was found to have been witnessed by a relative, which is illegal. The ballot was invalid. The poll workers spend a lot of time checking the absentees.
This is why the presidency is so important: He/she/it nominates the next Supreme Court justices.
I just wish I could trust McCain...
Are any of them now questioning Roe v Wade?
You have to make that leap of faith.....because you KNOW you can trust Hillary - more Souters, more Ginsburgs, and more Stephens.
“especially the poor, the elderly, and individuals with disabilities”
It’s absurd, isn’t it? These are the people getting SS and other handouts, they ALL have ID.
Pretty easy to see that they are seeing the only means by which they win elections - voter fraud - is going to go bye-bye.
By the way, “FormerACLUmember”, have you joined the ACLJ?
Hard to believe that someone with a disability doesn’t have an ID. Imagine trying to get the social security office to process a disability claim without providing identification. Doesn’t happen.
I thought Arizona had an ID law too.
Yup, and because the “absentee ballot” is really an “early ballot”, they often have plenty of time to examine the ballots - sometimes months.
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