By Ross Balano, Midwest Voices Columnist 2008
Today the Supreme Court of the United States upheld Indiana’s voter identification law. In doing so it ruled that it is not unconstitutional to require a person to produce a photo I.D. in order to vote and that the state has a “valid interest” in deterring fraud.
The court rejected arguments against the Indiana law, considered the strictest in the country, and said that the law does not impose unjustified burdens on people who are old, poor or members of minority groups and less likely to have a drivers license or other acceptable photo identification.
The vote came down 6 to 3 in favor with John Paul Stevens writing the opinion and being joined by John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito while only the three most liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, David Souter, and Steven Breyer dissented.
This is a welcome, common sense ruling by the court. Hopefully it will open the door for the Missouri law which had been struck down in the courts to be revived.
No person who is not a citizen should be allowed to vote and citizens only once each.
There have been accusations of voter fraud in the Kansas City and St. Louis areas in recent elections. Requiring a voter to show a photo I.D. is a small inconvenience to help insure the integrity of an election.
"There have been accusations of voter fraud in the Kansas City and St. Louis areas in recent elections."
Keep in mind, the so-called "voter fraud" Balano references is voter-registration fraud, where people who were getting paid to register voters made up names or got them out of a phone book to defraud the organization paying them, community activist group ACORN. ACORN turned these folks in and they were indicted and convicted. (The timing of that indictment, just before the election, was a tad suspect, and was likely politically motivated, supplying right-wingers like Balano with bogus ammunition to sling)
Just keeping it real.
For the record, I've no real problem with requiring identification when voting, so long as it's easy and free for people to obtain such identification and legit voters aren't inconvenienced. However, is voter fraud in the form of unregistered folks voting a major problem? Not at all convinced it is -- I'm much more concerned with movement towards paperless electronic voting machines, because it makes it so much easier for real fraud to occur, with someone hacking in and altering the results, and no paper trail to prove otherwise. That's true disenfranchisement.