Supreme Court upholds photo ID law for voters in Indiana

AP ^ | Apr 28 | MARK SHERMAN

[Aristotelian]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has ruled that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights. The decision validates Republican-inspired voter ID laws.

The court vote 6-3 to uphold Indiana's strict photo ID requirement. Democrats and civil rights groups say the law would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots.

[bannie]

ok...how DID it get there?

(Wait..that’s rhetorical!)

;-)

[livius]

Probably because they’ve already voted several times before under those names...

[purpleraine]

Actually SF is in the central part of the state. There’s a few hundred miles yet before you get to Oregon.

[ChildOfThe60s]

Some things are just better left unknown.......

[Hoodat]

What did Indiana do differently so that the ID law was approved??

You can find it right here in the preamble to the state constitution:

TO THE END, that justice be established, public order maintained, and liberty perpetuated; WE, the People of the State of Indiana, grateful to ALMIGHTY GOD for the free exercise of the right to choose our own form of government, do ordain this Constitution.

[kabar]

McCain is a breathtakingly flawed Republican candidate, but as much as it pains me to say so, he is all we have standing between us and our first genuine Marxist government.

McCain is going to hurt conservatives further down on the ticket. They will have to take different positions from McCain on issues like immigration, global warming, Gitmo, etc. with McCain having positions similar to the Dems. Moreover, McCain has depressed GOP fund raising forcing McCain to depend on federal funds and dipping into the RNC money, which will mean less money for other Rep candidates. People like me are not going to contribute to the RNC or volunteer to help McCain. Nominating the party maverick to be the standard bearer has consequences, none of them good.

[Towed_Jumper]

I guess opening your link would have been a good idea on my part...lol...please accept my thousand sniveling grovels of repentance. T_J

[Redbob]

This law should also deter the dead, the non-residents, and the illegal aliens from voting..

[Wolfstar]

Actually SF is in the central part of the state.

In a literal geographic sense, yes, but as someone who has lived in the Los Angeles area for 32 years, I can categorically state that San Francisco is considered by Californians to be in Northern California.

Although there is no official demarcation line between the northern and southern parts of the state, the general interpretation is that you draw a line across the top of San Luis Obispo, Kern and San Bernardino counties from the Pacific to the state's eastern border. Everything north of that line is considered NoCal.

Many people don't draw lines on maps, but go only by counties. Looked at this way, Southern California includes the 42,383 square miles encompassed by Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura, Imperial, and Santa Barbara counties. As of January 2007, the estimated population of these counties was 21,586,151.

The vast San Joaquin Valley runs from just north of the Tehachipi Mountains (about 70 miles north of L.A.) all the way up the central part of the state. When Californias talk about central California, that's usually what they mean. It can be clearly seen in this topographical view of the state, as can the San Francisco bay area. You can clearly see that, even if one were to cut the state literally in half, San Francisco would still be north of the literal midpoint.

[Wolfstar]

People like me are not going to contribute to the RNC or volunteer to help McCain.

Neither am I, plus I'll need to continually remind myself between now and November than McCain is better than either Obama or Clinton.

Nominating the party maverick to be the standard bearer has consequences, none of them good.

Agreed. However, it's important to be truthful and not blame "the party" for our predicament. McCain won more votes in the early primaries than anyone else. So we're stuck with him.

We're stuck with him because conservatives couldn't rally around one acceptable candidate until it was too late to stop McCain.

[purpleraine]

In a literal geographic sense, yes.........

Thank you.

I have lived in Cal since 1959, Sacramento, Stockton, Inland Valley, San Diego. I have traveled the state north to south many times. You did a lot of work, but that's your choice.

[Wolfstar]

I have lived in Cal since 1959, Sacramento, Stockton, Inland Valley, San Diego. I have traveled the state north to south many times. You did a lot of work, but that's your choice.

Not much work.

You might bear in mind there's no way to know where an anonymous person posting on the internet comes from unless they volunteer that information. There are a lot of people around here who bash California at every opportunity, so my choice is to try to educate when possible.

(I know you weren't bashing the state. I just took you as a misinformed person from another state.)

[Bluegrass Federalist]

Arizona’s law is still in litigation, so keep fighting. The 9th circus enjoined enforcement of it the first time around, and the SCOTUS smacked them down, so it is now back in the trial court. It is NOT enjoined this time, so it will be in place for this election.

Watch for the Rats to manufacture some best-case challenges and take it back up; however, also watch for a very clean election with insignificant burdens on voters. It could cut both ways.

