High court to weigh Arizona voter registration case

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(By Tim Gaynor Reuters) – Arizona will argue before the Supreme Court on Monday that it is within its rights to demand voters show proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, while opponents will argue it is an overreach of its powers. The legal dispute over the registration. Supreme Court on Voter ID

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Supreme Court on Voter ID

Voter-ID Law Draws Political Clash at Supreme Court (Update1)
By Greg Stohr

Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) — A U.S. Supreme Court clash over Indiana’s voter-identification law raises echoes of the 2000 Bush v. Gore case, pitting Republicans against Democrats in a fight over the rules of the polling place.

The justices tomorrow in Washington will hear the Indiana Democratic Party’s arguments against the law, which requires people to produce a government-issued photo ID before voting on Election Day. Republicans are defending the law, which was enacted on a party-line vote and signed by a Republican governor in 2005.

The case being argued a day after the New Hampshire primary will help determine who can cast ballots in the November elections, potentially affecting laws in dozens of states. Democrats contend the Indiana law alone will disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters, including a disproportionate number of minority, elderly and poor people.

“This case is going to have serious ramifications not only for government-issued photo-ID laws but also for what the fundamental right to vote means,” said Jon M. Greenbaum, an attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a Washington-based group that opposes the Indiana law.

Republicans, backed by the Bush administration, say predictions of disenfranchisement are overblown and speculative. They are asking the court to give states broad power to set up voter-ID requirements to help prevent fraud.

“Voter-ID laws make sense to most Americans,” said Bradley A. Smith, the Republican former chairman of the Federal Elections Commission. “Most people I know are surprised that we don’t have voter-ID laws.”

Voting Rules

Under the Indiana law, by some measures the country’s strictest, voters who don’t have a photo ID may cast a provisional ballot. To have their votes counted, they must visit a designated government office within 10 days and either bring a photo ID or sign a statement saying they can’t afford one.

At the core of the fight is disagreement over ID laws’ effect. The Indiana Democratic Party contends that 11 percent of voting-age U.S. citizens, or more than 21 million people, lack any form of current, government-issued photo ID.

A federal trial judge in Indianapolis rejected the Democrats’ estimates, saying figures presented by the party’s own expert witness suggest that 99 percent of Indiana’s voting-age residents already possess the necessary ID.

Indiana Republican officials have seized on that calculation, saying in court papers that it shows the ID requirement is the “embodiment of reasonableness.” The Democrats in a court filing dismissed the 99 percent figure as based on “back-of-the-envelope calculations.”

`Virtually No Problems’

Republicans fault the law’s challengers for not identifying any voter unable to cast a ballot as a result of the measure. Indiana’s Republican secretary of state, Todd Rokita, said in an interview that the state has conducted six elections with the ID requirement and encountered “virtually no problems.”

The Democrats say the question for the high court isn’t whether the law prevents anyone from voting but whether it “burdens voting to such a degree that some voters will be deterred from exercising that right.”

The American Civil Liberties Union and NAACP, which are helping challenge the law, liken the voter-ID requirement to now-obsolete poll taxes. The Supreme Court declared state poll taxes unconstitutional in 1966.

Fraud Alleged

The two sides likewise are at odds over the extent to which voter-ID laws stamp out fraud. Opponents of the Indiana law say supporters can’t point to a single, proven instance in which someone has tried to impersonate a registered voter at the polls.

“The type of fraud that voter ID would prevent — and impersonation fraud is the only type of fraud that voter ID would prevent — simply does not happen,” said Deborah Goldberg, a lawyer with the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice, which opposes the Indiana law.

Republicans say that because voter impersonation is a difficult crime to prove, the absence of prosecutions means little. They also contend they should be allowed to take preventive measures.

“You don’t have to wait until you’re a victim,” Rokita said.

A Chicago-based federal appeals court upheld the law on a 2-1 vote, with two Republican appointees in the majority. The dissenter, Democratic appointee Terence Evans, called the law “a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.”

Bush v. Gore

The case might similarly split the Supreme Court along ideological lines, as did the 5-4 Bush v. Gore decision that resolved the 2000 presidential election. That breakdown would likely leave Justice Anthony Kennedy casting the decisive vote.

“There is a significant risk that it will be a 5-4 split with the four liberal justices on one side, the four conservative justices on the other side and Justice Kennedy joining one side or the other,” said Edward Foley, director of the election-law program at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law in Columbus.

“If it ends up being a split court, I could see him going one way and I could see him going the other way,” Foley said.

The cases are Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 07-21, and Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita, 07-25.

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net .

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Forsythe mforsythe@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: January 8, 2008 09:36 EST