In ruling on the constitutionality of Indiana's voter ID law -- the toughest in the nation -- the Supreme Court had to deal with the claim that such laws demanded the strictest of scrutiny by courts, because they could disenfranchise voters. All nine Justices rejected that argument.
Even Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the three dissenters who would have overturned the Indiana law, wrote approvingly of the less severe ID laws of Georgia and Florida. The result is that state voter ID laws are now highly likely to pass constitutional muster.
But this case, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, also revealed a fundamental philosophical conflict between two perspectives rooted in the machine politics of Chicago. Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the decision, grew up in Hyde Park, the city neighborhood where Sen. Barack Obama -- the most vociferous Congressional critic of such laws -- lives now. Both men have seen how the Daley machine has governed the city for so many years, with a mix of patronage, contract favoritism and, where necessary, voter fraud.
That fraud became nationally famous in 1960, when the late Mayor Richard J. Daley's extraordinary efforts swung Illinois into John F. Kennedy's column. In 1982, inspectors estimated as many as one in 10 ballots cast in Chicago during that year's race for governor to be fraudulent for various reasons, including votes by the dead.
Mr. Stevens witnessed all of this as a lawyer, special counsel to a commission rooting out corruption in state government, and as a judge. On the Supreme Court, this experience has made him very mindful of these abuses. In 1987, the high court vacated the conviction of a Chicago judge who'd used the mails to extort money. He wrote a stinging dissent, taking the rare step of reading it from the bench. The majority opinion, he noted, could rule out prosecutions of elected officials and their workers for using the mails to commit voter fraud.
Three years later, Justice Stevens ordered Cook County officials to stop printing ballots that excluded a slate of black candidates who were challenging the Daley machine. The full court later ordered the black candidates back on the ballot.
Barack Obama has approached Chicago politics differently. He came to the city as a community organizer in the 1980s and quickly developed a name for himself as a litigator in voting cases.
In 1995, then GOP Gov. Jim Edgar refused to implement the federal "Motor Voter" law. Allowing voters to register using only a postcard and blocking the state from culling voter rolls, he argued, could invite fraud. Mr. Obama sued on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, and won. Acorn later invited Mr. Obama to help train its staff; Mr. Obama would also sit on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago, which frequently gave this group grants.
Acorn's efforts to register voters have been scandal-prone. St. Louis, Mo., officials found that in 2006 over 1,000 addresses listed on its registrations didn't exist. "We met twice with Acorn before their drive, but our requests completely fell by the wayside," said Democrat Matt Potter, the city's deputy elections director. Later, federal authorities indicted eight of the group's local workers. One of the eight pleaded guilty last month.
In Seattle, local officials invalidated 1,762 Acorn registrations. Felony charges were filed against seven of its workers, some of whom have criminal records. Prosecutors say Acorn's oversight of its workers was virtually nonexistent. To avoid prosecution, Acorn agreed to pay $25,000 in restitution.
Despite this record -- and polls that show clear majorities of blacks and Hispanics back voter ID laws -- Mr. Obama continues to back Acorn. They both joined briefs urging the Supreme Court to overturn Indiana's law.
Last year, he put on hold the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky for a seat on the Federal Election Commission. Mr. von Spakovsky, as a Justice Department official, had supported a Georgia photo ID law.
In a letter to the Senate Rules Committee, Mr. Obama wrote that "Mr. von Spakovsky's role in supporting the Department of Justice's quixotic efforts to attack voter fraud raises significant questions about his ability to interpret and apply the law in a fair manner." Of course, now an even stricter law than the one in Georgia has been upheld by the Supreme Court, removing Mr. Obama's chief objection.
The hold on the von Spakovsky nomination has left the Federal Election Commission with less than a quorum. As a result, the FEC can't open new cases, hold public meetings, issue advisory opinions or approve John McCain's receipt of public funding for the general election. Now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claims that, even without the von Spakovsky hold, filling the FEC's vacancies will take "several months."
All of this may be smart politics, but it is far removed from Mr. Obama's call for transcending the partisan divide. Then again, Mr. Obama's relationship to reform has always been tenuous. Jay Stewart, the executive director of the Chicago Better Government Association, notes that, while Mr. Obama supported ethics reforms as a state senator, he has "been noticeably silent on the issue of corruption here in his home state, including at this point, mostly Democratic."
So we have the irony of two liberal icons in sharp disagreement over yesterday's Supreme Court decision. Justice Stevens, the real reformer, believes voter ID laws are justified to prevent fraud. Barack Obama, the faux reformer, hauls out discredited rhetoric that they disenfranchise voters.
Acorn's national political arm has endorsed Mr. Obama. And its "nonpartisan" voter registration affiliate has announced plans to register hundreds of thousands of voters before the November election. An election in which Mr. Obama may be the Democratic candidate.
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John Fund is, and always has been, the dimmest bulb in the neocon pundit class. And we all know that that is a VERY high bar.
Is the Lucky ducky guy? Is he the one who thinks that people who make so little they don't have to pay taxes are the luckiest people in America? Or is he the one who was charged with physically abusing his girlfriend?
