Thursday, January 10, 2008

Supreme Court Hearing Vote Fraud Case

John Fund at the Wall St. Journal discusses the Indiana Voter ID law being challenged in the US Supreme Court by liberal groups.

"Supporters say photo ID laws simply extend rules that require everyone to show such ID to travel, enter federal office buildings or pick up a government check. An honor system for voting, in their view, invites potential fraud. That's because many voting rolls are stuffed with the names of dead people and duplicate registrations--as recent scandals in Washington state and Missouri involving the activist group ACORN attest.

Opponents say photo ID laws block poor, minority and elderly voters who lack ID from voting, and all in the name of combating a largely mythical problem of voter fraud."

Both sides have their points to make - while Indiana elections appear to have been well run and doesn't have any evidence of fraud occurring, (one rationale the liberal challnegers use to justify their case) just the possibility should be enough, in my view, for the court to uphold the lower court ruling in the state's favor. I find the liberal argument that such laws depress minority and poor voter turnout to be pretty specious, and in this case any voters without valid ID can cast provisional ballots. Such voters would then have ten days to go a a clerk's office to either show ID or sign an affadavit attesting to their identity. It will be interesting to see how the case is decided when the court releases them in June. My take is that they will likely let the lower court ruling stand.

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