As Adam B points out, the Supreme Court has just disenfranchised thousands and thousands of black and Latino people. In upholding Indiana’s picture ID voter requirement, they’ve assured that all states controlled by Republicans will immediately pass similar laws. If you have ever spent time in the inner city, you know that very few people have driver’s licenses or passports, and that it costs $60-$80 to go down to the Division of Motor Vehicles or Secretary of State and get a photo ID. Most young people either have no picture ID, or use a student ID for identification purposes.
Let me just give you a real life example. In 2004, when I was managing voter registration teams, almost no one I hired in North Philadelphia had a photo ID. Likewise, almost no one they went out and registered in their neighborhoods had a photo ID. Yet, we got tens of thousands of people registered to vote and then we got them to the polls. If I had faced a requirement that everyone of those voters provide an official piece of photo identification, almost none of them would have voted. Why? First of all, because they didn’t have $60-$80 to spend on acquiring the identification. Second of all, even if they did, they would have had to make a special trip to the DMV, which is another part of the city.
The Supreme Court’s decision (.pdf) is just laughable.
The record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history. Moreover, petitioners argue that provisions of the Indiana Criminal Code punishing such conduct as a felony provide adequate protection against the risk that such conduct will occur in the future. It remains true, however, that flagrant examples of such fraud in other parts of the country have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists, that occasional examples have surfaced in recent years, and that Indiana’s own experience with fraudulent voting in the 2003 Democratic primary for East Chicago Mayor — though perpetrated using absentee ballots and not in-person fraud — demonstrate that not only is the risk of voter fraud real but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.
They upheld a law that is ostensibly about preventing voter fraud, but there is not one documented case in Indiana of a person going to the polls, impersonating someone else, and casting a vote. Voter ID laws are transparent efforts to disenfranchise poor people that live in urban environments and that rely exclusively on public transportation. And that should pass the test of a violation of the Voting Rights Act. But this conservative court was willing to tie themselves up in pretzels to justify the suppression of Democratic votes.
In my experience talking to non-urban people about Voter ID laws, I always get a response like: ‘Isn’t it the least they could do to get a photo ID?’ Yeah, maybe if you pay for it.
At the time of oral arguments I remember posting a comment somewhere. The plaintiffs couldn’t cite a single case of disenfranchisement.
My mother-in-law was out of state when she fell and broke her hip. In the nursing home her drivers’ license expired. She was a lifelong voter and sorely disappointed that she had no current ID. We couldn’t very well hire an ambulance to take her to the Secretary of State’s office. In her wing there were dozens like her.
No cases? No imagination!
before this court? don’t need to cite any case as an example of disenfranchisement.
Is this not the court that ripped up the Constitution on December 12, 2000, stop the vote count in Florida?
No one should be surprised at this decision. The Constitution – that quaint document – has been trashed, so they can make it up on the wing.
hope your mother-in-law is on the mend. Be well.
It’s also the one that argued that women cannot be trusted to make important medical decisions because they’re too “emotional”. And that was Kennedy, supposedly one of the liberal justices.
“No cases? No imagination! “
actually, Michaela it seems like they have a very good imagination, since “there is not one documented case in Indiana of a person going to the polls, impersonating someone else, and casting a vote”, but they upheld a law to prevent it anyway.
As malcolm x once said “it points toward either the ballot or the bullet.”
This business of stealing people’s rights and reversing decades of progress has got to stop.
As Riverdaughter points out this disproportionately affects women, because women change their names when they get married.
that’s another good point…and when they get divorced.
My wife was married and divorced before I met her. She didn’t petition to get her birth name back, which caused some minor hassles for us when we got married because she had to use her legal (i.e. ex-husband’s) name, not the name I knew her by and was used to. Now it’s causing some minor hassles again, since, because that name is on the marriage certificate, we’re going to need to get a copy of her first marriage certificate before we can get one of Washington’s new fancy-pants ID cards that will let us cross into Canada without having to go to the hassle of getting a passport.
Ah yes, ID cards. I will have a bit more to say about this later.
my MG & E bill and an old birth certificate to vote in the Wisconsin primary, just in case.
There should be alternative pieces of ID, like a SSN, too.
Perhaps an SSN should be a photo card as well, taken when one is an adult.
They make a big deal of Social Security cards not being ID cards. Says so right on the card.
Yeah, right.