The GOP has tried and will continue to try to disenfranchise anyone who is poor or likely to vote for Democrats. That is incontrovertible. Any so called voter law proposed by a GOP memeber has that intent behind it.
Any who believes that America's right wing is anything less than malevolent towards the average America citizen is either a fool or in a state of denial.
"Barack Obama, the faux reformer, hauls out discredited rhetoric that they disenfranchise voters."
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He is a "faux reformer" because he disagrees with Stevens? Nice!
Here are some other faux reformers:
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Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented.
Indiana's voter ID law "threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting rights of tens of thousands of the state's citizens," Souter said.
The targets of the law, he said, are "voters who are poor and old."
...
It places "an unnecessary burden on elderly and low-income voters, not to mention other voters of disparate racial and ethnic backgrounds," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
...
Mary Wilson, president of the League of Women Voters, said her group has never found a problem with in-person voter fraud. "We'd be the first ones out there to prevent voter fraud, if there really was a problem," she said.
...
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iegvd98ph9koi4IJgrhdaPAwZsxQD90B4M780
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And if this law is meant to prevent fraud, how would it prevent it for mailed-in votes, and increasingly popular method for voting?
How about calling it an honest disgareement between Stevens and Obama? But that would be too complicated to understand for mnay readers already dumbed down by columnists like Fund and commentators like Limbaugh.
How about arguing for law that says only Republican votes count?
We used to have a standard of "fairness." It was based upon an honest appraisal of facts after identifying a common problem. We called it "democracy."
Now we must endure these contrived arguments, all of which have no purpose other than to give advantage to the already advantaged. We've heard similar sorts of laundry-list justifications for Iraq and suspending the Constitution; we heard similar arguments justifying the unitary executive or lobbyist written legislation. They decide what they want, then they find "reasons". It doesn't matter if those reasons are accurate, if they make sense, if they contradict the premise they supposedly support or if they even apply. Having the outcome already decided, they pay toadies like Fund to try to make facts fit reality -- the reality they've "created."
Arguing that only Republican votes count would at least be more honest.
If Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer dissented, then it's a bad decision.
In a toughly worded dissent, Justice David Souter said "Indiana has made no such justification" for the statute "and as to some aspects of its law, it hardly even tried."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/28/scotus.voter.id/
As a Credentials Committee member for the Collin County (Texas) Democratic Party I saw what voter fraud can do.
In Texas Mrs. Clinton won our Primary.
In Texas Mr. Obama won our Caucus.
In the primary people had to either have an ID or their voters registration card.
In Collin County, and other Texas counties the same rules were not enforced in the caucuses. This was despite State Party Rules and State law.
We did not require some voters give an address much less a last name to vote in our caucus. This was a clear violation of State Party Rules and State Law.
One delegate to our county convention had only given his name as "John" at the precinct convention. At the county convention people have to show ID to get credentials. Anyone named "John" could have gotten the credentials.
We also had a huge problem with precinct shopping. The number of delegates that each precinct gets is based on the number of people that voted democratic in that precinct in past elections. This makes some precincts gets lots of delegates while having relatively few voters. The Obama campaign sent e-mails to their supporters telling them to target those precincts.
At least 30 Obama delegates to the County Convention were elected to Precincts they did not even live in.
It is no more immorral to block a rightful voter from voting than it is to allow someone who is not a rightful voter to vote.
Hey Jackass,
Unless the state pays for the ID, pays for the missed time in obtaining the ID, and provides transportation to register for the ID, then this type of law is no different than a POLL TAX!!!
Poll taxes are unconstitutional, and the fact that the current Supreme Court would overule precedent to uphold this law shows the rest of us how far the highest court of this country has fallen.
Good point, could use a little more tact though... but couldn't we all:)
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Acorn's efforts to register voters have been scandal-prone...Mr. Obama continues to back Acorn...Barack Obama, the faux reformer, hauls out discredited rhetoric that they disenfranchise voters.
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Certainly the Republican Party has been scandal-prone over these past 8+ years.
http://senate2008guru.blogspot.com/2007/08/republican-culture-of-corruption-2007.html
I'm glad to see that you, Mr. Fund, have disassociated yourself from this right-wing faux fiscally-conservative, faux troop-loving, faux patriotic party. And if you claim, "I'm not a Republican--I'm a Libertarian," then you're still associating with scandal:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/campaign2002/656850/posts
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/oconnell
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In Seattle, local officials invalidated 1,762 Acorn registrations. Felony charges were filed against seven of its workers...
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"No votes were cast in the names of the phony voters. Prosecutors said the defendants committed fraud in order to keep their jobs without actually registering voters."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003982533_acorn30m.html?syndication=rss
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So we have the irony of two liberal icons in sharp disagreement over yesterday's...decision.
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There's nothing ironic about liberals in sharp disagreement. We think for ourselves, rather than mindlessly goosestep off the cliff like dittohead lemming Republicans.
Back in the '70s, didn't you claim to run for a school board seat and get 46% of the vote when your name wasn't even on the ballot?
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8903
Why on Earth should we be lectured by someone with your track record?
