April 29, 2008 - Justices rule on voter ID - High court refuses to strike state's law

Paper: Ventura County Star (CA)
Title: Justices rule on voter ID - High court refuses to strike state's law
Date: April 29, 2008
Author: Deborah Hastings ; AP national writer

The Supreme Court's refusal to strike down an Indiana law requiring government-issued photo identification at the ballot box could disenfranchise minority and elderly voters at next week's primary and prompt other states to pass similar laws, voting advocates said Monday.

The court, in a splintered 6-3 ruling Monday, said Indiana's law, which took effect in 2006 and requires voters to present a state or federal photo ID card at the ballot box, does not violate the First or 14th amendments. The court said the law served as a justifiable protection to the electoral process.

"It's especially worrisome that the court has sent a signal making it easier to put up barriers to people voting ," said Michael Waldman, executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's law school. "There's a real risk that people will see this as a green light to pass restrictive voter ID laws in other states."

More than 20 states require some type of identification at the polls. But only Georgia and Indiana require government-issued photo IDs. In recent years, appellate courts have upheld bitterly fought identification laws in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, but none is as stringent as the Indiana law.

California does not require voters to present identification. The voting process requires that the voter announce his or her name to a poll worker, who then checks the name and address against a list of registered voters in the precinct.

Bills to require California voters to present identification at polling places failed in both houses of the Legislature earlier this year.

Opponents, which included the League of Women Voters and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Foundation, noted that such a system would have created a double standard in the state because its provisions would not have applied to those who vote by mail.

Mail-in voters account for about 40 percent of the electorate in California.

Opponents of the California bills also noted that recent federal studies of voter fraud allegations have uncovered very few instances of people showing up at polling places who are not entitled to vote.

Advocacy groups, including the Brennan Center, say they know of no voter fraud case ever being prosecuted against someone who impersonated another voter at the polls. Indiana's Republican Secretary of State Todd Rokita acknowledged there were no prosecutions in his state for impersonating voters, but said the measure was necessary to protect election integrity.

Indiana Solicitor General Tom Fisher, who argued the state's case before the high court, said Monday's ruling vindicates the law as a "common sense measure to protect the security and integrity of elections ."

Of the remaining state primaries, Indiana's vote on May 6 has the most possibility for voter confusion over ID rules, voting advocates say. The remaining states, including Nebraska, Kentucky and Idaho, have much more lax identification requirements.

Those states that worry election advocates because of ongoing efforts to pass strict photo ID laws include Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. But it appeared unlikely Monday that legislators in those states would be able to push any such measures through before November's general election .

In Missouri, where the state supreme court overruled a previous photo-ID law, Republican Rep. Stanley Cox earlier this year proposed a constitutional amendment requiring such identification. He'd been waiting on the Supreme Court's decision before aggressively lobbying for it, but with Missouri's legislative session due to end May 16, Cox said Monday that the high court's ruling came too late.

"As a practical matter, the voters probably won't have this choice until 2010," Cox said.

Across the country, as many as 20 million people lack such identification, most of them minorities and the elderly who don't have driver's licenses or passports and are unable to afford the cost of obtaining documentation to apply for such identification, advocacy groups say.

In Indiana, more than 20 percent of black voters do not have access to a valid photo ID, according to an October 2007 study by the University of Washington.

In Marion County, 34 Indiana voters without the proper identification were forced to file provisional ballots in an off-season local election . According to Indiana's photo law, voters have 10 days to return to the county courthouse with the proper identification. They can also file an affidavit claiming poverty.

"Who's going to show up and sign an affidavit saying ‘I'm poor'?" asked Bob Brandon, president of Fair Elections Legal Network, a nonpartisan network of election lawyers.

- AP writer David A. Lieb in Jefferson City, Mo., contributed to this report.

- Star staff writer Timm Herdt contributed to this report.