October 01, 2007

"High court can regain ground; strike voter ID"

"George W. Bush's domestic legacy will be a deeply conservative U.S. Supreme Court, one which has already shown its impatience with efforts to redress lingering racial discrimination. It ruled against efforts in Louisville and Seattle to keep schools racially balanced.

Let's hope the Roberts court is more progressive in its views toward voting. The Supreme Court is the last bulwark against an invidious effort to disenfranchise poorer voters, many of them black and brown, through highly restrictive voter ID laws. Such laws have been passed in states around the country, from Arizona to Indiana to Georgia.

The nation's highest court has agreed to hear an appeal of the Indiana law, and its ruling will likely be issued just in time for the 2008 presidential elections. The law — and similar ones in other states — should be struck down. By requiring voters to show a state-sponsored ID such as a driver's license, those laws create unfair obstacles for elderly and poor voters who are unlikely to own cars and, therefore, unlikely to drive.

Americans who are safely ensconced in the economic mainstream may find it hard to believe that there are law-abiding voters out there who don't have a driver's license. In writing the majority opinion upholding Indiana's law, Judge Richard Posner, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, certainly had that view.

"It is exceedingly difficult to maneuver in today's America without a photo ID. Try flying, or even entering a tall building such as the courthouse in which we sit," he wrote.

But there are still voters in small towns and rural hamlets who have never flown, never entered a federal courthouse and never rented a movie from Blockbuster. Yet, they, too, have the right to vote, according to the U.S. Constitution."

You can read the rest of the column here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at October 1, 2007 07:28 AM