NYT editorial: The Court Fumbles on Voting Rights; "Democracy was the big loser..."

[DeepModem Mom]

Editorial
The Court Fumbles on Voting Rights
Published: April 29, 2008

Democracy was the big loser in the Supreme Court on Monday. The court upheld Indiana’s voter identification law, which solves a nearly nonexistent problem by putting major barriers between voters — particularly minorities — and the ballot box. Worse, the court set out a standard that clears the way for other states to adopt rules that discourage disadvantaged groups from voting. It is a sad reversal for a court that once saw itself as a champion of voting rights.

In 2005, Indiana passed one of the nation’s toughest voter ID laws. It requires voters to present government-issued photo ID at the polls. Private college IDs, employee ID cards and utility bills are unacceptable. For people without a driver’s license — who are disproportionately poor and minority — the burden is considerable. To get acceptable ID, many people would be forced to pay fees for underlying documents, such as birth certificates.

This should not have been a hard case. The court has long recognized that the right to vote is so fundamental that a state cannot restrict it unless it can show that the harm it is seeking to prevent outweighs the harm it imposes on voters.

The Indiana law does not meet this test. The harm it imposes on voters, some of whom will no doubt be discouraged from casting ballots, is considerable. The state’s interest in the law, on the other hand, is minimal. It was supposedly passed to prevent people from impersonating others at the polls, but there is no evidence that this has ever happened in Indiana. It seems far more likely that the goal of the law’s Republican sponsors was to disenfranchise groups that lean Democratic....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/opinion/29tue1.html?hp

[pansypoo53219]

1. guess we NEED

to have court cases about vote COUNTING. so glad kerry didn't SUE.

[Doctor_J]

2. Fumble connotes an accident - this was willful assault on democracy

Fat Tony and his brethren are anti-American criminals who should be impeached beginning the second day of the next congressional term. Once law and order are restored, we MAY be able to get our country back. Otherwise it's going to get bloody.

[mod mom]

7. and the timing (was expected in June) worked out well for the corporate candidates.

[mopinko]

3. illinois will be next

rigging the '08 election already. gonna be a long road to november.
illinois has proposed a similar law.

[RufusTFirefly]

4. SCOTUS rules. Democracy suffers....

This news is nearly 8 years old.

[grannylib]

5. Not a "fumble" - an out-and-out offensive assault on voting rights

in this country, and a blatant effort to prevent likely Democratic voters from exercising their right to vote.

[FlyingSquirrel]

6. How long can this continue???????

:nuke:

[roseBudd]

8. Yeah because my employers clearly have no idea who I really am - sarcasm off

[FreepFryer]

9. The next Democratic President & Congress must stack the court, as Johnson threatened to do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/opinion/26smith.html

WHEN a majority of Supreme Court justices adopt a manifestly ideological agenda, it plunges the court into the vortex of American politics. If the Roberts court has entered voluntarily what Justice Felix Frankfurter once called the “political thicket,” it may require a political solution to set it straight.

The framers of the Constitution did not envisage the Supreme Court as arbiter of all national issues. As Chief Justice John Marshall made clear in Marbury v. Madison, the court’s authority extends only to legal issues.

When the court overreaches, the Constitution provides checks and balances. In 1805, after persistent political activity by Justice Samuel Chase, Congress responded with its power of impeachment. Chase was acquitted, but never again did he step across the line to mingle law and politics. After the Civil War, when a Republican Congress feared the court might tamper with Reconstruction in the South, it removed those questions from the court’s appellate jurisdiction.

But the method most frequently employed to bring the court to heel has been increasing or decreasing its membership. The size of the Supreme Court is not fixed by the Constitution. It is determined by Congress.

<...> there is nothing sacrosanct about having nine justices on the Supreme Court. Roosevelt’s 1937 chicanery has given court-packing a bad name, but it is a hallowed American political tradition participated in by Republicans and Democrats alike.

If the current five-man majority persists in thumbing its nose at popular values, the election of a Democratic president and Congress could provide a corrective. It requires only a majority vote in both houses to add a justice or two. Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative colleagues might do well to bear in mind that the roll call of presidents who have used this option includes not just Roosevelt but also Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln and Grant.