In 2005 Indiana (a red state) passed a law requiring voters to present a government-issued ID – nothing else will do – before casting a ballot. This week the Supreme Court is hearing a court challenge, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, in which a number of organizations have filed amicus briefs on both sides, all linked here.
– and in not one of them has any proponent of ID requirements put forth any credible evidence that persons voting while ineligible is a real problem requiring a solution.
There is no “right” to vote in the U.S. It makes my skin crawl everytime I hear this. You cannot be denied full suffrage BECAUSE of your: race, sex, failure to pay a poll tax, or age provided you are over the age of 18.
Those are the only constitutional limitations. Everything else, including producing a valid government ID, is fair game…
And how would you propose proving it’s a real problem, considering without IDs to check you have no way to prove the person is voting under the wrong name? A 20-20 undercover expose where someone deliberately commits fraud?
Although I can’t prove people do commit fraud without ID checks, it’s easy to imagine they do given how voting works in my town. All you do is go to the line where your last name falls and give a perfect stranger your first and last name. My little brother moved away a few months ago, and I’m positive he’s on my town’s voter rolls still. If someone had claimed to be him, I’m sure they could have voted under his name without a problem.
How difficult would it be for someone’s campaign to find out who is registered in a given town but doesn’t vote, and have other people claim to be those voters? Probably easier than hacking voting machines.
As long as IDs are freely given at a very low cost (or free,) I think the SCOTUS would be within bounds to uphold a voter ID law. However, diligent efforts towards getting IDs into the hands of the eldery and poor also need to be made.
You must, then find it hard to read several Supreme Court decisions, namely all the ones which have asserted that there is a fundamental right to vote contained in the meaning of “liberty,” as used in the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments.
Now, if by your assertion, you mean that no person can force a state to let them vote, you would be correct, but since you note that there are restrictions written directly into the Constitution on the ability of the federal or state governments to restrict your franchise, you should acknowledge that there are other restrictions that have been found to exist. I’m not going to bother with a lengthy dissertation on the issue; I’m sure you can find several examples without too much trouble (such as Kramer v. Union Free School District, 395 U.S. 621 (1969)).
Good. I hope the Supremes uphold the law and do so in language that encourages other states to enact similar laws. It makes my skin crawl knowing that anybody can walk into the polls, say they are me, and cast my vote.
I presume that you mean the 5th and 14th Amendments of the constitution? You know…that thing written for citizens of the USA? So how is one meant to reserve the right to just citizens if you don’t use a guarantation* process of some sort?
And similarly, how does verifying the identity of a voter in any way remove their voting liberty? People should have to produce ID to drive, but not to vote on/against someone who might lead the country to war?
Driving is not a fundamental right protected by the Constitution and federal statutes. Voting is.
The crux of the argument here is that obtaining suitable ID can be, for some, difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. It is a de facto poll tax, which disproportionately affects poor minorities. This violates the 14th amendment.
There is an additional argument under the Voting Rights Act that you cannot have different requirements for different voters. Since the ID requirement only applies to in-person voters, the law also violated the Voting Rights Act.
As best I can tell, none of the posts you cite have working cites that challenge BG’s claim. Not saying they don’t exist, but these aren’t very persuasive.
The best one of the bunch says that a bunch of provisional ballots were accidently counted. But the law in question here wouldn’t eliminate provisional ballots.
So the amendments are applicable not only to citizens, but to all persons living in the United States. I dislike it when people make this fundamental mistake.
As for the rest of your post, I wasn’t taking any side in the debate about the OP. I was merely correcting the erroneous assertion of jtgain that there is no “right to vote.”
To the best of my recollection, in none of the linked threads did any proponent of ID requirements cite an example of voter-fraud-as-a-real-problem that was not trivial (e.g., that ACORN crap), irrelevant, or bullshit. You are free to comb the threads for such a purported example, cite it – and then defend its probative value. Which you can’t. There is no case to make.
Umm, no. My argument is exactly what I said it was. Namely, obtaining the ID required by the law in question can be, for some, difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. In this case, the state attempted to provide voting ID at no cost, but you had to have a valid birth certificate and secondary ID to obtain it–two things some people do not have and would have to pay for.
Situation in the jurisdiction I live in: You go register at the Registration Board at your local Elections Commission office (no later than 50 days before the election). If you are a first-time registrant, you show up with proof of identity and domicile. They provide you a voter reg card with your voter number and photograph; they also take your signature (or mark, if illiterate). The process is 100% free of charge to the registrant.
The poll workers get from the Elections Commission a list of the ward’s registered voters, with a digital copy of your pic and sig. You show up, show your ID and sign in. They compare you and your sig to the pic and sig on the card and on the list. They then wave you in if all fine. On the days immediately before election day and during election day itself, the Board is open to replace lost or damaged cards. If election day is not a Sunday, it’s declared a mandatory holiday. People requesting absentee ballots by the deadline, will get a flag on the polling place list indicating they are not expected to vote in person.