It’s always drive-time radio in Los Angeles. I just spent the afternoon maneuvering around this sweltering city, and today’s Supreme Court decision to uphold Indiana’s voter identification law was part of a feature segment at least twice this afternoon on NPR member station 89.3 KPCC here.

Rick Hasen of Loyola Marymount University and electionlawblog.org (who filed a friend-of-the-court brief on this case) broke down the specifics of the decision on AirTalk with Larry Mantle (listen here with Real Player). Today Hasen wrote for the Huffington Post that he believes this case “will encourage further litigation, because it relegates challenges to laws imposing onerous burdens on a small group of voters to “as applied” challenges, but those challenges will be difficult to win.”

Patt Morrison also took up the issue on her program (listen here with Real Player). For the full text of the Supreme Court’s decision via the New York Times, click here.

Los Angeles traffic photo via fredcamino on Flickr.

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The U.S. Election Assistance Commission is an independent, bipartisan commission created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002. It will be holding a public meeting in Minnesota on the 16th. The EAC is operates the federal government’s first voting system certification program and is charged with making sure HAVA is executed-as-planned. They also adopt voluntary voting system guidelines that are, well, voluntary, and, according to their website, provide “best practices and resources to election officials throughout the nation.” (more…)

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Linda Greenhouse, from the Supreme Court, reports for the New York Times that the justices’ actions yesterday indicate they might uphold Indiana’s voter ID law, and further, make it more difficult for similar cases to be brought in the future. She writes:

The justices’ questioning indicated that a majority did not accept the challengers’ basic argument — that voter-impersonation fraud is not a problem, so requiring voters to produce government-issued photo identification at the polls is an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.

Stay tuned here for updates. For the complete article and an in-depth analysis, click here.

Previously:
Our Voter ID requirement archive

Posted in Election Reform, Indiana, Voter ID requirements | 2 Comments »

WASHINGTON, DC — We hopped off the campaign trail for a night and headed down to DC, but have no fear, we’re on our way back to New Hampshire to cover today’s primary and the voter turnout there. If you haven’t seen it already, click here (video) for our look back at record turnout in Iowa (which didn’t break 17% of eligible voters), and our look ahead at what might happen in New Hampshire today.

Yesterday in the New York Times, reporter Ian Urbina detailed the back story to the Indiana voter ID case that is headed to the Supreme Court January 9th. We’ve been following it here for quite some time. At the heart of the matter is whether or not Indiana’s restrictive voter ID laws will stand. But the case has significance far beyond Indiana. Urbina writes:

How the court applies that test in this case could set the standard for challenges to election rules across the country. The decision could affect a range of other voting-related rules being imposed by states, including ones involving the handling of provisional ballots, new restrictions on voter registration and the methods states can use to purge voters from registration rolls.

For the full article, click here.

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We’ve been following the battles over voter ID requirements here for some time. According to the Associated Press, looks like Indiana’s voter ID law will head to the supreme court on January 9th. Mark Sherman gives the background:

On one side are mainly Republican backers of the law, including the Bush administration, who say state-produced photo identification is a prudent measure intended to cut down on vote fraud. Yet there have been no Indiana prosecutions of in-person voter fraud — the kind the law is supposed to prevent.

On the other side are mainly Democratic opponents who call voter ID a modern-day poll tax that will disproportionately affect poor, minority and elderly voters — who tend to back Democrats. Yet, a federal judge found that opponents of the law were unable to produce evidence of a single, individual Indiana resident who had been barred from voting because of the law.

For the complete details from the AP, click here. (more…)

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A Why Tuesday? reader passed along the news that the Virginia State Board of Elections approved a request from the VA Republican party to have “all who apply for a GOP primary ballot first vow in writing that they’ll vote for the party’s presidential nominee next fall.” Weird, right?

(more…)

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