January 09, 2008
Supremes Hear Arguments In Voter ID Case
UPDATED.
Just in time for the 2008 elections, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments this morning on whether laws requiring a government-issued photo ID to vote are constitutional (transcript [PDF]).
The main topic at hand is election fraud. We previewed the case back in September when it was granted cert. Surprisingly, the justices seemed eager to steer the arguments away from the political touchiness of the voter ID issue.
The first questions asked of Paul Smith, arguing for petitioners, concerned whether his clients even had standing to sue the Marion County Election Board and Indiana secretary of state over one of the strictest voter ID laws in the land. Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts grilled Smith on this point, and for good reason: the plaintiffs included the Democratic Party of Indiana, which sued on the grounds that the government-issue photo ID required was unfairly prohibitive for elderly and poor voters, who may not own cars or driver's licenses.
The justices were essentially asking Smith to prove that the plaintiffs had actually been harmed by the law. A skeptical Roberts noted the lower-court judge's finding that "there is not a single plaintiff who intends not to vote because of the new law -- that is, who would vote were it not for the law."
"Well, Your Honor, the record in this case was made when an election had not yet happened," Smith replied. "So that comment, while it was certainly made, I don't quite understand its significance. This case was brought to try to prevent an irreparable loss of constitutional rights in advance of the implementation of this law."
Smith added that since the January 2007 Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruling [PDF], elections had been held under the law and that a number of people who did not have photo IDs were not allowed to vote.
Justices Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy didn't seem to buy Smith's explanation of whether his plaintiffs thought any requirement beyond a simple signature would be acceptable. "Well, it is certainly true that, in fact, there is no evidence in this record of any significant amount of fraud that is still occurring with the existing system of voter identification," Smith said, in a dodge of that question.
The justices finally managed to get Smith to admit that the answer was no. But they didn't seem satisfied with the contention that any additional measures designed to prevent fraudulent voting would be unconstitutionally burdensome.
The consolidated suits, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board and Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita, are a prime example of a case in which the central dispute and the constitutional questions at hand don't neatly jibe. All across the country, Republicans have enacted voter-ID laws in order, they say, to prevent fraud. Democrats counter that such laws disenfranchise voters who gravitate toward their party (the elderly, indigent, sick). Meanwhile, there is little empirical evidence that fraud at the polls is much of a problem at all, raising questions about the necessity of those statutes.
We suspected before that petitioners may have jumped the gun on this one. Judging by Kennedy's skepticism of the case, without more proof that significant numbers of voters are unable to meet the polling requirements (making the 17-mile trek to obtain a photo ID, in one example provided by Smith), it appears unlikely this court will overturn the Seventh Circuit's ruling upholding the Indiana law.
The court is expected to issue its opinion by the summer. See more analysis from ScotusBlog's Lyle Denniston. Orin Kerr at Volokh Conspiracy has culled the more telling questions from Kennedy.
Posted at 5:56 PM
Posted to:
Campaigns, Constitution, Supreme Court
Share via
