Voting Rights: Photo Finish
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit: NAACP v. Evon Billups, Superintendent of Elections
The great voter-photo controversy continues. This time in Georgia.
Just how burdensome is it to individuals living in the 21st Century to produce a photo before they can vote? According to the plaintiffs who challenged Georgia law requiring such onerous measures as proving you are who you say you are with an ID (even a free one paid for by the State if you somehow managed to live your life in America without possessing some sort of photo ID), it is the equivalent of a poll tax and worse, and therefore in violation of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, of the Equal Protection Clause, of the Fourteenth Amendment, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and of the Georgia Constitution.
A photo ID?
Have we become so sensitive (senseless?) that merely requiring voters to show a confirming photo to vote could be thought so burdensome and discriminatory as to invoke monumental claims of constitutional and legislative infringements? Or are we not prepared to deal with the fact that voter fraud might be occurring right here in the good ole U.S. of A.
Well, there is still some common sense afoot in the common law and the Court of Appeals ruled that the minimal burden imposed by the voter-photo law was far outweighed by the state’s interest in “protecting ‘the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.’”
Here’s the bottom line: “The ordinary burdens of producing a photo identification to vote, which the Supreme Court described as ‘arising from life’s vagaries,’ do not ‘raise any question about the constitutionality of’ the Georgia statute.” Accordingly, voters in Georgia, as in Indiana (and 5 other states), will have to reach into their wallet for their picture before they cast their ballots. Hopefully, they will survive the trauma.
But will the nation survive this negative assault on our electoral process? Is this a portrait of an empire in decline entering the darkroom of disenfranchisment? Or merely a snapshot that has exposed the voter to the brutal truth that the camera doesn’t lie, even if some voters do.
With so many hotly contested elections and legal challenges ending in photo finishes, maybe we should all just smile and say “cheese” before we poke a few chads or pull the lever.
That’s how I vote on this one.
