Voter I.D. Laws Will Be Held To Be Constitutional

The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday on the consolidated cases of Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (07-21) and Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita (07-25), known to the rest of us as the Indiana Voter I.D. case. In short, Republicans enacted a law in Indiana that requires that a voter present a photo ID, to be compared to the voter registration list, when he or she appears to vote. If someone has forgotten his or her I.D., they are able to file a provisional ballot - and they then have ten days to come back to the election headquarters and show the relevant identification. If they don't, their votes don't count. Very simple, and not hard. But the Democrats claim that it will somehow discriminate against poor people - an argument that I, and apparently a majority of the Justices, find lacking. Even the New York Time's Linda Greenhouse, in her report on yesterday's arguments (Justices Indicate They May Uphold Voter ID Rules), seems to think that voter I.D. requirements will be held to be constitutional - something that must have been very hard for her to write.

The discrimination argument is two-fold: first, that it is too difficult for poor people to get a photo I.D., especially if they don't drive; and second, photo I.D.'s are too "expensive". Both arguments are not only bogus, but are easily rectified. First, you need a photo  I.D. to do practically anything in America these days - cash checks, etc. States make it very easy for anyone who needs a photo I.D. to get one. I'll offer up a personal example - about 20 years ago, my mother developed a health condition that prevented her from driving. Shortly afterwords (and after her driver's license expired), she realized that she needed some sort of a photo I.D. to go about her daily business. So she called up the state, found out what agency provided photo I.D.s for people who didn't have drivers licenses, and got someone to take her down to that office with her birth certificate to get her identification. $15 and 20 years later, she still uses it frequently. So if someone can get down to register to vote and can get themselves down to vote on election day, then they can certainly get down to an office to get a photo I.D. for voting purposes. It's just simple common sense.

As far as the "affordability" argument goes, that's specious as well, but there's also an easy solution to that - and it was suggested in yesterday's arguments by the liberal Justice Stephen G. Breyer:

Justice Stephen G. Breyer was the most active in suggesting ways to Fisher that the law’s impact could be minimized. Breyer’s notion was that the state could simply offer to give a photo ID to a voter who did not have one and could not afford to get one. “It is no big deal — just take a picture of them [when they register] and hand it to them. That would satisfy your anti-fraud concern, in a less restrictive way.” Justice Kennedy chimed in to suggest that, if the Court found Indiana’s way of authenticating voters’ identity was too burden, whether the state might have available “some reasonable alternative.”

When the most common-sense solution to the whole problem is offered by one of the liberal Justices, you can pretty much predict how this case is going to turn out. The only Justices that appear to be on the wrong side of common-sense, as expected, are Justices Ginsburg and Souter. And who knows what might happen if Justice Ginsburg brings out the tears. But if they actually rule on this case, it seems clear that Voter I.D. laws, in general, will be upheld.

But as the NYT's article and an article in this morning's Wall Street Journal (Justices Seem Skeptical
Of Barring Voter-ID Laws) inform us, there is a very good argument made by the majority that this lawsuit has no standing - that it should have been brought as an "as applied case", showing that a particular plaintiff had his voting "rights" violated. While I have sympathy for this argument, and would love to be an attorney questioning a plaintiff along these lines: "Sir (or Madam), you were able to get to court today, and you were able to get to the polling station. Why, then, were you not able to get to the state office to pick up your free voting I.D.?", I know that the Supreme Court doesn't work that way. And since whatever decision (either "no standing" or "Voter I.D. laws are constitutional") will come down sometime in July, I'd rather see that the constitutionality of such laws be upheld, with no need for any further rulings from the Supreme Court. You know, stare decisis and all that.