One option for activists interested in remedying this would be to push for changes to your own state constitution. Missouri’s voter ID law was struck down based on Missouri constitutional grounds – a decision that was agreed to by even the most conservative justices on the Missouri Supreme Court.
good point. This is a particularly harmful decision. It will leave a major stain on this court.
Yes. We’re going to see a lot of stains on the Roberts court. This one occurred even with Stevens on the court. Imagine once he retires if McCain were to win.
I have never understood why he gets a free pass on that one.
I agree, but no time for this election. My suggestion below, free mobile stations to register voters, could be done by lawsuit by July. Changes to state constitutions take so much longer.
It is a longer term solution – but more permanent.
On the mobile trucks – one thing to be careful of is where they are deployed in the state. It sounds like a good idea (and in general is a good idea) but in Missouri (before the statute was overturned) it turned out that they were only going to pay for a few and were going to deploy most of them in the rural areas that were mostly … you guessed it – Republican.
And it doesn’t solve the problem for seniors who have to track down birth certificates from other states.
So! Big deal. Habeus and not voting rights. The fucking nazis have landed. Unfucking believable. And let us not forget that the vote was 6-3! Staggering. Well, just one more reason for the dems to win a veto proof congress! And what are the chances of that happenning?
It’s only going to get worse once states start following the RealID laws put together by the
KGBDHS.Displaced Americans?
Americans with no name?
Poll tax, here we go again.
Can anyone doubt that today’s Supreme Court would find that there is nothing unconstitutional about an explicit poll tax?
.
KGBDHSKBRThe national ID card is also intended to be used for this purpose, just
as the Nazis used early IBM computer punch card technology to
catalogue lists of homosexuals, gypsies and Jews before the round-ups began.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“Yeah, maybe if you pay for it.”
I think it’s time to start filing lawsuits requiring states with voter ID laws to provide free IDs to all citizens, and requiring that the service be at least as available as voting locations.
After all, voting should not cost you money.
Please take a look at my diary: Of IDs And Voter Re-Enfranchisement: An Open Letter To Barack Obama.
This just depresses the hell out of me.
Oppression! Plain and simple, oppression! Here in the Netherlands every citizen or registered foreigner receives a card in the mail which (s)he hands to the election commission as identification before voting. What kind of medieval institution is the Supreme Court of the U.S.?
That’s how we do it in Missouri. No photos, just the card. It works fine.
Right.
The Roberts court gets by with this stuff by making very narrow decisions and deferring to legislation. So there have to be other ways to get around it until hopefully, we can reform the court.
In this case, the only way is to sue to force states to provide free sources of IDs in the most convenient places for those most affected; mobile stations for nursing homes, store-front registration areas in inner cities. It COULD be done this summer, if someone were aggressive enough.
Well if they defer to legislation it seems like there’s still enough time to put an emergency bill through Congress to state explicitly that IDs are not a requirement for voting. Unfortunately this is exactly the kind of law His Nibs would be keen to veto.
That’s my point. We can fuss and fume about the long term implications of this, but November is the target.
So let’s force the states to provide free photo IDs to people NOW. If nothing else, the cost will be a great argument for the bills we should be putting forward in each state.
I don’t like the idea of having to show ID in order to vote, but where do you get your $60-$80 figure to obtain one? Is there only one DMV office in Philly? Here in Topeka we have at least two, so I would think that a huge city like Philadelphia would have several throughout the area.
I described my mother-in-law’s situation upthread. Here are a couple others:
Divorcees…especially in places like New Orleans, where documents were lost.
In South Florida, where I am right now, Creoles who have language problems (There is no written Creole!)
In the inner city, long long lines. In Michigan I plan on an hour wait during business hours to get a licence plate. Would I wait an hour for an ID that was only good for voting? (Assuming I didn’t want to fly anywhere?)
Excuse me, but there is.
The author is Prof. Albert Valdman.
I know that it is spelled phonetically, in Secretary of State offices. But that’s a construct for convenience. Most of the poor Creole children in Florida don’t speak French, have never seen the inside of a school, and have no idea what that is.
I had time to go to your link. Please note: I’m talking about Haitians, not Louisiana natives. Same word, different population.
Yes, there is a phonetic spelling that the state of Florida uses to try to communicate with its many Haitian residents. But most children who migrate to Florida (now mostly through Mexico, not over the seas) have never been in a school, and never learned to read. Some 14,000 last count in Palm Beach County Schools.
