Published: July 12, 2008 07:38 pm            

TRIBUNE-STAR EDITORIAL: A principled stand

League of Women Voters’ lawsuit on state voter ID law to be commended

TERRE HAUTE — It must be interesting to be Todd Rokita these days. While the photo identification voter law he keeps calling “exemplary” has managed to disenfranchise a group of elderly nuns, the latest legal challenge to it comes from the non-partisan, roundly respected League of Women Voters in Indiana.

Might the secretary of state pause to wonder whether the nation’s strictest voter ID law — designed and passed by Indiana Republicans in 2005 — needs a bit of retooling?

Of course not. Rokita blew off the sisters, has sniped at the League for its action and implied selfish insensitivity by its members, saying their suit “will result in the resources of state government being focused on this issue yet again and once again at taxpayer expense.”

Rokita has as his primary put-down tool a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in April that found the law is not federally unconstitutional on its face. Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said the court’s decision might have been different if it had been brought on behalf of a specific voter whose rights were violated.

Never mind that 32 named examples of disenfranchisement submitted by the Marion County Board of Elections were part of the plaintiffs’ arguments before the high court — and zero examples of Hoosier voter fraud were part of the state’s. As Justice Stevens noted:

“The only kind of voter fraud that SEA 483 [the Indiana statute] addresses is in-person voter impersonation at polling places. The record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history.”

One of the 32 denied voters, Valerie Williams, had to cast a provisional ballot in November 2006 when she brought various bills and IDs that used to be sufficient in Indiana to the polling place in her retirement home. Williams, who needs a cane to walk, was unable to get to her local county elections office with a required photo ID within the mandated 10 days, thus her ballot was tossed.

Nevertheless, the six justices concluded that the great burden of proof had not been met by the plaintiffs, the Indiana ACLU and the Democratic Party.

Eight days later came the 2008 Indiana primary, when 10 Sisters of the Holy Cross in South Bend were turned away from their polling place — in their convent — because they did not possess proper state or federal identification. In their 80s and 90s, the nuns offered either expired passports or photo-less IDs. A younger sister from their order who was working the polls that day had to deliver the bad news.

The younger nun called the incident “heartbreaking.” Rokita’s office snapped back that the sisters knew about the new law and “didn’t want” to follow it.

Rokita never mentions the Sisters of the Holy Cross or Valerie Williams when he dismisses opponents of the photo ID law as overly concerned with “a handful of voters [who] will have trouble complying with the requirement.” In his response to the League of Women Voters’ lawsuit, Rokita discounted all critics, saying, “Indiana has got some real problems, and this isn’t one of them.”

He also trumpeted “eight successful elections in Indiana since the photo ID requirement was installed.”

Ten senior-citizen nuns don’t get to vote in the most exciting primary in Indiana in 40 years, and the secretary of state calls it “successful”?

The state chapter of the League is using Indiana’s constitution for its challenge. All that the state constitution requires is that a voter be 18, a U.S. citizen, registered and a resident of the state. Nothing short of a constitutional amendment can change that, the League contends.

In an official statement on the lawsuit, Rokita insisted he will “continue to stand strong in protecting Hoosier voters and taxpayers.” How ironic that he is standing against an organization that was founded in 1920 to aid America’s most recently enfranchised population, females, and which exists in all 50 states today to promote and protect voter participation.

        

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