The United State Court of Appeals of the Seventh Circuit found standing in the suit. Judge Richard Posner's ruling suggests that folks without a photo I.D.. would probably not vote anyways. Especially, since, having a photo I.D. is almost a mandate in order to move about the world.
Even though 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, without one; see United States v. Smith, 426 F.3d 567 (2d Cir. 2005)), and as a consequence the vast majority of adults have such
identification, the Indiana law will deter some people from voting.
And more than likely those folks on the low end of the pole of survival, economically poor, would vote Democratic. That is if these same folks managed to or are motivated to even show up at the polls to vote.
No doubt most people who don’t have photo ID are low on the economic ladder and thus, if they do vote, are more likely to vote for Democratic than Republican candidates.
Exit polls in the recent midterm elections show a strong negative correlation between income and voting Democratic, with the percentage voting Democratic rising from 45 percent for voters with an income of at least $200,000 to 67 percent for voters having an income below $15,000. “Exit Polls", http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/US/H/00/epolls.0.html; see also Jeffrey M. Stonecash, Class and Party in American Politics 114 (2000) (tab. 5.7). Thus the new law injures the Democratic Party by compelling the party to devote resources to getting to the polls those of its supporters who would otherwise be discouraged by the new law from bothering to vote. See Havens Realty Corp v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 378 (1982); Smith v. Boyle, 144 F.3d 1060, 1061- 63 (7th Cir. 1998).
Having say that the evidence was not enough to motivate the Judge to find a single plaintiff who would vote or not vote based on the new law among those who stood before the district court.
There is not a single plaintiff who intends not to vote because of
the new law—that is, who would vote were it not for the law. There are plaintiffs who have photo IDs and so are not affected by the law at all and plaintiffs who have no photo IDs but have not said they would vote if they did and so who also are, as far as we can tell, unaffected by the law. There thus are no plaintiffs whom the law will deter from voting.
Nor did the Judge believe the new I.D. photo law would reduce the voters roll any more than the National Voter Registration Act law that required the purging of the voters rolls.
The plaintiffs point out that the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg-6(a)(4), requires all states to purge their registration rolls of ineligible voters. See also the Help American Vote Act, 42 U.S.C. § 15301, particularly § 15483(a)(4)(B). The purge has not yet been completed in Indiana. One thing that is slowing it down is that removing a name from the voter registration roll requires notice to a registered voter whose address appears from postal records to have changed, and only if a voter fails to respond to the notice and fails to vote in two successive federal elections can the state remove him from the rolls. 42 U.S.C. §§ U.S.C. §1973gg-6(c), (d). And when the purge is completed, it is likely to eliminate many more eligible voters than the new Indiana law will do, cf. Jeffrey A. Blomberg, “Note: Protecting the Right Not to Vote From Voter Purge Statutes,” 64 Fordham L. Rev. 1015, 1016-17(1995), yet provide only a short-term solution, since as soon as the purge is complete the inflation of the registration rolls will recommence.
The fact that the law requiring the purging is not being followed in a timely fashion did not appear to have swayed the Judge in considering the State of Indiana's ability to follow the Election laws as negligible.
Judge Terrence Evan, expressed an understanding that more and more voters are optioning out of participating in the political process.
Let’s not beat around the bush:
The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic. We should subject this law to strict scrutiny—or at least, in the wake of Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428 (1992), something akin to “strict scrutiny light”—and strike it down as an undue burden on the fundamental right to vote.
Judge Evan even suggested shopping malls as a creative way to get out the vote. And even suggested that the voter fraud is just a veiled attempt at keeping certain voters away from the poll.
The fig leaf of respectability providing the motive behind this law is that it is necessary to prevent voter fraud—a person showing up at the polls pretending to be someone else. But where is the evidence of that kind of voter fraud in this record? Voting fraud is a crime (punishable by up to 3 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 in Indiana) and, at oral argument, the defenders of this law candidly acknowledged that no one—in the history of Indiana—had ever been
charged with violating that law. Nationwide, a preliminary report to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission has found little evidence of the type of polling-place fraud that photo ID laws seek to stop. If that’s the case, where is the justification for this law? Is it wise to use a sledgehammer to hit
either a real or imaginary fly on a glass coffee table? I think not.
At the end of the day, reviewing the new law fail to rise to the level of strict scrutiny leaving it up to the reason provided by the State.
Hat tip to ILB
