Let Them Vote

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that an Indiana law requiring government-issued photo identification at the polls is constitutional. We believe that both sides of the Supreme Court’s argument—that the law does not place an undue burden on citizens’ ability to vote and that this law protects against the imminent threat of voter fraud—are misguided.

This law, which is one of the nation’s toughest, does not allow voters to use utility or phone bills or employee identification at the polls. The necessity of government-issued photo ID means that citizens are required to spend money on an ID which might be useless to them in all other contexts. Although the Supreme Court disagrees, this action is blatantly discriminatory toward those people who do not need driver’s licenses. Although the Indiana motor vehicle agency will grant a free, non-driver’s license state ID to people who do not drive, it requires an unexpired, “primary document” like an original birth certificate or a passport. This restriction unfairly affects certain demographics who are not in the position to acquire a state ID, like the poor, the elderly, and the disabled.

Furthermore, the evidence that the Court cites to justify its fear about voter fraud is weak at best. The Court’s citation of alleged voter fraud in New York City’s 1868 election is absurd. The only specific evidence of in-person voter fraud that the majority opinion cites is an incident in 2004 in Washington involving a single person. Although states should obviously be concerned about voter fraud, especially in the much less reliable realm of absentee ballots, the Court gives states too much leeway in this instance. The risk of in-person voter fraud is too small to place such a burden as government-issued ID onto citizens.

The most disheartening aspect of this decision is that the Indiana law is just one part of the voting mess that America currently faces. Many people assumed that the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was breaking the final barrier in opening voting booths to all Americans. But as the country has witnessed in horror in 2000 in Florida and with much less concern in Ohio in 2000 and 2004, the voting systems that we currently use are nowhere near ideal. In the history of America, states have failed to protect voters’ right or ability to vote, whether out of racism or apathy, and it is horrible that state-sanctioned impediments such as this one still exist.

For Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the majority opinion and is typically one of the Court’s strongest advocates of democratic inclusiveness, this decision seems especially egregious. We hope that additional lawsuits will be soon brought in front of the Court, which opened itself to the possibility of changing its mind if the barriers against voting prove to be greater. The federal government must put more pressure on states to have reliable voting systems that are open to all citizens.