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TechnoratiSupreme Court Voter ID Decision Widely Denounced
WASHINGTON - The mainstream League of Women Voters lashed out at the U.S. Supreme Court this week, calling its decision on voter identification "a disgraceful decision by a court that has no credibility on election issues."
League President May G. Wilson added that the Court's rejection of a challenge to Indiana's policy requiring voters to show a government-issued photo ID is "a bad decision for democracy" and a "concerted effort to disenfranchise legal voters."
Wilson's words echoed a similar outpouring of fury from a wide array of voter and civil rights groups following Monday's 6-3 Supreme Court decision.
ACLU Legal Director Steven R. Shapiro argued that "we should be seeking ways to encourage more people to vote, not inventing excuses to deny citizens their constitutional rights."
At the heart of the controversy is whether requiring a photo ID places an undue burden on potential voters who are unlikely to have a passport or a driver's license -- the two most commonly accepted forms of photo ID.
People for the American Way called the threat of voter fraud "a ruse," pointing to numerous studies showing that millions of eligible voters lack the type of ID Indiana requires, including senior citizens who no longer drive, students, the disabled, minorities, and low-income people.
The state of Indiana argued that the burden of obtaining a photo ID is minimal compared to the goal of preventing voting fraud. But the ACLU points out that Indiana offered no proof that voter fraud was at issue in the state, noting that no cases of in-person voting fraud have been prosecuted in recent history.
Civil rights groups suggest that the Court's decision, coming on the eve of a presidential election and Indiana's primary, in which an African American is a serious contender, has partisan overtones and intent.
President John Payton of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund charged: "Without doubt, thousands of otherwise eligible African Americans and other minority voters who would have wanted to participate in what is perhaps the most historic election in our lifetime will not be able to vote under mandatory voter ID requirements."
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who also sits on the Democratic National Committee, called laws like Indiana's "a cynical attempt to suppress turnout among groups who tend to vote for candidates who prioritize working families' issues, including lower-income Americans and people of color."
Voter rights organizations involved in the case, Crawford v. Marion County, pledged yesterday to continue the fight against restrictive voter ID requirements. Since the Supreme Court based its argument on lack of evidence that the ID requirement constitutes a "burden," the groups vow to gather evidence to the contrary.
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU's law school, meanwhile, is drafting legislation aimed at enabling universal voting registration for consideration by Congress.
"We see a thrilling surge of citizen engagement and participation in this election," said the Center's executive director Michael Waldman. "This should be the time to craft new voter registration laws to make sure that every citizen who wants to vote, can vote."
Waldman called Monday's Supreme Court decision "the most important voting case since Bush v. Gore."
© 2008 One World.net
20 Comments so far
Show AllMy god are you an idiot. Before I take your stupid response apart, let me state that I'm not a Democrat. I don't see the point of supporting either party, since they could care less about working people. I am beyond perplexed why a working person would support a party, like the Republican Party, who wants to support things like NAFTA while cutting back the flow of labor. Why don't you get off of redstate.org and read some economics, site here a single one who says it is economically efficient, or fair, to liberalize capital while cutting back the flow of labor. Your party, the party of Lincoln, is now run by a bunch of reactionary right wingers who are not only ideologically rigid but have no ideas, so they resort to emotions. People like yourself, which is evident in your stupid posts, aren't the brightest, so emotion takes place of logical policies that will actually make your life better. The Democratic Party of the 19th up until the mid 20th century was run by a group of right wing reactionaries. Party platforms change over time, both parties have. The people who belong to the parties are what shape the policies. What really matters is the ideology. The right wing reactionary ideologues that ruled the Democratic Party, the ideology that you are now closest to, have simply jumped ship and joined your party. That's why your party attacks all foreigners, demonizes cultures different than our own, is afraid of change and is ideologically rigid, just like the Democratic Party of segregation (which was by the way bi-partisan). Your "conservative", right wing philosophy, is what caused the Democratic Party to be the reactionary party it was and it is the nut wing of the Republican Party now.
I will ask again: if you and your pathetic, ideologically rigid and reactionary party are so concerned about elections, why are you blocking having paper trails for voting machines that have been shown to be easily broken into and tampered with? Simple question idiot, answer it. Please articulate the justification for not having paper trails.
