Although the 2008 presidential election showed unprecedented increases in turnout from underrepresented citizens, their rates of voter registration and participation were still well behind the electorate in general. As we approach election season, this pattern may only continue. Instead of taking steps to improve the administration of elections to encourage and facilitate voter participation from eligible citizens, lawmakers and elected officials are back to raising barriers to voting by implementing strict voter ID laws, as illustrated through high profile court battles, ballot initiatives, and fast-moving legislation.
An appeal to an Indiana’s court’s decision to shut down the state’s notorious voter ID law as unconstitutional was heard last week in the state Supreme Court.
“That’s a lot to have to go through for a constitutional right,” said Supreme Court Justice Frank Sullivan Jr. on the struggles to obtain “birth certificates or other documentation in other states to get a state ID or driver’s license here,” according to Niki Kelly of the Journal Gazette.
While state attorney Thomas Fisher complained that there are “only a handful of anecdotal cases” that prove how voter ID denies citizens the right to vote, “Sullivan pointed out…that the only documented cases of voter fraud he is aware of are absentee ballots ‘and yet no one has to show ID to get an absentee ballot or cast one.’”
An imminent battle over voter ID has also been confirmed in Mississippi. Tuesday, Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said that voter ID will be on the state ballot in 2011, according to Elizabeth Crisp of the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger. Hosemann, a supporter of voter ID bills that have been subject to partisan battles in the legislature over the last decade, said the state Republican Party had collected some 131,678 signatures in favor of the initiative.
“Those in favor of requiring voters to show identification at the polls long have argued that it would help deter fraud, while opponents said it could create intimidation for and decrease turnout among older black voters who once were subjected to Jim Crow laws,” writes Crisp. In 2009, a voter ID initiative gained support from typically resistant Democratic legislators after the addition of an early voting provision. State Republicans, who did not favor the early voting amendment, killed the bill.
Texas, another state that has long fought over voter ID along party lines, may expect the battle to continue in 2011, according to the Dallas Morning News, which says that state Republicans selected voter ID as a resolution in their primary last week. And three states, South Carolina, Idaho, and Rhode Island, have pending photo voter ID bills in their state legislatures.
The League of Women Voters, who challenged the Indiana law in League of Women Voters v Rokita, say voter ID “crosses a line” because it creates “an additional qualification to vote rather than a regulation on voting.” The inevitable result of such laws, voting rights advocates maintain, is the disenfranchisement of thousands of eligible Americans.
“There is a whole group of folks out there effectively being denied the right to vote,” Supreme Court Justice Robert Rucker said. “How does that inspire confidence?”