Today, the Supreme Court handed down a decision upholding an Indiana law that requires voters to show a Photo ID at polling places:
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter-identification law on Monday, declaring that a requirement to produce photo identification is not unconstitutional and that the state has a “valid interest” in improving election procedures as well as deterring fraud.
In a 6-to-3 ruling in one of the most awaited election-law cases in years, the court rejected arguments that Indiana’s law imposes unjustified burdens on people who are old, poor or members of minority groups and less likely to have driver’s licenses or other acceptable forms of identification. Because Indiana’s law is considered the strictest in the country, similar laws in the other 20 or so states that have photo-identification rules would appear to have a good chance of surviving scrutiny.
The ruling, coming just eight days before the Indiana primary and at the height of a presidential election campaign, upheld rulings by a Federal District Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which had thrown out challenges to the 2005 law.
Justice John Paul Stevens, who announced the judgment of the court and wrote an opinion in which Chief John G. Roberts Jr. and Anthony M. Kennedy joined, alluded to — and brushed aside — complaints that the law benefits Republicans and works against Democrats, whose ranks are more likely to include poor people or those in minority groups.
The justifications for the law “should not be disregarded simply because partisan interests may have provided one motivation for the votes of individual legislators,” Justice Stevens wrote.
Justice Stevens and the two court members who joined him found that the Democrats and civil rights groups who attacked the law, seeking a declaration that it was unconstitutional on its face, had failed to meet the heavy burden required for such a “facial challenge” to prevail.
Perhaps, they suggested, the outcome could be different in another voter-rights case, one in which a plaintiff could show that his or her rights had been violated. That was the approach suggested by the Bush administration, whose solicitor general, Paul D. Clement, urged the court to wait for a lawsuit brought by someone was actually barred by the statute from casting a ballot.
Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. concurred in the judgment of the court, but went further in rejecting the plaintiffs’ challenge. In an opinion by Justice Scalia, the three justices said, “The law should be upheld because its overall burden is minimal and justified.”
Scalia, Thomas, and Alito are, of course, correct. If everyone is required to show identification in order to vote, and it is relatively easy for voters to get the required identification, then the argument that the requirement constitutes an unacceptable burden is, quite simply, absurd.
Of course, considering that it was Democrats and civil rights organizations who were so concerned about the “integrity” of the voting process in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, one would have thought that they would support a bill that ensures that only people legally entitled to vote are voting in an election.
But, then again, logic and politics are seldom united.