"The records of lying and cheating in voting sits squarely on the Democratic side."
Anyone who says this is simply, at least, willfully ignorant. To the Republican Party you're nothing more than a useful idiot, since they could care less about regular people (the Democrats aren't much better).
Ken Blackwell was the chair of the Bush re-election campaign in 2004, while he was in charge of running the election in Ohio. Now, forget that you are a Republican, if you can, just for a second. Why is it debatable that there is, on face value alone, a HUGE conflict of interest there? Why does EVERYTHING have to be a partisan debate? If the Republican Party decided to say that gravity doesn't exist, would you argue on behalf of them then?
If you weren't afraid of any ideas that might re-think your positions or support for the Republican Party you'd READ the Conyers Report. See, in the report there are FACTS (do you know what these are?) that show that the results, especially in black precincts that supported Kerry, were statistically impossible. Some counties had negative vote totals, others had more votes than voters, vote machines in poorer and black areas had only a few machines and had long lines while areas that everyone knew would support Bush had more machines than were needed. Votes were thrown away in black precincts FAR mare than non-black precincts. Again, this happened, it isn't something that can be argued against. If any one of these things happened you could say it was a coincidence, if they all happened, logically (assuming you can thing logically and not entirely partisan) it isn't a coincidence. The person who owns the machines used in Ohio said that he was "determined" to deliver the election to Bush. Again, forget you're a Republican for a second, does this not sound just a bit fishy?
Here's a link to a summation of the findings.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010605Y.shtml
Here is a link about "vote caging" (illegal, and again, the facts are not arguable, it happened) in New Mexico, on behalf of the Republicans:
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/5/14/investigative_journalist_greg_palast_reports_on
I'm sorry but this whining pretend about Ohio is just ridiculous. Ohio has a system of where the local votes are certified by a bi-partisan system. Your complaint I'm sure is the retiscent racism against Ken Blackwell when he performed the final act or certification for the state as a whole.
The records of lying and cheating in voting sits squarely on the Democratic side. But than what do you expect from a political party that defended slavery, the KKK, and the Jim Crow laws.
Brontoburger, the problem of course isn't just Indiana, and how well the system supposedly functions there. For the sake of argument, let's say Indiana is perfect as far as giving anyone who is eligible to vote a card. What if, like we saw in Ohio in 2004, someone in charge of running the elections is working on behalf of a campaign and makes it law that people have to jump through loopholes to get the id? The assumption on your part is that the people in charge of elections will work optimally and will do all they can to make sure everyone can vote, that is a huge assumption and pardon people for not taking these officials at their word. After all, how many of these same politicians want voting machines, which have been proven to be pretty easy to break into, with no paper trails? How many election results have been statistically impossible (read up on the Conyers report or Palast's work on the 2004 election in Ohio) yet have gone through with no objection for elections officials? Let's just blindly give more power to crooks, who have a record of lying and cheating, and then pretend we're shocked when people see dangers in this decision.
Also, if people who support this want to make sure elections are fair and honest why do so many of them openly oppose paper ballots for voting machines?
wcdevins... 'disenfranchised poor'?? You don't know what your talking about but it does seem like you pay attention to the DNC talking points.
Indiana has had this law in effect for 7 election. Works fine. Roots out accidental and intentional error on identification. All in the state can recieve a state id for free if they don't have a drivers liscense so it makes so-called class status invalid. Indiana also allows voter registration when going to the DMV so they've had an increase in registered voters the last 15 years.
VOTE DEMOCRAT!!!!!!!
VOTE EARLY!!!!!!!!
VOTE OFTEN!!!!!!!!
(DON'T FORGET TO VOTE FOR YOUR DEAD RELATIVES)
bronto - it works for whom? Certainly not the disenfrachised poor...
When a ruling like this is made, the debate about elitism and class war driving the government should be over immediately. There is no other way to read this ruling, reasonably, than as a severe measure in the class war in which the Judicial Branch is obviously a strong player (as if the 2000 election fiasco was not adequate proof).
There is no voter fraud problem to be solved. Therefore, voter fraud is not the target of this ruling. It's legitimate voters that are the target. Legitimate voters that are likely to vote against the interests of those that make the rules -- that's the problem being solved here.
