Barrio Abogado chimes in regarding the Supreme Court upholding of the Indiana voter rights law.

I do not think anyone would disagree with my belief that voting is one of the most sacred rights we possess as US citizens. Voting is the means by which we determine our elected leaders and thus the policy choices made by our government.   The poor decision voters made four years ago to re-elect George W. Bush brought us a failing economy, higher gas prices and the continuation of a war with no end in sight.   Fortunately, we have the opportunity to change the direction of our country this November.  The public’s desire for change has resulted in the highest percentage of voter registration and voter participation in decades. That is the good news. The bad news is that the US Supreme Court got it wrong when it upheld an Indiana law that makes it harder for some people to vote.  For the opinion, see Crawford v. Marion County Election Board at: http://www.supremecourtus.gov. 
 
Voting is a fundamental right guaranteed by the US Constitution.  It is one of our most cherished freedoms along with the right to free speech, freedom of assembly and the right to worship the religion of our choice.  Nevertheless, these rights are not unlimited.  You cannot yell “fire” in a crowed movie theater; you cannot gather to start a riot and you cannot impose your religious beliefs over those of others.  Voting is restricted to citizens and voters must establish their residency to vote in their community.  Everyone wants elections to be fair and to reflect the genuine will of the majority.  Consequently, some regulation is necessary for order rather than chaos to be the end result of our electoral process.  

The degree of regulation we are willing to accept in order to protect the integrity of an election is an underlying challenge we face.  Like any fundamental constitutional right, it requires a balancing test.  What restrictions are acceptable before we undermine the right to vote guaranteed by the Constitution?  The history of voting rights has numerous examples of regulations used by one class over another claiming to protect the right to vote.  These laws really empowered one segment of society at the expense of another.  Gerrymandering and property rights were once used as a means to disenfranchise entire groups of women and minority voters.  Literacy tests and poll taxes existed as legitimate regulations created to protect the voting process, but in reality prevented otherwise qualified citizens from voting. Fortunately, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 addressed some of these concerns and we now have ballots available in whatever language a citizen wants to use when casting a vote.  Previous Supreme courts have struck down efforts to restrict a citizen’s right to vote.  Unfortunately, the Supreme Court under the leadership of Chief Justice Roberts has taken a constitutional step backward and imposed an identification challenge upon each voter.

No one would argue that we should not protect the integrity of the election process, but neither should we allow the adoption of laws making it harder to engage in voting.  Under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and National Voter Registration Act (NAVA) Congress struggled to make voter registration and voting easier, while protecting the voting process from fraud and manipulation.  Indiana took the challenge too far and passed a law requiring all voters to present a photo ID before they could cast a ballot.  One might be tempted to think that such a law is a common sense approach to preventing fraud.  After all, we do not want people to cast a ballot if they are not qualified to vote.  Most states require voters to attest under penalty of perjury that they are citizens and residents of the community.  For decades, that has been sufficient to protect the validity of our elections.  No election in this country has ever been overturned or ruled invalid because non-citizens voted or because voters were impersonated.
 
In my experience, the biggest threat to the voting process occurs though voter intimidation, voter suppression and voting system malfunctions.  As lawyer hired by the Democratic National Committee to oversee the protection of voting rights during the 2004 presidential election, the most common problem I witnessed was not fraud but the incompetence of local officials.  I have seen local clerks and registrars regularly fail to ensure the appropriate operation of polling places, fail to provide sufficient ballots, fail to secure ballots and fail to properly process and count ballots. I have also seen voters intimidated as they approached the polling place and told that only citizens were entitled to vote.  In addition, I have seen voters followed home or had their automobile license plates numbers copied. However, in all the years I have participated in the oversight of elections, I have never seen one instance of voter impersonation. 
 
The Indiana GOP state legislature decided without any evidence of misconduct whatsoever that voter impersonation was a problem that required a solution.  They changed the law and added a new ID requirement even though there has not been a single incident of voter impersonation prosecuted in any election in Indiana. It is already a felony to impersonate a voter.  If you vote in person in Indiana, you must now present your ID.  However, if you vote via an absentee ballot no form of ID is required.  The logic of a Lewis Carroll story is alive and well in Indiana.  The Indiana legislature created a solution in search of problem. 
 
So the question becomes…why did Indiana pass a law to prevent voter fraud if no cases of in-person voter impersonation at polling places existed? The answer is that goal was not to protect elections, but to make voting harder for one segment of voters.  At a time when voters are becoming more and more apathetic about voting, Indiana added one more burden on voters to make it more difficult to vote rather than simpler.  The US Supreme Court swallowed Indiana’s argument. Ask yourself, which segment of the population is the least likely to possess an ID and be more intimidate to show up at a polling place on Election Day?  That segment would be the elderly, the homeless, people living in shelters, the handicapped, minorities and anyone else who might otherwise be qualified to vote but have trouble getting or producing an ID.  The potential for abuse is endless.  What if you changed your maiden name to your married name and could not produce an ID reflecting the name change?  What if your last name was Gonzalez but you spelled it Gonzales with an s at the end instead of a z and the voter registration roll contained the wrong spelling? It is interesting to note that most of these voting groups also tend to vote as Democrats.
 
In upholding the Indiana law, the Roberts Court cited as an example of voter fraud the election of New York Mayor Boss Tweed in 1868.  We have just had one more constitutional right undermined because of something that occurred in an election over 140 years ago!   What’s next a retina scan?  How long before I have to swipe my ID to verify my identity and residency? Will I have to bring a passport to prove my citizenship and identity?  How about a DNA sample?  How much more inane will this get?  
 
The thoughtless reasoning that created a law like the Indiana Voter ID law requires those of us who care about the constitution to exercise our constitutional right and vote this November.  If we fail to elect state legislatures and a President prepared to protect our constitutional rights instead of undermining them, then we have no one to blame but ourselves.  The next President will decide the make up of the Supreme Court.  Will we continue allow elected leaders to restrict our constitutional freedoms in the name of some non-existent threat?  Or, will we return to a voting process that encourages every qualified voter to be counted? Our votes will determine who our elected leaders will be.  As a consequence, we decide the policy choices followed by our government. Let us vote and make the right choice this November!