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Proving who you are

Sensible voting ID laws now in Supreme Court's hands

Published October 1, 2007 at midnight

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Is someone's identity more important when a) boarding a commercial airliner, or b) casting a ballot on Election Day?

Or is identity equally critical to both activities?

If you agree with the second proposition, as we do, you're probably not outraged about the Indiana voting law that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review in its term that opens next week.

In most states (Colorado included, sadly) flying in a plane is treated as more important than voting. Indiana is different. It actually requires its voters to provide identification no less reliable than they would need to pass through airport security.

If the justices uphold the law in a decision early next year, Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman will have a firmer legal foundation for the enhanced-ID requirements he wants to take to the legislature at that time.

Voting-rights activists are apoplectic about Indiana; we'd like to see more places emulate the Hoosier state. Voters should be expected to prove their identity; lax verification standards can enable, if not encourage, multiple voting and other forms of election fraud.

It's true, of course, that many states, including Colorado, have generous absentee-ballot provisions in which the procedures for checking identification are not nearly as air-tight as the requirement of a photo ID. But that's an argument for greater safeguards with absentee ballots, not for indulging a slipshod system at the polls.

Some voting-rights activists believe that even the haphazard ID standards most states use are too onerous - that requiring a voter to supply any identifier at the polls somehow "suppresses" turnout, particularly by minorities. They consider this the most important case the high court will decide this year, comparing it to rulings that struck down poll taxes and literacy tests.

Easy, now. Both a federal district court and the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wisely concluded that Indiana's law places no undue burden on voters. The law requires voters to present a valid, government-issued ID (typically a driver's license or U.S. passport) at polling places. Anyone without ID can cast a provisional ballot, and it will be counted if the voter can otherwise prove his identity to election officials within 10 days.

"The purpose of the Indiana law," Judge Richard Posner wrote for the appeals court majority, "is to reduce voting fraud, and voting fraud impairs the right of legitimate voters to vote by diluting their votes - dilution being recognized to be an impairment of the right to vote." Every invalid vote that's counted negates a legitimate ballot.

And as for the claim that ID requirements somehow intimidate voters, Posner had this terse rejoinder: "There is not a single plaintiff who intends not to vote because of the new law - that is, who would vote were it not for the law."

Coffman told us the legislation he proposes will differ somewhat from Indiana's law, no matter what the Supreme Court decides. The Indiana statute does not recognize expired driver's licenses; that could be a burden, Coffman said, on senior citizens who no longer drive but carry expired licenses. And he suggested there might be other ways to broaden the "safety net" for voters who would be disqualified on technicalities.

Currently, any registered Coloradan can present a utility bill at a polling place and cast a ballot. Try getting through security at DIA with a utility bill.