May

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Supreme Court Upholds Vote Photo ID

May 1, 2008 |

The article calls it a blow to voter’s rights. They focus on the cost of a photo ID. However, at least in Ohio, other forms are accepted that don’t cost anything other than a bill from a Utility for example. Sure matching signitures is one way to go but if you ever looked at people’s signitures they can vary from week (or year) at a time. Photo ID or other form that has been accepted is certainly little burden on the poeple. Heck, showing up to vote is burden too. Perhaps someone will want to eliminate that also. Hey. No need. Most people don’t show already. Must be that photo ID issue. Yeah. That’s keeping them home. Right.

The US Supreme Court has just dealt a serious blow to voters’ rights that could help put John McCain in the White House by eliminating tens of thousands of voters who generally vote Democratic.

By 6-3 the Court has upheld an Indiana law that requires citizens to present a photo identification card in order to vote. Florida, Michigan, Louisiana, Georgia, Hawaii and South Dakota have similar laws. Though it’s unlikely, as many as two dozen other states could add them by election day. Other states, like Ohio, have less stringent ID requirements than Indiana’s, but still have certain restrictions that are strongly opposed by voter rights advocates.

The decision turns back two centuries of jurisprudence that has accepted a registered voter’s signature as sufficient identification for casting a ballot. By matching that signature against one given at registration, and with harsh penalties for ballot stuffing, the Justices confirmed in their lead opinion that there is “no evidence” for the kind of widespread voter fraud Republican partisans have used to justify the demand for photo ID.

Voting rights activists have long argued that since photo ID can cost money, or may demand expensive trips to government agencies, the requirement constitutes a “poll tax.” Taxes on the right to vote were used for a century to prevent blacks and others from voting in the south and elsewhere. They were specifically banned by the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1964.

But the Court’s lead opinion, written by Justice Stevens, normally a liberal, said that though rare, the “risk of voter fraud” was nonetheless “real” and that there was “no question about the legitimacy or importance of the state’s interest in counting only the votes of eligible voters.” The burden of obtaining a voter ID, said the court, was not so difficult as to be deemed unConstitutional.

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