Supreme Court’s
Assault on Voting Rights Fueled by Inconsistent Logic
In 2008, when the Supreme
Court upheld Indiana’s requirement that voters present photo identification at
the polls, it did so in spite of the fact that there is no evidence of more
than a handful of ineligible people casting ballots, mostly in error. Justice Stevens had to go back to nineteenth
century New York to find instances of the widespread voter fraud that the photo
identification is designed to remedy. It
is readily acknowledged by many, even proponents, that the purpose of these
voter identification requirements is to make it more difficult for certain
people, mostly poor, elderly and minorities, those who tend to vote democratic,
to cast ballots.
On June 23, 2012, Mike Turzai, the House Republican Leader in Pennsylvania, said
on the House floor: “Voter ID, which will allow Governor Romney to win the
state of Pennsylvania, done!” This
statement is available on Youtube. In the event, Romney did not carry
Pennsylvania. True, Obama’s
vote fell in Pennsylvania by 8.7% compared with a decline of 5.17% nationwide, but
Romney’s vote was less that 1% higher than
McCain’s. Nationwide, Romney’s vote beat
McCain’s by a mere 1.6%. This proves, and should prove to the Supreme
Court, that Obama’s almost 10 million vote margin over McCain did not contain any illegally cast
ballots. It should also prove that voter
ID requirements depress the Democratic vote by about 3%.
Voters already need to sign their names twice when they vote;
and because of the mechanics of elections, the poll workers are the people who
live in the precinct where the voters live.
Anyone who has ever cast a ballot can see that the election inspectors
and a vast proportion of the voters know each other on a personal basis.
In fact, in a nation where a
majority of the eligible electorate usually does not go to the polls, does
anyone think that the ineligible are flocking to take their places? The percentage of voters turning out is
declining. Two years ago, in New Jersey,
the primary election turnout was 3%.
Today, the Supreme Court
invalidated a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which requires
federal government approval of changes to election rules in places with a
history of racial discrimination. The
Supreme Court invalidated the provision on the basis that the states and
counties subject to the requirement were determined based on data that is fifty
years old, and therefore no longer valid. But the key part of the decision held that
the provision is discriminatory because, get this, other states not subject to
the requirement, like Indiana and Pennsylvania that have recently enacted the
same discriminatory rules, are not subject to pre-clearance and this bias is unfair.
In other words, first the Supreme Court permitted the
expansion of these discriminatory identification provisions based on century
old data. Today, they permitted the further
expansion of these discriminatory provisions based on the fact that it wasn’t
fair to single out some states and counties based on fifty year old data.
This assault on voting rights by the Supreme Court, which
preceded Bush v. Gore, is extremely dangerous.
It is closing the door to free and fair elections in favor of a
two-party fix skewed to empower the wealthy.
Obama will not be president forever. If there is no free, fair and peaceful
mechanism for setting priorities and resolving disputes, then violence will
result.