Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Voter IDs

Now, really. Everyone must have known exactly how this one was going to turn out, even before the arguments were written in draft. Not requiring a photo ID before voting is tantamount to inviting massive voter fraud. Without such a check on the process, who is to say that one voter couldn't go and vote at five or more polling places?

Clearly, the only people that wanted to strike down voter ID laws were those who had designs on using such a legal loophole to allow a single voter to vote multiple times. "Vote early and vote often" was becoming the new leftist battle-cry.

But the U.S. Supreme Court has effectively put an end to the multiple-vote-casting-single-voter scheme. From MSNBC:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights, validating Republican-inspired voter ID laws. In a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana's strict photo ID requirement, which Democrats and civil rights groups said would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. Its backers said it was needed to prevent fraud. It was the most important voting rights case since the Bush v. Gore dispute that sealed the 2000 election for George W. Bush. But the voter ID ruling lacked the conservative-liberal split that marked the 2000 case. The law "is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting 'the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,'" Justice John Paul Stevens said in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy. Stevens was a dissenter in Bush v. Gore in 2000. Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas also agreed with the outcome, but wrote separately.

The three votes against? Well, as Gomer Pyle would say, "Suprise! Suprise! Suprise!" Those three votes came from the three most liberals justices on the Court. Care to guess what they were thinking when they tried unsuccessfully to strike down a law aimed at curbing voter fraud?

More:

Stevens said the partisan divide in Indiana, as well as elsewhere, was noteworthy. But he said that preventing fraud and inspiring voter confidence were legitimate goals of the law, regardless of who backed or opposed it. Indiana provides IDs free of charge to the poor and allows voters who lack photo ID to cast a provisional ballot and then show up within 10 days at their county courthouse to produce identification or otherwise attest to their identity.

You get all that? "Indiana provides IDs free of charge." Clearly, there is no conspiracy to keep the poor from voting. But without a voter ID law, it is clear what kind of conspiracy could crop up.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Supreme Court Upholds Voter ID Law
Associated Press via MSNBC.com
April 28, 2008