You may have seen through the usual sources that the Supreme Court yesterday heard oral arguments in regards to Indiana’s “strictest in the nation” voter ID law.
I’m no legal scholar, but I did skim through the transcript of the session. A couple of the Justices seemed to be hung up over whether the Democratic Party of Indiana had any business being a plaintiff on the case, and why such a big fuss was being made over such a seemingly small problem — lines of questioning that doesn’t bode well for the “ID’s are evil” crowd. Also, the attorney arguing against the law came off as a bit of a dolt in the record.
But that’s not why I’m posting.
In some of the post-argument discussion on the blog circuit, I came across this statement in AJC’s “Thinking Right” blog:
The challengers say: If we were in power, we’d have chosen another approach (usually absentee voting) to restoring the integrity of the voting process. Fine. But just because one party doesn’t like the choice made by another to achieve the same end doesn’t make it unconstitutional.
While I disagree with the author’s sentiment, and I’m not a fan of ultra-stringent Voter ID laws, there is a bit of sense in that quoted passage.
One of the alternatives regularly suggested to recent Voter ID laws is a two-part system:
- Folks who show up at the polling place show ID and vote normally;
- Folks who show up at the polling place without ID cast essentially an absentee ballot, which is counted after the signature on the ballot envelope is compared to the signature on record.
(Under some recent Voter ID laws, folks who don’t have or are unable to get photo ID can cast provisional ballots which are counted after they go down to the county office during business hours, within 10 days, to provide proof of identity….or they can request regular absentee ballots, which are subject to signature verification.)
If Dems are really peeved by the toughness of recent voter ID laws, getting themselves elected to state legislatures, and changing the law to something a bit more sane might be a more realistic course of action, rather than taking a complaint all the way to a conservative-leaning Supreme Court.
1 response so far ↓
1 mrshl // 10 Jan 2008 at 7:26 pm
My understanding is that it’s this “getting themselves elected” part that’s going to be affected negatively under most Voter ID laws. Republicans are passing these laws not because there’s rampant voter fraud (there isn’t, and the everyone at the argument yesterday seemed to agree with this assessment). They like these laws because they knock out traditionally democratic voters.
They aren’t “restoring the integrity of the voting process”; they’re purposely warping the integrity of the voting process. Thus the argument for making such laws unconstitutional…at least without the kind of safeguard you suggest.