Right to vote deserves constitutional protection
September 09, 2013 at 7:00:54am
AARON LOUDENSLAGER
The Badger Herald
... Voter fraud in the United States is virtually nonexistent. In fact, as reported by ABC News, a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice demonstrated that between 2002 and 2005, only 26 voters were found guilty of voter fraud. This amounts to approximately .00000013 percent of the votes cast between 2002 and 2005 that resulted in voter fraud convictions. As Colin Powell said, “You can say what you like, but there is no voter fraud. How can it be widespread and undetected?”
In essence, we have politicians enacting voter ID laws to fix a problem that doesn’t exist in reality. In addition, although these voter ID laws are bad from a policy standpoint, under existing U.S. Supreme Court precedent, these laws might pass constitutional muster. The Supreme Court has, in the past, called the right to vote a “fundamental” right subject to strict scrutiny, but recently has retreated from this standard and instead applied a “balancing test.” As the Supreme Court stated in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, rational “evenhanded restrictions that protect the integrity and reliability of the electoral process itself” are constitutional. But the Court also said that these restrictions “must be justified by relevant and legitimate state interests ‘sufficiently weighty to justify the limitation’” ...
The right to vote is the foundation of any truly democratic and open society. This right is being slowly eroded by numerous voter ID laws across the country. It is time for Congress and the states to ratify Pocan’s proposed constitutional amendment so that every person will be able to vote, regardless of restrictive voter ID laws.
http://badgerherald.com/oped/2013/09/10/right-to-vote-deserves-constitutional-protection/
