By Mark Bennett
The Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE
December 17, 2007 09:36 am
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It’s amazing how little we care about things we declare sacred.
After Gallup and other public opinion polls continually indicated that 40 percent of Americans attend religious worship services regularly, two skeptical Christian researchers did their own checking in 1998 and concluded that people, well, exaggerated.
So, if many of us lie about going to church, it’s not surprising that our most sacred civic act — voting — really isn’t so sacred to us after all.
Political observers can’t wait for January. They speculate and stew over the mysteries of the upcoming presidential primaries and caucuses. Can Obama beat Clinton? Is Mike Huckabee a flash in the pan? Will camping out in Iowa pay off for John Edwards? Will Romney, McCain and Giuliani fade? Politicos also anxiously await what is being called the most important U.S. Supreme Court decision on voting rights since it decided the Bush-Gore election in 2000.
This case indeed appears to pack hefty impact. The Supremes will weigh the constitutionality of the Indiana voter ID law, beginning with oral arguments on Jan. 9. That 2005 law claims to protect Hoosiers from voter fraud, even though little evidence exists of imposter balloting in Indiana or any other state, for that matter. Instead, beneath its veil as a noble safeguard, the Indiana law unnecessarily adds hassles to voting.
The last thing we need is another reason not to vote.
At this very moment, last month’s Terre Haute mayoral election continues to be a swirl of controversy, with a recount and a federal Hatch Act challenge leaving the race between incumbent Kevin Burke and Republican Duke Bennett unfinalized. But is it really the massive controversy it seems to be, or does the fevered pitch of the combatants overstate its interest? After all, 70 percent of the city’s registered voters didn’t go to the polls on Nov. 6.
Remember that cataclysmic congressional election in 2006 when the unending Iraq war swept Republican incumbents out of office? Sixty-two percent of Vigo County’s registered voters didn’t vote. Even the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 only enticed 51 percent of Vigo Countians to the polls.
When our most stirring races for public office only draw barely half of the eligible voters, the idea of adding more steps to the process seems strange.
Not surprisingly, Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita — who championed the state’s photo ID law — offers multiple rationalizations for its value and necessity. In a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Rokita, the State of Indiana backs up his assertions, insisting the law is “well-crafted,” based on “reasonableness” and is a “long-overdue election-security reform.” The brief says data shows the law has “no negative impact on Hoosier voters.”
Its positive impact is negligible.
For many Hoosiers, the photo ID requirement seems like no big deal. That official, government-issued card — our driver’s license — is right there in our wallet or purse. But not everyone drives. Some elderly, poor and disabled folks don’t have driver’s licenses. Ah, but those people can still get a free photo ID from the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles. But some of the documents necessary to get that free photo ID cost money to obtain, and these non-drivers must go get all of that.
That’s how Indiana’s voter ID law — the most stringent in the nation — ended up with the Supreme Court. The court will hear two consolidated cases — the Indiana Democratic Party vs. Todd Rokita, and William Crawford (a state representative who filed a lawsuit) vs. the Marion County Election Board. Obviously, the first case demonstrates this issue involves wrangling along party lines. Republicans insist the law simply protects the integrity of the election process. Democrats say the voting fraud claim is just a cover for a law meant to make voting more difficult for people who tend to favor Democrats — the poor, the elderly and the disabled.
But if you step above the partisan crossfire and eye the law objectively, it just looks like the state is hassling people who have a right to vote.
In last month’s Terre Haute election, a man who hadn’t missed an opportunity to vote over a 36-year period (including a stint in the military), told a Tribune-Star reporter he had to leave the voting area to go retrieve his photo ID. Limping on a broken left foot, he said, “I was just told I couldn’t vote without a photo ID. I have one and just have to get it and follow the rules, but I’m upset. I know they don’t want fraudulent voting, but tell me the necessity in this state.”
Really.
Hopefully, the U.S. Supreme Court will rise above suspicions that it will act according to a majority of the justices’ tendencies to favor conservative causes.
A group of secretaries of state from Ohio, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri and Vermont filed a level-headed brief with the Supreme Court, urging the justices “to look at all sides of the issue,” said Jennifer Brunner, the Ohio secretary of state. They’re concerned because similar — but less restrictive — voter ID laws have spread to several states. Ohio adopted such a statute before Brunner took office.
Speaking by telephone from Columbus, Brunner stressed that she joined the other secretaries only after careful consideration, stressing that she gets along well with Rokita and reassured her Indiana colleague the filing “wasn’t anything personal.” After all, Brunner has ties to Indiana. Her daughter attended DePauw University and performed occasionally with the Terre Haute Symphony.
Indiana’s strict voter ID law, Brunner said, doesn’t fix anything and unnecessarily complicates voting.
“In this case, there’s been no real proof that this addresses a problem to any appreciable degree,” Brunner said.
Thus, “it makes you suspect that this is some sort of concerted effort coming out of Washington, rather than a tide of good government washing over the country,” Brunner said.
She has experience in election law. Prior to becoming secretary of state, Brunner worked on a case challenging the validity of signatures. Handwriting experts told her that forging a signature was extremely difficult.
Instead of an aura of confidence among voters, Brunner more frequently hears reactions to voter ID laws similar to that of the long-time Terre Haute voter who had to leave the polls to retrieve his ID on a sore leg.
Many older people casting ballots under Ohio’s voter ID law for the first time “just shook their heads and just couldn’t understand why, after all these years, they had to supply some sort of ID,” Brunner said.
If people with a track record of voting sense an unnecessary hassle, it’s doubtful that many folks among that 70 percent who didn’t vote last month will end up at polling places in Indiana’s upcoming May primary or next November’s general election.
If voting is indeed a sacred civic right, the government shouldn’t make it harder to do.
Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.
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Tribune-Star columnist Mark Bennett