Posted by Damozel | Yes, citizens of Indiana, the states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights. So saith the six of the Supremes 'in the most important voting rights case since Bush v. Gore,', thereby validating 'Republican-inspired voter laws.'(AP)
In a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana's strict photo ID requirement, which Democrats and civil rights groups said would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. Its backers said it was needed to prevent fraud. (AP)
Chief Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the Court, said that the law "is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting 'the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.... We cannot conclude that the statute imposes 'excessively burdensome requirements' on any class of voters. "(AP)
Souter, dissenting, said that the law ""threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting rights of tens of thousands of the state's citizens."(AP) Justices Breyer and Ginsburg also dissented.
More than 20 states require some form of identification at the polls. Courts have upheld voter ID laws in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, but struck down Missouri's.... The decision also could spur efforts to pass similar laws in other states. (AP)
Indiana's law is 'the most onerous in the nation.' (SCOTUSblog) While some states require some form of voter i.d., "no state had a mandatory requirement to produce a government-issued photo ID until Indiana and Georgia did so in 2005."(SCOTUSblog)
The ACLU, which brought the case, is 'extremely disappointed.' But there is 'little history in Indiana of either in-person voter fraud — of the sort the law was designed to thwart — or voters being inconvenienced by the law's requirements (AP)
The main opinion found that the Indiana law may fall somewhat more heavily upon older persons born in other states, persons with economic or other limitations making it difficult for them to get a birth certificate or other document in order to get a state-issued ID, homeless individuals, and persons whose religious faith raises an obstacle to being photographed.” But Stevens said Indiana does take steps to allow persons to cast provisional ballots and then prove their identity after the election.(SCOTUSblog)
As the majority pointed out, 'Indiana provides IDs free of charge to the poor and allows voters who lack photo ID 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.' (AP) Does this mean that such a law might be held unconstitutional in a state where a class of voters could show that such a requirement was excessively burdensome to them?
At The Election Law Blog, Rick Hasen is pessimistic:
In a nutshell, the approach boils down to this: under the balancing approach of earlier cases (which the opinion says comes from cases such as Anderson and Burdick), a state needs to come forward with merely plausible non-discriminatory interests to justify an election law. The evidence need not be strong. Indeed, though Justice Stevens says that there is evidence of fraud to justify a voter identification requirement, the actual evidence he cites in the footnotes is incredibly thin---either reaching back to 1868 (footnote 11) or a single case of impersonation voter fraud found in a recent gubernatorial election in Washington state (fn. 12).
Moreover, Justice Stevens says an interest in preserving voter confidence can justify such laws as well, ignoring undisputed evidence such laws are not at all likely to instill voter confidence (and could in fact do the opposite). Nor does it matter if the motivation in passing the law is completely partisan. The law is to be upheld unless "such considerations had provided the only justification for a photo identification requirement."
So those with partisan motive need only find a nonpartisan pretext for such laws. Once the state has posited its neutral reasons for such a law, the law is to be upheld if it doesn't impose serious burdens on most voters. For those voters who do face serious burdens, they must bring an "as applied" challenge where they present specific evidence applied to them as to why the law is onerous. This channelling of election law cases into as applied challenges--part of a recent trend of the Court--- is going to make it tough for a lot of plaintiffs who are burdened, and is in sharp contrast with the Court's approach in earlier cases, such as the Harper case striking down the poll tax for everyone, not just poor voters.
The evidence in as-applied challenges must be specific and tested in litigation; as Justice Stevens says responding to Justice Souter's dissent: "Supposition based on extensive Internet research is not an adequate substitute for admissible evidence subject to cross-examination in constitutional adjudication." (emphasis, and paragraph breaks, added)
Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog acknowledges that the requirement is likely to fall heaviest on traditionally Democratic constituencies (as was the Indiana Republicans' cunning plan).
While the Court’s main opinion said it was “fair to infer that partisan considerations may have played a significant role” in enacting the photo ID law, it went on to say that that law was neutral in its application and was adequately supported by the justifications the state had offered...Justice Stevens’ opinion stresses that the Court was ruling on the law only as written, saying the Democratic challengers faced “a heavy burden of persuasion in seeking to invalidate” the 2005 law “in all its applications.” The opinion said that the challengers’ evidence did not make it possible to quantify the size of any burden on voters, or to judge what part of any burden was justified
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