The Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed with overwhelming majorities in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. It was sponsored in the Senate by the Republican leader, and was implemented with a certainty and clarity that shocked the perpetrators of a fraudulent election system. Voting rights did not confer the benefits of social justice. However, those rights did move to correct a key systemic inequality of political participation.
We were awake as a nation for a brief period, unified in the demand for the right to vote. The struggle to expand the franchise has been ongoing throughout our history from white male property owners to all white males. For a period after the Civil War, both black and white males voted until white supremacy regained control in the old South. The women's suffrage movement was the last major expansion of the franchise before the great civil rights movement of the 1960's and beyond which demanded voting rights for blacks and then Latinos.
A new trend has emerged, one that takes the nation back to the post-Reconstruction period of the 1880's when black citizens lost their recently gained right to vote and participate in civic life.
Contracting the Vote
The April 28, 2008 decision upholding Indiana's photographic identification (photo ID) law by the Supreme Court of the United States is a major blow to voting rights.
Bush versus Gore dissenter, Justice John Paul Stevens, spoke for the majority. In Crawford et al. versus the Marion County Board of Elections et. al., the Court decided that Indiana's law was constitutional since it represents what may be a valid concern by the state, even though Stevens' acknowledged that Indiana presented no evidence of in-person “voter fraud”, the alleged “threat” that made the law necessary.
Justice Stevens and the majority failed to consider that the Indiana law was passed on a straight party-line vote with only Republican legislators supporting it and all Democrats opposing. Why was it a party line vote? Like many other voter identification laws, Indiana's version is clearly biased against potential Democratic voters and constituencies.
The Court majority was unimpressed by the fact that many voters won't have a photographic identification, according to a number of studies. The Court ignored a recent study showing Indiana's law will restrict the vote and that photo identification requirements are associated with 10% less turnout than is seen with less restrictive verifications.
Indiana's Voter Identification Law
The Court decision allows the Indiana law to stay in place. In order to vote, the law requires that registered voters present a current state or federal identification with a photograph that bears a name matching the voter's name on the registration records. Indiana is one of the seven states requiring photographic identification (photo ID). The other states are Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, and South Dakota.
Voters who show up in person without a photo ID are offered a provisional ballot. The voter must return to the election board by noon ten days after the election with proof of identification, i.e., photo ID. Failing that, the voter must sign an affidavit asserting that either he or she can't afford the identification or has a religious objection to being photographed. If there is no other challenge, the vote is counted. Sound complicated? How many would go through all these steps to cast a ballot? Why should anyone be required to do so?
You don't need a photo ID at if you vote by absentee-by-mail (11% of Indiana voters used absentee-by-mail or in-person in the 2008 Indiana presidential primary). In addition, if you’re confined to your home or a facility for medical reasons or if you have a disability and can’t get to your precinct, a member of the state “travel board” will bring you a ballot and take your vote. There is no requirement for photo ID in either of these instances.
The False Alarm of Voter Fraud Used to Restrict the Vote
Voter fraud refers to in-person voting by individuals unqualified to vote. The alleged phenomenon of "voter fraud' is the justification for restrictive voter identification laws like Indiana's. Voter identification laws specify the identification that voters present before they're allowed to cast a ballot. Supposedly, tight voter identification laws reduce voter fraud. Of course, if there is no voter fraud to speak of, there's no legitimate justification to risk the right to vote by restrictive identification laws.
Voter fraud differs from election fraud, which refers to the wholesale theft of elections through manipulation of voting and tabulating machines, gerrymandering (the distortions of districts to secure elections), and other methods of rigging an entire election.
The Bush Justice Department made a major effort to document an epidemic of voter fraud. The U.S. Attorneys had extensive training and intense encouragement to make cases. The failed results of this effort are well documented and apparent from the total convictions displayed in the chart below. The political manipulations behind this effort were one of the causes of the U.S. Attorney's scandal.
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