Published: September 19, 2009 08:24 pm         

TRIBUNE-STAR EDITORIAL: Court of Appeals wise to void Voter ID law

Requiring some to show identification while giving others a pass is discriminatory

TERRE HAUTE — The League of Women Voters is at its core about the enfranchisement of all citizens, with no room in its values for discrimination, whether it be on the basis of gender, race or some other qualifier. With a long history of involvement in suffrage movements and voting rights, it is no surprise the Indiana arm took on the state’s Voter ID law, one which it viewed as treating voters unequally. In a resounding 3-0 decision Thursday, the state Court of Appeals agreed.

Indiana’s highest elected officials, themselves benefactors of voter choice, were quick to decry the court’s decision in the harshest of terms. “An act of judicial arrogance,” Gov. Mitch Daniels said of the ruling. Secretary of State Todd Rokita — the administrator of elections in the state and the person named in the challenge brought by the League of Women Voters — reduced the suit to one word: gamesmanship. Greg Zoeller, the state Attorney General, vowed to appeal the decision, sending the case to the Indiana Supreme Court.

Passed by a Republican-controlled General Assembly in 2005, the law requires voters to show a photo identification that must include an expiration date when presenting themselves at a polling site. Voters who do not have a photo ID with them are allowed to cast provisional ballots, but they must produce a photo ID to the circuit court clerk or the county election board before noon 10 days following the election for the vote to count. The intent of the law is to prevent voter fraud, an admirable goal.

It is the law’s stipulated exceptions, though, that concerned the League. Voters casting absentee ballots by mail are not required to show any proof of their identities. Also excluded are those voters living in a residential facility that happens to be a designated polling site, i.e. a nursing home.

The Appellate judges could not reconcile the inequality of requiring some voters to show a photo ID while giving others a pass. The trio concluded: “The Voter I.D. law violates Indiana Constitution Article 1, Section 23, and must be declared void because it regulates voters in a manner that is not uniform and impartial.”

Article 1, Section 23 — otherwise known as the Equal Privileges and Immunities Clause — in the Constitution states: “The General Assembly shall not grant to any citizen, or class of citizens, privileges or immunities which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens.”

The court’s ruling appears soundly based in the Constitution. To accuse the court of political partisanship, as did Gov. Daniels in his post-ruling outrage, seems misplaced, even given that the judges were appointed by his predecessors, all Democrats.

In their 29-page opinion, the judges acknowledge that the Voter ID law may be fixable, but repairmen they are not; the judicial branch of government is expressly forbidden by the Constitution to tinker in functions of the legislative or executive branches.

If the Indiana Attorney General is determined to “vigorously defend” the statute by appealing to the state Supreme Court, he is well within his rights, though as taxpayers we question the expenditure of more money to defend a bad law.

Better still, the General Assembly should go back to the drawing board — erase it — then tackle anew the problem of voter fraud, minus a formula that discriminates.