Dewhurst Hails Court Ruling Upholding Indiana’s Partisan Poll Tax
David Dewhurst wasted little time before hailing the controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding a voter ID bill law in Inidiana that has been criticized as discriminatory and anti-democratic.
“I look forward to passing a fair voter ID law in Texas next year,” Texas’s very own career-rookie lieutenant governor said in a statement.
Not so fast, countered state Sen. Mario Gallegos (D-Houston), who blocked a similar bill during last year’s legislative session. “The Supreme Court doesn’t have a vote in the Texas Legislature.”
“In a dissenting opinion, Justice David H. Souter said that for those on whom the law had an impact, the burden was ‘serious’ and the state had failed to justify it,” according to a New York Times report. “Like the Virginia poll tax the court struck down 42 years ago, he said, ‘the onus of the Indiana law is illegitimate just because it correlates with no state interest so well as it does with the object of deterring poorer residents from exercising the franchise.’”
Posted on April 29, 2008 – 10:36 am by APR
6 Responses to “Dewhurst Hails Court Ruling Upholding Indiana’s Partisan Poll Tax”
How can you (or the NY Times for that matter) label an opinion authored by Justice Stevens and joined by Chief Roberts and Justice Kennedy as “partisan?”
Such a rare alliance is the very definition of jurisprudential bipartisanship.
By 020033 on Apr 29, 2008
I read it differently. I think “partisan” refers to the Indiana law, not the Supreme Court decision, which merely upholds the “partisan” law.
By John Maginnis on Apr 29, 2008
I find it hard to call the law in question “partisan” because it allowed for free voter identification cards and even provided the ability to vote via an affidavit if voters did not possess a voter ID card.
I rarely find myself agreeing with Justice Stevens, but here, I concur that there is no measurable constitutional burden imposed on voters by this law.
By 020033 on Apr 29, 2008
My opinion is that this law is part of a political strategy employed in many states by the Republican Party to use a phantom problem — illegal voters impersonating legal voters — as an excuse to disenfranchise elderly and poor voters, who probably tend to vote Democratic. The numbers of voters “burdened” by these voter ID requirements may not be high, but those numbers are still higher than the incidents these laws are supposedly trying to protect against.
By John Maginnis on Apr 29, 2008
I agree with you, as does Justice Stevens, that there was absolutely no evidence of the type of voter fraud this law supposedly was enacted to combat. It was indeed a phantom problem.
But I just don’t comprehend what the alleged “burden” is, no matter how many or how few people it affects. If the ID card is free, and if you don’t even need the ID card if you vote provisionally and then sign a free affidavit at the county courthouse, it just seems specious to argue that any burden whatever is imposed on the voter.
Plus, I’d wager the numbers may be closer than you posit as between the number of voters attempting to vote fraudulently and those “burden[ed]” by the law.
Great post and discussion though, thx.
By 020033 on Apr 29, 2008