THE AMERICAN voting system has had all manner of problems lately, but an epidemic of voter fraud is not one of them. Even so, during oral arguments before the US Supreme Court last week, a majority of justices appeared poised to uphold a 2005 Indiana law imposing stringent requirements for photo IDs at the polls. Never mind that, in the course of combating a nonexistent problem, these laws impose a disproportionate burden on poor, minority, elderly, and disabled voters. And never mind that the laws have been pushed most aggressively by partisan Republicans who tend to benefit politically when such voters stay away from the polls.
Getting a government ID is rarely free or simple. Yet several justices, including frequent swing vote Anthony Kennedy, seemed blithely unconcerned about the potential effects of the ID laws, which Kennedy described as "a minor inconvenience to a small percentage of voters." Equally disturbing was some justices' willingness to narrow the circumstances in which plaintiffs could challenge unfair election laws. The suits charging that Indiana's law is unconstitutional on its face were filed before the law took effect. Justice Antonin Scalia suggested that a challenge should wait until actual victims of an election law could be found. But at that point, the damage - in the form of disenfranchisement and partisan mischief - would be done.
Why, in this era of running government like a business, should a trip to the Registry of Motor Vehicles be a precondition for exercising a fundamental right that far predates the invention of the automobile? If photo IDs are suddenly so vital to the process of voting, perhaps state election officials should be prepared to issue photo IDs, as Justice Stephen Breyer suggested.
Better yet, the nation's high court could put an end to the voter-fraud charade by striking down the Indiana law - thereby making sure that no American loses the chance to vote because of heavy-handed laws passed for one party's political gain.