Louisiana Creole is related to Haitian Creole, and Dr. Valdman has done work with Francophone Haitians in this country and outside.
I don’t know about Pennsylvania, but here in Washington state the fee is $20 for a state ID card and they are available at any state licensing office that also issues driver’s licenses. This, however, does not count time lost from work, the cost of transportation, child care, or any other factor that might need to be figured in for the “real” cost of the ID card.
When I lived in Philly, there were two driver’s license centers, both far from any actual people. I went to the closer one once. I took a day off work, and the bus ride there was crowded and took two hours. When I got there, I was told I needed a birth certificate; come back when you find one.
I never did. Getting a passport was easier for ID purposes.
Those are almost $100 now and unless they’ve significantly reduced the backlog, it takes forever to get one. It’s probably even less of an option for many of the people affected by this ruling.
Pennsylvania DMV web site says they are $10.
Passports are $10? Nada.
in your dreams
Note that in the Indiana case the photo ID was free. I think that’s always going to be a requirement – that you don’t have to pay a fee to get a voting card. Although you can certainly use an approved card that you did pay a fee for (i.e. a driver’s license).
The court (at least Stevens) recognizes that there are other costs that may cause a special burden on some people’s right to vote but says that Indiana mitigates that burden by providing in its statute that people without the state ID can vote by provisional ballot and then troop themselves down to the circuit court clerk’s office within 10 days of the election and sign an affidavit.
In any event, I don’t think the argument that they are “cheap” would fly to the court. It is not clear the court would uphold a requirement that they be paid for – directly. I also don’t see that the court would uphold a law that without the ID you absolutely can’t vote – there would have to be some way to cast a provisional ballot that would count.
On election day 2006, a woman told me she had just been charged $10 for her “free” voter ID. I gave her a copy of the law that I had brought to the polls and told her she could take it to the license branch to ask for her money back. I have not heard if she was able to get a refund. The poll tax has returned.
My recently turned 18 year old lost both his birth certificate and his social security card, which made it impossible to get a replacement ID/driver’s license without jumping through some major hoops. First was sending off to the county of his birth for the new certificate, with a check for $35 of course, then waiting the 3 to 6 weeks for that to arrive in the mail. Then a trip to the SS Admin. building and a 3-hour wait in line, then back to the DMV for the ID/driver’s license, which, IIRC, was $25. Not to mention time off from your hourly job and bus fare, etc.
My biggest obstacle in hiring people in 2004 was that so many people did not have a social security card, which is a requirement. I had to walk many people through the steps for acquiring one.
“there is not one documented case in Indiana of a person going to the polls, impersonating someone else, and casting a vote”
Well, of course not. If they don’t check identifications then how could they possibly know whether there was fraud or not???? Maybe I’m missing something.
As a Democrat and a progressive I really don’t see how this disenfranchises anyone. On the contrary, it protects legitimate voters against fraud, and help guarantees fair elections. I’m sorry, I just don’t buy these claims.
The claim that it costs $60-80 to get a voter id in Pennsylvania simply isn’t true. I just checked their web site and it costs $10. In California where I live it costs $23, it’s free for seniors, and only $7 for low-income people.
You aren’t counting the cost of the documentation that you need.
And certainly a state can require identification at a poll, but it doesn’t have to be picture identification. Our state sends out a voter ID card to every voter and you bring that to the poll. They also send an official notice card for every election and you can bring that to the poll – it shows it was addressed to you. And if you forget it you can show some other kind of identification. Also, if two people at the polling station can personally identify you, that’s enough (this happens a lot in small towns where everyone knows each other – especially older voters).
So there are many ways to make sure that the person has some identification that doesn’t mean they have to pay for a certified copy of their birth certificate in order to get an “official” state ID.
This probably isn’t going to even interest the non-lawyers here but publius has a piece up about the opinion (which I haven’t had a chance to read in full yet) and speculates on Justice Stevens’ reasons for joining with Kennedy and Roberts:
So … come on y’all. Let’s work for that future better court.
I don’t drive. My passport expired 3 years ago.
If you told me the election was next Tuesday, I wouldn’t be able to vote under this law.
They say “photo-id” as if it were something you could get at a dime store.
What they really mean is ‘state id’.
Back in the day, all you needed to prove your identity was a charge card and a photo id from your job or school.
My, how things have changed.
Back in the day, young whippersnapper, just the card sent by the county board of elections was plenty!