Supreme Court says states can demand photo ID for voting
By MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press
April 29, 2008
Page 2 of 2
Indiana provides IDs free of charge to people without driver's licenses. It also allows voters who lack photo ID's to cast a provisional ballot and then show up within 10 days at their county courthouse to produce identification or otherwise attest to their identity.
Stevens said these provisions also help reduce the burden on people who lack driver's licenses.
Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, a Republican, praised the decision. ''This says to the voter you can have confidence again in the elections because we're doing some of the things the guy at the video store does when you go and rent a video,'' Rokita said.
Ken Falk, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, said the court was willing to burden ''tens of thousands of eligible voters who lack a government-issued identification while accepting at face value Indiana's unsubstantiated claim of voter fraud.'' The ACLU brought the case on behalf of Indiana voters.
The proliferation of voter ID laws followed the enactment in 2002 of the federal Help America Vote Act. The law was designed in response to the disputed 2000 presidential election. The law's voter ID provisions apply to first-time voters and do not mandate photo identification.
Many Democrats criticized the ruling Monday. It places ''an unnecessary burden on elderly and low-income voters, not to mention other voters of disparate racial and ethnic backgrounds,'' said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
Mary Wilson, president of the League of Women Voters, said her group has never found a problem with in-person voter fraud. ''We'd be the first ones out there to prevent voter fraud, if there really was a problem,'' she said.
Several critics pointed to a footnote in Stevens' opinion to show how far back he went -- 140 years -- to describe the corrosive effects of widespread fraud at polling places, a reference to Boss Tweed's influence in New York's municipal elections in 1868.
Republicans, meanwhile, praised the decision for recognizing the threat of voter fraud. ''Today's ruling rightfully allows states to safeguard against such destructive abuse,'' said House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio.
In Oklahoma, Republican legislators said the ruling should help them pass a less-stringent voter ID bill. The Oklahoma House has approved legislation to require voters to present some form of identification -- including a utility bill or bank statement. The measure faces a final vote by the state Senate.
Monday's case was the court's first significant foray into election law since the Bush v. Gore dispute that sealed the 2000 election for George W. Bush. The voter ID ruling, with no majority opinion and four of the nine justices writing, lacked the conservative-liberal split that marked the 2000 case.
The consolidated cases are Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 07-21, and Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita, 07-25.
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