From Bill Mears, CNN Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Supreme Court on Monday backed Indiana’s law requiring voters to show photo identification, despite concerns thousands of elderly, poor and minority voters could be locked out of their right to cast ballots.
The 6-3 vote allows Indiana to require the identification when it holds its statewide primary next week. It also will give most state legislatures time to revise their voter laws for the November elections.
This was perhaps the biggest voter rights case taken up by the justices since the 2000 dispute over Florida’s ballots, in which George W. Bush prevailed to gain the presidency.
At issue was whether state laws designed to stem voter fraud end up disenfranchising large numbers of Americans who might lack proper documents to prove their voting eligibility. The case raised important constitutional questions, but also involved race and partisan politics.
Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said any political issues considered by the state were mitigated by its desire to stop voter fraud.
“The state interests identified as justifications for [the law] are both neutral and sufficiently strong to require us to reject” the lawsuit, he wrote.
But in a toughly worded dissent, Justice David Souter said “Indiana has made no such justification” for the statute “and as to some aspects of its law, it hardly even tried.”
Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita has conceded the state has never presented a case of “voter impersonation,” which the law was designed to safeguard against. The 2005 Indiana law requires that a valid photo identification be presented by a person casting a ballot at a polling stations. Previously, most citizens needed only to sign a poll book to vote.
For those lacking a driver’s license or other government-issued photo ID such as a passport, the state provides a free voter ID card, issued through the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
Even so, Souter said, such a law “threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting right of tens of thousands of the state’s citizens.”
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer also dissented.
Stevens candidly noted the “real-world impact” of a statute passed by a GOP-controlled state Legislature and signed by a Republican governor. More…
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