“Righting” An Imaginary Wrong

Before this session of the Supreme Court began last September, the New York Times told us the following (I highlighted this in the following post on Justice John Paul Stevens also)…

The case that will most test the court’s ability to rise above partisanship is a challenge to Indiana’s voter ID law. Indiana is one of a growing number of states that require voters to present a government-issued photo ID. Such laws have been billed as anti-vote-fraud measures, but there is little evidence of vote fraud at the polls. The Republicans who have pushed these laws are trying to make it hard for poor and minority voters, who are less likely than other groups to have drivers’ licenses — and more likely to vote Democratic — to cast ballots. The court has traditionally championed voting rights, but a conservative majority may boost Republican chances in 2008 by endorsing this disturbing barrier to voting.

They absolutely nailed it (and here's more). But the really depressing part is that Stevens helped them go along with it, even though the voter ID law would have ended up still enforced anyway.

Amanda Terkel and The Guardian tell us here that…

To justify his decision Stevens had to point to an anecdotal example of ballot box stuffing in the 1868 New York City elections during the notorious Tammany Hall era, an instance of one person committing voter fraud in the 2004 elections in the state of Washington and a 2003 case of fraud in an Indiana mayoral primary election. The last example, however, involved an absentee ballot, which would be not covered under this new law.

On May 6, voters without photo IDs may cast provisional ballots. More likely, they'll just stay home. Writing the dissent, justice David Souter predicted: "Indiana's 'voter ID law' threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting right of tens of thousands of the state's citizens and a significant percentage of those individuals are likely to be deterred from voting." This last scenario is exactly what conservatives want.

In Indiana, 13% of registered voters lack the documents needed to obtain a license, and therefore, cast a ballot. These restrictions disproportionately affect not only low-income, minority and elderly voters, but also disabled, homeless, transgender and urban residents, leading to lower levels of voter participation.

Additionally, these affected voters tend to vote Democratic, as Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales were more than aware. A 2007 study (pdf) for the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race found that just 81.7% of Democrats in Indiana have access to a photo ID, compared with 86.2% of Republicans.

And McClatchy tells us here that…

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court's decision Monday to uphold Indiana's photo ID law in elections will permit Republican-dominated legislatures in nearly a dozen other states to pass legislation that liberal political advocates say will disenfranchise poorer, Democratic-leaning voters.

Project Vote, a liberal-leaning voter registration group, said 59 voter ID bills have been introduced in 24 states — nearly all of them by Republicans — during the 2008 legislative session. Forty are pending. Republican legislators in 11 states also are pushing bills to require proof of citizenship to register to vote.

I sincerely this ruling does not end up as a valedictory of sorts for a man who said, “I don’t think of myself as a liberal at all,” even though he wrote a stinging dissent from the majority opinion in Bush v. Gore, but if it does, Judge Stevens only has himself to blame.

Update 5/6/08: Wow, nice job, you six! You'd better hope Obama doesn't end up 12 votes short (assuming these sisters would have voted for him, of course).

Update 5/16/08: And this is another unholy consequence (h/t J Street).