When Indiana passed a voter I.D. law, it was ostensibly to protect the integrity of the voting process. What better way to prevent voter fraud than to require those participating in an election to produce identification?
Was there any evidence of a voter-fraud scourge in Indiana? No. Would the law make it harder for “certain kinds” of voters (i.e., the elderly, minorities, and the poor) to participate? Yes. Did this look a whole lot like Republican lawmakers trying to discourage likely Democratic voters from taking part in elections? You betcha.
But that didn’t stop the Supreme Court today from approving the Indiana law.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights, validating Republican-inspired voter ID laws.
In a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana’s strict photo ID requirement, which Democrats and civil rights groups said would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. Its backers said it was needed to prevent fraud. […]
The law “is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting ‘the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,'” Justice John Paul Stevens said in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy. Stevens was a dissenter in Bush v. Gore in 2000.
Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas also agreed with the outcome, but wrote separately. Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented, just as they did in 2000.
The ruling is most disappointing. As Josh Marshall explained last year, “Remember, the point of voter ID laws is not to eliminate fraud; it is to eliminate Democratic voters.”
Indiana’s law is part of a national strategy that Republicans hatched a few years ago. GOP policy makers have pushed these schemes without any evidence of actual fraud, but it’s very little effort (passing a state law) with the potential for big rewards (winning elections by disenfranchising voters more likely to support the other party).
“The alleged ill that this is out to correct doesn’t really exist,” said Justin Levitt, counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, which filed a brief arguing against the law.
Indeed, when researchers took a closer look at the Indiana law, they found:
* 21.8% of black Indiana voters do not have access to a valid photo ID (compared to 15.8% of white Indiana voters — a 6 point gap).
* When non-registered eligible voter responses are included – the gap widens. 28.3% of eligible black voters in the State of Indiana to not have valid photo ID (compared to 16.8% of eligible voting age white Indiana residents – a gap of 11.5 percent).
* The study found what it termed “a curvilinear pattern (similar to an upside down U-curve)” in the relationship between age and access to valid ID – younger voters and older voters were both less likely to have valid ID compared to voters in the middle categories. 22% of voters 18-34 did not have ID, nor did 19.4% over the age of 70. (compared to 16.2% of Indiana voters age 35-54 without valid ID and 14.1% for 55-69 year olds).
* 21% of Indiana registered voters with only a high school diploma did not have valid ID (compared to 11.5% of Indiana voters who have completed college – a gap of 9.5%).
* Those with valid ID are much more likely to be Republicans than those who do not have valid ID. Among registered voters with proper ID, 41.6% are registered Republicans, 32.5% are Democrats.
Kevin Drum, whose post on this issue last year included some very helpful charts, adds, “[T]his is probably just a coincidence. I’m sure Karl Rove and the RNC had no idea that the demographics broke down like this. Right?”
Heaven forbid. Republicans had a choice — try to win elections the old fashioned way (by earning the support of voters), or try to shave a few percentage points off the likely vote totals of the other side. They seem to prefer the latter, even if it means proposing a solution to a problem that doesn’t exit.
And today, the Supreme Court not only approved one state’s measure on this, the court majority gave a green light to other states to do the same thing.
Update: Just to drive home the point that the problem the law seeks to address doesn’t exist: “The only examples Stevens can cite in the footnotes are a colorful description of Boss Tweed paying people to vote multiple times in the election of 1868, and an instance of one individual committing in-person voter fraud in Washington state in 2004. The third example (from the 2003 East Chicago race) isn’t even relevant, as Stevens concedes, since it’s a kind of voter fraud not addressed by the Indiana statute. It’s pretty clear that Indiana’s law would be constitutional if it advanced some governmental interest — but should it really be permissible for Indiana to impose a substantial burden on citizens who lack photo identification in order to prevent a type of voter fraud perpetrated by Boss Tweed 140 years ago?”