You don't often see Stevens on the same side as Roberts, Thomas, Scalia and Alito.
I'm cool with requiring photo ID to vote, but I'm not okay with the state being able to charge for an ID (that is effectively a poll tax) or require a fixed address.
The burden of traveling to a more distant BMV office rather than a conveniently located polling place is probably serious for many of the individuals who lack photo identification. They almost certainly will not own cars, and public transportation in Indiana is fairly limited. According to a report published by Indiana’s Department of Transportation in August 2007, 21 of Indiana’s 92 counties have no public transportation system at all, and as of 2000, nearly 1 in every 10 voters lived within 1 of these 21 counties. Among the counties with some public system, 21 provide service only within certain cities, and 32 others restrict public transportation to regional county service, leaving only 18 that offer countywide public transportation....
For those voters who can afford the roundtrip, a second financial hurdle appears: in order to get photo identification for the first time, they need to present " ‘a birth certificate, a certificate of naturalization, U. S. veterans photo identification, U. S. military photo identification, or a U. S. passport.’" As the lead opinion says, the two most common of these documents come at a price: Indiana counties charge anywhere from $3 to $12 for a birth certificate (and in some other States the fee is significantly higher), that same price must usually be paid for a first-time passport, since a birth certificate is required to prove U. S. citizenship by birth. The total fees for a passport, moreover, are up to about $100. So most voters must pay at least one fee to get the ID necessary to cast a regular ballot. As with the travel costs, these fees are far from shocking on their face, but in the Burdick analysis it matters that both the travel costs and the fees are disproportionately heavy for, and thus disproportionately likely to deter, the poor, the old, and the immobile.
To you and me, $100 seems like nothing much, but I have been poor, and let me tell you, $100 is the difference between eating or not, having the water or lights shut off or not, having your home foreclosed upon or not. Phones and a car are a luxury. Being poor is being in a different world.
Also, it stands as a fact that this law (and others like it) will systematically discriminate against the poor; it also stands as a fact that this will benefit Republicans, as the majority of Republican voters are people of means.
As I've posted in my own journal, for the poorest, even $10 can mean the difference between eating that week and having nothing. So this amounts to a "poll tax" and is therefore unconstitutional.
In Illinois (where I had my kids and so have personal knowledge), the first birth certificate is free. I believe I could have gotten up to three copies.
The photo ID for voting requirement sounds like good grounds for striking down birth certificate fees, although that could be tricky for people born in other states.
Transportation to the state office to get the photo ID could be harder to manage (and I hadn't thought of that), but perhaps a second lawsuit to force any state with that requirement to come pick people up (or maybe send a van around once a year with computers and digital cameras) might be successful.
Right, which is why I think challenging the specific hurdles might be more successful than challenging the authentication requirement. But looking closer, it looks like that might have already been the core of Breyer's dissent, anyway.
Someone's "right to live" may be a right, but that doesn't mean they won't starve to death or die of exposure or pneumonia or AIDS or Mack truck.
(If I read the summary right, the majority opinion found that neither side had actually shown much of anything. I don't know if that means the Daily Kos wrote a more persuasive argument than the lawyers arguing before the SCOTUS, or if that was argued and found to not demonstrate serious hardship. That voting registration was free was a point against burden; the need to pay for copies of documents to prove things wasn't mentioned in the summary I read.)
Fortunately, like with starvation, there are donation-funded and volunteer groups whose goal it is to help people vote who otherwise could not. And truly, I'd rather see campaigns spend money on get-out-the-vote (targeted to their constituents, of course) than horrendous amounts on TV ads. Or those dial-everybody computers.
At the precinct where I worked the last election (and may well work a lot of future elections), we accepted any reasonable photo ID, not just drivers licenses and state IDs. Lots of those, particularly school IDs and library cards, are free. This may not be the case in more contentious precincts.
If a person is concerned about his or her ID being valid, I recommend voting via absentee ballot. So far, you don't need any ID for one of those - which is perhaps an oversight. I can imagine intercepting absentee ballots at, say, a nursing home, and engaging in vote fraud. I'll have to check to see what the rules are on where one can have an absentee ballot mailed.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-28 09:05 pm (UTC)I'm cool with requiring photo ID to vote, but I'm not okay with the state being able to charge for an ID (that is effectively a poll tax) or require a fixed address.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-28 09:13 pm (UTC)To you and me, $100 seems like nothing much, but I have been poor, and let me tell you, $100 is the difference between eating or not, having the water or lights shut off or not, having your home foreclosed upon or not. Phones and a car are a luxury. Being poor is being in a different world.
Also, it stands as a fact that this law (and others like it) will systematically discriminate against the poor; it also stands as a fact that this will benefit Republicans, as the majority of Republican voters are people of means.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-28 09:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 03:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 12:15 am (UTC)Transportation to the state office to get the photo ID could be harder to manage (and I hadn't thought of that), but perhaps a second lawsuit to force any state with that requirement to come pick people up (or maybe send a van around once a year with computers and digital cameras) might be successful.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 12:42 am (UTC)Is the act of voting a right or a convenience?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 01:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 02:31 am (UTC)(If I read the summary right, the majority opinion found that neither side had actually shown much of anything. I don't know if that means the Daily Kos wrote a more persuasive argument than the lawyers arguing before the SCOTUS, or if that was argued and found to not demonstrate serious hardship. That voting registration was free was a point against burden; the need to pay for copies of documents to prove things wasn't mentioned in the summary I read.)
Fortunately, like with starvation, there are donation-funded and volunteer groups whose goal it is to help people vote who otherwise could not. And truly, I'd rather see campaigns spend money on get-out-the-vote (targeted to their constituents, of course) than horrendous amounts on TV ads. Or those dial-everybody computers.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 03:04 am (UTC)If a person is concerned about his or her ID being valid, I recommend voting via absentee ballot. So far, you don't need any ID for one of those - which is perhaps an oversight. I can imagine intercepting absentee ballots at, say, a nursing home, and engaging in vote fraud. I'll have to check to see what the rules are on where one can have an absentee ballot mailed.