A Supreme Court Reversal: Abandoning the Rights of Voters

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011508F.shtml

A Supreme Court Reversal: Abandoning the Rights of Voters
By Adam Cohen
The New York Times

Tuesday 15 January 2008


The Supreme Court heard arguments last week in a hugely important case about voter ID laws. Asking for identification at the polls may sound reasonable, but an Indiana law disenfranchises large numbers of people without driver's licenses, especially poor and minority voters. If the court upholds the law, as appears likely, it will be a sad new chapter in its abandonment of voters, a group whose rights it once defended vigorously.

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It might seem that today's court is simply judicially restrained, deferring to rules adopted by the democratically elected branches. Recently, however, the court struck down parts of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that limited "Swift boat" style attack ads on the eve of elections. It was perfectly willing to reverse a federal law when the political power of corporations and wealthy individuals was at stake.

The Indiana voter ID case should not be a hard one. Restrictions on voting are subject to heightened constitutional scrutiny, and the state cannot justify the enormous burdens the law imposes. There is no evidence that in-person vote fraud has ever occurred in the state, but there is considerable evidence that voters will be disenfranchised. Indiana could have deterred fraud in less harmful ways, including by accepting a wider range of ID's.

Critics of the court are already dubbing the voter ID case Bush v. Gore II, and ascribing political motives. The Indiana law, like others nationwide, was pushed through by Republican legislators, evidently with the intent of reducing Democratic turnout.

The five conservative justices may like the fact that voter ID laws increase the odds that Republicans will hold on to the White House in 2008. Or they may have a disregard for poor and minority voters that transcends partisan politics. At the oral arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts suggested that if a voter has to travel 17 miles by bus to a clerk's office to fight over whether his vote should count, it is no great concern since the trip is not "very far."

When the court struck down parts of the McCain-Feingold law, Chief Justice Roberts emphasized that the Constitution "requires us to err on the side of protecting political speech rather than suppressing it." When it comes to voters' rights, the court appears eager to err in the opposite direction.