Decision Is Likely to Spur Voter ID Laws in More States

Go to Original
By Ian Urbina

Washington - Far from settling the debate over voter identification, the Supreme Court ruling on Monday upholding Indiana's voter ID law is likely to lead to more laws and litigation, voting experts said.

Lawmakers in at least four states may seek to pass stricter regulations in the next year or so, the experts said. In response, voting rights groups might sue on behalf of individuals or groups in an effort to exempt them.

"The court's opinion is likely to perform the same function for the photo ID debate as the Pennsylvania primary did for the Democratic presidential nomination - hardening positions while doing little if anything to illuminate a path to resolving the conflict," said Doug Chapin, director of the Pew Center on the States Web site, electionline.org.

Voting experts said the decision would have limited effects on voting in the primaries and presidential election because most state legislatures were not in session, could not call emergency sessions or did not have the makeup to pass ID bills.

Voting experts predict legislative movement this year or next, especially in states with Republican legislative majorities and Republican governors.

Some critics of the decision said they feared that it would add to confusion at the polls.

"Even before the verdict, we saw confusion surrounding voter ID laws, and now voters and poll workers are more likely to think the Supreme Court just approved some national voter ID law, which indeed they did not," said Jonah H. Goldman, director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Mr. Goldman said that poll workers might ask for unrequired identification and that citizens might not vote because they mistakenly thought that they could not do so if they did not have certain forms of identification.

In the Indiana primary next Tuesday, little will change, because the ID law has been in force. Twenty-five states require identification at the polls for all voters, including seven that require or can request photo ID. This year, Texas and at least nine other states, including California, Illinois, New Mexico and Virginia, have considered photo ID measures.

The ruling is likely to set off fierce debates where illegal immigration is a hot issue, experts said. In Texas, debate over photo ID in 2007 paralyzed the State Senate for weeks before the bill was rejected. In response to the new ruling, the Republican-controlled Legislature will probably be recalled to work on a new ID measure, voting experts said.

In Oklahoma, an identification measure will be debated shortly, and in Kansas, voting experts predict that lawmakers may act because the governor vetoed an ID bill last year.

Missouri lawmakers, who are in session, are likely to be encouraged in an effort to put the question on the ballot. In 2006, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down an ID law.

Voting experts said a bill pending in Florida to make its ID law more restrictive was now more likely to pass.

Advocates for tighter laws called the decision a resounding affirmation.

"This decision not only confirms the validity of photo ID laws, but it completely vindicates the Bush Justice Department and refutes those critics who claimed that the department somehow acted improperly when it approved Georgia's photo ID law in 2005," said Hans A. von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission and a former Justice Department official.

Mr. von Spakovsky's confirmation to a regular term on the election panel has stalled in the Senate because of his support for voter ID laws.

Although voting experts said the decision supported the law that Georgia passed in 2005, it did not necessarily substantiate an ID law being challenged in Arizona.

"There is still a good chance that the Arizona law could be overturned in the courts because it has a proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration, and the Supreme Court decision did not weigh in on the proof-of-citizenship issue," said Mr. Goldman, whose group is involved in the Arizona case.

Wendy R. Weiser, a law professor at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, said it was important to remember that the ruling did not give the states a blank check to pass restrictive ID laws.

"The court specifically left open the possibility of lawsuits against ID laws that burden specific groups of citizens like older voters, poor voters and students," Professor Weiser said, "and all the legislation we have seen to date do, in fact, burden those groups."

But, she added, in putting virtually all the burden of proof on plaintiffs seeking to argue that laws illegally restrict their voting rights, the decision makes it much tougher for voting rights groups to prevail in court.