Supreme Court upholds voter ID law

The Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision Monday to uphold an Indiana law requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls, overruling the concerns of Democrats and civil rights advocates who argued the law burdens elderly, minority and student voters.

{mosads}The ruling comes one week before Indiana's Democratic presidential primary, which is shaping up as the next major battleground in the race between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.).

“The application of the statute to the vast majority of Indiana voters is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting ‘the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,’ ” wrote Justice John Paul Stevens in a ruling joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas agreed with Stevens in separate opinions.

Liberal justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented.

“Indiana’s ‘Voter ID Law’ threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting right of tens of thousands of the State’s citizens,” wrote Souter, who predicted that “a significant percentage of those individuals are likely to be deterred from voting.”
Those most likely to be affected include important Democratic constituencies: minority, student and poor voters. African-Americans and students are expected to provide crucial support to Obama's campaign next week, and Monday's ruling could cost him thousands of votes.

Indiana's voter law received wide support from state Republicans, while many Democrats opposed it. Yet the court found the partisan divide over the law did not make it unfair.

“But if a nondiscriminatory law is supported by valid neutral justifications, those justifications should not be disregarded simply because partisan interests may have provided one motivation for the votes of individual legislators,” Stevens concluded.