In upholding Indiana's toughest-in-the-nation voter ID law, the United States Supreme Court has given its blessing to the use of a powerful weapon to eliminate a nearly nonexistent problem. The collateral damage will be poor people who have a tough time getting the ID that the state requires.
Fraud by individual voters is simply not rampant. Even the supporters of the Indiana law signed three years ago have to acknowledge that they don't have evidence of widespread fraud by individual voters. And Demos, a voter rights organization, did an in-depth analysis of voter fraud and found it "very rare."
The Supreme Court's decision marks a disturbing about-face for an institution that in the past has been an important defender of voters' rights. It is not the last word, by any means. For individual voters who find the requirement for a government-issued photo ID too onerous or too expensive--in next week's Indiana primary, for example--bringing a lawsuit is still an option. So we can expect more litigation on this knotty issue.
Meanwhile, let's hope this decision does not encourage other states to adopt voter ID requirements as strict as Indiana's.
Comments (8)
Voter fraud is rare? I would disagree with that statement. Look back to the Kennedy Nixon presidential elections and how Kennedy won with voter fraud from Chicago because mayor Daly stuffed the ballots. This is where the phrase ' vote the cemetary' came from. If it happened in the past than it can happen in the future.
If the democrats still have issues with voter ids, we can always stamp the hand with indellible ink like some african countries have done.
Actually, Mayor Daley is dead (at least the one who presumably used the cemetery to come up with votes for John F. Kennedy). So he's no longer perpetrating voter fraud.
What the Demos report says (and I hope you find time to read it, using the link in my original post) is that fraud in the past has primarily been committed by political organizations, not by individual voters. (You cite Daley in 1960. I would cite the Florida Republicans in 2000, who managed to ditch many thousands of voters from the rolls because they had the same last names as prison inmates.) But fraud by individual voters going to the polls is rare. That's the fraud that the Indiana law aimed at. The more prevalent (though still not exactly frequent) form of individual voter fraud involves absentee ballots. But the Indiana law doesn't really deal with that.
So we should wait until it's a huge problem before taking simple & reasonable measures?
Dumb.
Mr. Keller conveniently leaves out the 2005 Jimmy Carter / James Baker study that showed the DOJ had launched over 180 investigations into voter fraud and found clear evidence of over 200 cases of felons voting illegally as well as hundreds of folks who voted twice. The study also found over 180,000 dead people listed on voter rolls in the 2004 election. This legislation is needed to protect the voting rights of law-abiding citizens.
Jimmy Carter is very often right. But when he hangs around with James Baker, he runs the risk of being wrong. The New York Times editorial board put it just about right in this post:
http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/jimmy-carters-bad-call-on-voter-id/t.
Voter suppression is as American as napalm. There has never been a conviction for voter fraud in Indiana. The Supreme Court is merely genuflecting to the state's disenfranchisemet of the old and the poor who traditionally vote Democratic.
THE STATE OF INDIANA WILL PAY FOR THE ID IF YOU CANT AFFORD THE $12 IT COST TO GET ONE....WHY ANYONE WOULD EVEN QUESTION THIS , IS NOT PAYING ATTENTION..
Just how does this hurt poor people? Even if you don't drive you can still get a state ID. I also doubt that voter fraud is rare. I'd say there are plenty of places in the country where the Democratic Party is absolutely dependent on illegal aliens voting. That is why they are against any sort of anti-fraud measures.