As for the questions about what IN did differently, there are a number of things, but IN is actually a more burdensome law than others. Georgia, for example, had a voter ID law invalidated, so went back and amended the law and it passed muster at the trial court.

The keys seem to be 1. the ID must be free, so as not to be a poll tax; 2. several different types of photo ID must be accepted, and 3. provisional ballots can be cast without ID that can be supported by affidavit executed w/in 10 days at the clerk’s office.

[kabar]

Agreed. However, it's important to be truthful and not blame "the party" for our predicament. McCain won more votes in the early primaries than anyone else. So we're stuck with him.

McCain became the presumptive nominee with just 31% of the total primary vote, i.e., just before the so-called Potomac primaries [MD, VA, and DC]. Winner take all and open primaries helped McCain game the system, And he benefitted from the compressed primary schedule. We would be much better off with a proportional system with a threshold.

We're stuck with him because conservatives couldn't rally around one acceptable candidate until it was too late to stop McCain.

This was the plan all along by the party's hierarchy, which has tried to squeeze conservatives out. The primary system structure is what helped McCain, along with the MSM, which wanted a McCain-Hillary match up knowing that the difference between the two parties is really tweedledee and tweedledum.

At CPAC this year, many of the attendees were sickened to hear John Bolton, Newt, George Will, and others telling us to support McCain because he was the lesser of two evils. Many of us booed. The system is becoming more and more corrupt. It needs to be shaken up.

The immigration issue could have been the spark to change the political landscape. It cuts across party lines. It is the elephant in the room that just gets larger and larger affecting and/or driving all of the challenges facing this country whether it is health care, education, energy usage, taxes, crime, wages, entitlement programs, etc. McCain and others think they can make it go away by making the illegal legal. It will only exacerbate the problem placing even greater burdens on the taxpayer. What is going on today is unprecedented.

[Gondring]

Can someone tell me why it's so hard for “women and minorities” to obtain a photo ID? Even if one has no drivers license you can still get a photo ID through the state. Oh wait,that would take initiative,money,and proper birth certificate.

One reason listed is that while the ID is free, there's a fee to get the document required to get the ID (e.g., birth certificate, etc.). This fee was higher, even inflation adjusted, than the poll tax that was shot down.

States should provide the service of a virtual birth certificate for free...that is, agree to send a version to the other agency for ID purposes for free, but charge the fee for hardcopies only. I want them to have no reason to argue this in any future challenges.

[Gondring]

Probably because they’ve already voted several times before under those names...

If all this voter fraud was going on, why-oh-why weren't they able to give a single example of voter impersonation fraud for the SCOTUS arguments?

Was this just terribly poor preparation for the case and a large helping of luck that the case was won?

[Gondring]

This was the plan all along by the party's hierarchy, which has tried to squeeze conservatives out.

Well, FReepers seemed to enjoy it a lot, too...slamming other candidates without providing good answers for their own, calling names, marginalizing good men, etc.

[Crim]

Add Ohio.

[deport]

Accepted but not necessary as we all should try to keep the info presented on this forum as accurate as possible. I should have included both list in the original post I made and maybe that would have reduced the confusion. I wish all states mandated a photo ID. Take care and have a nice day.

[Bluegrass Federalist]

Stevens cited some in the opinion. Washington State, New York City, etc. There was evidence, and no it was not a lack of preparation. The problem with citing more is that if voter impersonation fraud is going on, virtually the only way to catch it is if the real voter shows up at exactly the same time as the impersonator (not going to happen for fraudulent registrations, out of state or dead voters) or the poll worker actually knows the real voter. The Dems have cited the paucity of prosecutions as proof that this is a partisan conspiracy; however, logically there would not be much direct proof (as opposed to statistical or anecdotal, such as more votes than living registered voters, votes cast for dead folks, etc.).

This is why the level of scrutiny involved is so important. In a normal case, the burden is on the Plaintiff to prove that the state’s regulatory interest is not reasonably calculated to protect a legitimate state interest in a non-burdensome manner. In the case of a protected class or invidious discriminatory effect (speaking non-precisely, if any other counsel are grading me), the burden is on the state to show that there is a legitimate or compelling state interest and that the burden is narrowly tailored and balanced aganst the benefit. In this case, 6 justices found the burden to be on the plaintiffs, who could not show much in the way of disenfranchised voters.

It raises the burden for future voter ID challenges. Watch for the Arizona law to be challenged again “as-applied” with a best-case plainitff after this election. They might make it through the 9th Circus on it, though the 9th did follow the SCOTUS on its previously challenge to that law.