Supreme Court Upholds Indiana Voter Identificaton Statute

By sskrplaw on April 28, 2008 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

decision in Crawford v. Marion County and it is yet another High Court setback to the rights of minorities and the underprivileged. In its ruling, the Court upheld an Indiana law requiring voters to show state or federal sanctioned proof of identification before casting their ballot. The Court properly noted that the burden, though slight, was on the state to articulate some reason justifying this restriction on the electoral process. Though the majority said there was evidence of fraud to justify the voter identification requirement, the actual evidence cited is weak to say the least: one instance dating back to 1868 and a single case of impersonation voter fraud found in a recent gubernatorial election in Washington state.

This opinion simply ignores the history in this country, including recent history in the last two presidential elections, of state authorized attempts to discourage minorities from voting. As the well reasoned dissent of Justice Souter makes clear, Indian’s law “poses nontrivial burdens on the voting rights of tens of thousands of the State’s citizens.” Republicans were quick to applaud the Court’s opinion and Democrats to condemn it. One day, hopefully, both parties will encourage attempts to make it easy for all Americans to vote and resist attempts to place burdens in the path of the democratic process.

Alan Milstein

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Supreme Court Upholds Indiana Voter Identificaton Statute

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