In many industrial nations, such as in Europe, registering voters and issuing the necessary papers is regarded as a solemn obligation of the government which actively registers citizens and makes every effort to increase turnout.
We have the exact opposite -- the government is complicit in maximizing the disenfranchisement of perceived undesirables.
And, let's not forget that the power of the vote is the only power remaining for citizens on a national level.
culicomorpha May 1st, 2008 11:01 pm
"I'm a little dismayed by the responses to this story. Beneath all this banter about "verifying identities" is the basic fact that nations, states, and counties have grown so large that nobody actually knows anyone anymore."
Excellent point, culicomorpha, and one I've pondered as well.
In every society, there is a point where it requires more control in order to "govern" more people. Centralized governments just aren't equipped to govern huge populations, therefore, they have to resort to increasingly controlling tactics.
The first line of defense against totalitarian control of the masses, are the masses. However, this will always be a losing battle so long as the population increases in size. In order for a more democratic society to emerge, there must be, at some point, a breaking away. This has always been the case in history (witness the USA) and remains so.
We must fight against fascism, but we must also be looking toward what needs to be done to regain some semblance of democratic governance and freedom. IOW - we must break away.
I should also state that Indiana has had this law for 7 elections. It's normal, everyone is used to it and it works.
I'm a little dismayed by the responses to this story. Beneath all this banter about "verifying identities" is the basic fact that nations, states, and counties have grown so large that nobody actually knows anyone anymore.
If you need an ID to be a citizen, then the very function of being a citizen is impossible. Things are too large, and this problem will not be fixed by raising the bar for verification. The problem is scale. If you are just a number then this is the perfect scenario for stealing an election - not like it hasn't been done before.
Frankly, I don't want to be an isolated entity who is known only by my SSN or whatever number they choose to assign to identify me. I am not a number. I want to be part of a community, where I am known, and these issues are superfluous and downright stupid.
But in America, like in Nazi Germany, get used to the refrain: Papers, Papers please.
I don't agree with the objections to this either. Indiana provides free state photo ID to anyone who cannot pay, and honestly there's no excuse for not having it. How do these supposedly vast numbers of people get by with no ID? Without it, you can't apply for public assistance, you can't get legal work, nothing. Without legal ID, you cannot even drink.
That said, I believe voter registration should be automatic with the ID. Your social security number should be your voter number, period, no other forms or steps to take. Show up, present ID, and vote.
i agree with this decision. there have been a ton of cases of multiple voting and people going into swing states to vote illegal. it happened in new hampshire in 2004. it happened in iowa this time for obama. there was a kid from wisconsin in 2000 who voted 49 times or something and later was prosecuted for it. there was a case in miami where the democratic mayor was thrown out for organizing the same fraud. in boston, they joked about "waiting for st. paul's cemetery to come in ..." its rampant. this was a great decision.
All voting requires identification that the person is a registered voter. To state that a photo ID (drivers liscense or state id) is excessive is assinine and dishonets. If someone is applying for a job they need an ID. For a temp job even requires at min. a state photo ID.
I think you people are being wholly dishonest and I think you 'protest to much' in regards to voter fraud.
ugh. "states rights" to disenfranchise voters. enough of this nonsense. do these clowns believe in democracy at all? doubtful.
Indiana is fully within its state rights to determine which forms of identification it uses to determine registered voters.
Impeach Scalia and Thomas! They both had conflict of interest in Bush v. Gore -- judicial misconduct!
One step closer to a required national ID card...
Just imagine the possibilities. Embedded RFID chips that will allow our every movement to be logged. Need to locate someone for shipment to Guantanamo, just call up the ID and see that person just entered a restroom at the national required shopping area otherwise known as Wal-Mart.
SCOTUS - The most fascist operation in the world today.
There was NO evidence to support voter ID fraud, there was much evidence to support voter suppression and this is what we get? The unelected, unaccountable SCOTUS is an abomination of democracy. Just another example of the GOP voter fraud machine up and running in time for November. And you're right on the money, Skippy.
It might be a bad decision for a democracy, then again in order to be a democracy one must _count_ the votes. Something the usa didn't do in 2000, and with the introduction of electronic voting machines owned by members of the repuke party made impossible in subsequent elections...