In a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana's strict photo ID requirement, which Democrats and civil rights groups said would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. Its backers said it was needed to deter fraud.
The law "is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting 'the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,'" Justice John Paul Stevens said in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy.
The case concerned a state law, passed in 2005, that was backed by Republicans as a way to deter voter fraud. Democrats and civil rights groups opposed the law as unconstitutional and called it a thinly veiled effort to discourage elderly, poor and minority voters — those most likely to lack proper ID and who tend to vote for Democrats.
There is little history in Indiana of either in-person voter fraud — of the sort the law was designed to thwart — or voters being inconvenienced by the law's requirements.
"We cannot conclude that the statute imposes 'excessively burdensome requirements' on any class of voters," Stevens said.
Stevens' opinion suggests that the outcome could be different in a state where voters could provide evidence that their rights had been impaired.
But in dissent, Souter said Indiana's voter ID law "threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting rights of tens of thousands of the state's citizens."
Scalia, favoring a broader ruling in defense of voter ID laws, said, "The universally applicable requirements of Indiana's voter-identification law are eminently reasonable. The burden of acquiring, possessing and showing a free photo identification is simply not severe, because it does not 'even represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting.'"
Stevens is most certainly NOT one of the originalist justices on the court, so his swing toward that side is a big, big statement. While it sounds like there's a small loophole (which I'm sure will be exploited at some point), the fact remains that this is a very, very positive ruling for the integrity of our elections. I think it is very telling that it is always Democrats who favor loosening restrictions on one of our most precious rights, despite the most flimsy evidence that disenfranchisement is actually occurring. The only logical conclusion is that Democrat leaders know they are getting the lion's share of illegal voters, whether those votes are from illegal aliens, felons, animals, or dead people. Aside from that, there is simply no good reason NOT to require a photo ID to prove identity before voting.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court agrees in a clear decision.
There's my two cents.
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