Voter IDs upheld; debate still rages

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court's decision Monday to uphold Indiana's photo ID law in elections will permit Republican-dominated legislatures in nearly a dozen other states to pass legislation that liberal political advocates say will disenfranchise poorer, Democratic-leaning voters.

Project Vote, a liberal-leaning voter registration group, said 59 voter ID bills have been introduced in 24 states – nearly all of them by Republicans – during the 2008 legislative session. Forty are pending. Republican legislators in 11 states also are pushing bills to require proof of citizenship to register to vote.

The use of photo IDs to curb voter fraud has become a touchstone for Democrats who accuse the GOP of engaging in a vast conspiracy to restrict voting of the poor, the elderly and minorities.

Congress investigated the Bush administration's Justice Department last year over allegations that its Civil Rights Division had twisted enforcement of the nation's voting rights laws to aid Republicans and had authorized restrictive voter ID laws in various states.

Monday's 6-3 ruling only reinforced those opinions, but the divisive nature of the decision was diminished as the usually liberal Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the main opinion and said the state law is a reasonable reaction to the threat of voter fraud.

Indiana has a "valid interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process," said Stevens in an opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Stevens said Indiana's desire to prevent fraud and to inspire voter confidence in the election system is important even though there have been no reports of the kind of fraud the law was designed to combat. Evidence of voters being inconvenienced by the law's requirements also is scant.

Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas agreed with the outcome Monday, but wrote separately in favor of a broader defense of voter ID laws.

"The universally applicable requirements of Indiana's voter-identification law are eminently reasonable. The burden of acquiring, possessing and showing a free photo identification is simply not severe, because it does not even represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting," Scalia said.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented.

Indiana's voter ID law "threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting rights of tens of thousands of the state's citizens," Souter said.

The targets of the law, he said, are "voters who are poor and old."

"The Supreme Court has ... imperiled the rights of thousands of vulnerable voters with no ready access to photo IDs," said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief. "If this law is enforced in a major presidential election," she said, "I'm afraid we will see many otherwise qualified voters turned away at the polls."

Sen. Barack Obama, whose presidential campaign competes in Indiana's primary next week, said: "I will continue to fight to ensure that all of our citizens have equal and unfettered access to the polls, including Indiana voters on May 6."

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton also expressed disappointment. Her spokesman, Jay Carson, said Clinton "believes these voter ID laws disproportionately impair the voting rights of minorities, the poor, and seniors."

In contrast, Republicans hailed the decision.

"Now we have a very clear roadmap for other states to follow," said Indiana's Republican secretary of state, Todd Rokita. "We've been getting calls from 25 other states that have been waiting for a green light, waiting to proceed."

Rokita campaigned for Indiana's 2005 law on grounds that voter impersonation fraud exists even though the state has not prosecuted anyone for the offense.

Democrats and left-leaning election groups say such a wave of new restrictions would infringe on the rights of eligible voters at the lowest rungs of society – those lacking a driver's license or other government-issued photo ID – and who have joined the electoral process amid this year's high-profile presidential campaign.

Five other states – Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Michigan and South Dakota – have enacted photo ID laws. But unlike Indiana, some require valid photo IDs only from first-time voters or don't require a current address. Nineteen other states require some form of ID.

About the writer:

• Call Greg Gordon, McClatchy Washington Bureau, (202) 383-0005. The Associated Press and Washington Post contributed to this report.