- Tom
Who the heck is John Fund and how did he get the space to be an idiot? Granted the Supreme Court joins him but the reality is people of color - particularly Hispanic because they are mistaken for illegal immigrants - are frequently hassled when it comes to obtaining driver's licenses in all parts of this country. Reports are widespread. I lived in Massachusetts, a liberal state, and it happens often there. The fact is Republicans are overwhelmingly in favor of this and Democrats are not. That says it is political and clearly if it benefits Republicans, it means, they believe the ethnic votes can be suppressed.
So now poorer folk are faced with an additional fee, to pay for a state ID card. Yes, there are waivers but then you are asking people to fill out additional paperwork from other people just to have a right that is a birthright of all Americans.
This is one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in decades.
I think the damage that's been done to the supreme court is the scariest part of the neo-con's rape of this country. Sadly, it's probably the area that will most directly affect us on a regular (and odds are highly personal) basis. They want to play using their stacked deck and their rules. Has an entire supreme court ever been impeached?
How is it that John Fund is still taken seriously as a journalist/commentator? As vividly on display in this highly inaccurate piece, the guy has a horribly annoying habit of creating obvious falsehoods and then applying mystifyingly bad analysis to the same. John Fund has become a parody of himself and everything that is wrong with the right-wing propaganda machine.
This post is full of misleading and outright false statements. In particular, there was not a unanimous rejection of the argument that voters could be disenfranchised by voter ID laws. In fact, Stevens' opinion was basically that the groups that brought the suit didn't satisfy a particularly difficult legal requirement in order to challenge the law before its application actually ended up disenfranchising a potential voter. A challenge will have to wait until after an election. Furthermore, three justices dissented in that opinion, arguing that such laws do disenfranchise voters and in fact could have been overturned because their very nature is a partisan ploy by Republicans to steal elections.
If the Republicans of Indiana (not a single Democrat voted for it) want the poor and destitute to have photo IDS, they should cough up the money to make it possible. How about a squadron of "photo-id-mobiles" that would travel to the poor communities and help people who don't have a birth certificate either get one or get alternate testimony to their lifelong residency in this country.
If you don't know anybody who can't get their birth certificate, can't pay for it, and/or doesn't have a day to take the bus back and forth to the DMV to maybe get an id to cast a vote that may not be counted, look at your hands. I'm a magician. I know what color they are.
As for the nonsense about Obama being shady for supporting ACORN, whose ideal, if not always their reality, is community empowerment- well all I can say is Murdoch, Murcoch, Murdoch.
If it turns out that every voter is required to show I.D. will John Fund and the rest of the right wing finally lay the notion to rest, that there is massive voter fraud, in minority communities? If so, this may end up helping the Dems, more than hurting them.
The Dems will then be able to focus attention on issues such as voting machines without paper trails and Republicans skewing Democratic Primaries at the behest of right wing radio talk show hosts, something no Republican, that I'm aware of, has spoken out against.
Hey John...what are YOU doing here?
Guess you heard that some dems are just as gullible and looney as the cons, huh?
Yes.....who knew?
Sad but true.........these dems may believe even you.
So John does Karl send these goodies over or do you have to quid pro quo him?
hey guy where's the voter fraud in georgia?
John Fund is such a squirrel. Stevens a liberal icon? The fact that Stevens is not a radical conservative like Scalia, Thomas, Roberts & Alito doesn't make him a liberal. PLEASE! I wish we had a liberal justice on the Court because we haven't had one for years.
Nothing in your posting speaks to the point of this blog. Stevens favors voter reform and honest voter registration while Obama defends illegal and unethical voter registration. Stevens political ideology is not the issue. BUt what you have done is so typical of Obama supporters. Change the subject, avoid the issue, ignore the truth in a posting in order to attack a point, not the point.
The problem with the article and our point is that you act as if it is a quick fix one way or the other. Stevens sides on the side of preventing voter fraud, but I would assume he is also against disenfranchisement. Same with Obama, he has come down on the side of enfranchisement, but feels that the IN law maybe done in a less restrictive way. That doesn't mean he supports voter fraud. That would be like saying that because you are for Hillary, you are a racist. You can be for one without being against the other.
If Obama is for legal voting why has he failed to support registration reform, preferring to side with ACORN to continue a form of registratiion open to easy to compromise?
You can bring up racism, but keep in mind an objective look at the campaign reveals it is Obama who is the racist. Ms. Clinton has not said or done anything that would lead a reasonable or rational person to use the racist term, as Obama has done on a number of occasions.
By the way, I do admit to having a slight problem with Syrians. It started in 1973 on the Golan.
funny, i was using this posting to try to convince myself that obama cares about at least SOME voting rights. so it's only primary votes in michigan and florida that he doesn't care about?
this writer doesnt have a clue to what he pretends to write about.
these laws are not about voter fraud.
they are a further attepmt to block people from voting.
part of the republicans strategy for years.
if you want to know who these laws will affect do some investigation.
but heres a clue.
they will NOT prevent white people from voting.
do you homework pal.
According to his bio above, Mr. Fund gets
his paycheck from Mr. Murdoch.
What I found interesting is the timing of
the decision, a week before two big primaries,
one of them with a large black vote.
Voters can get provisional ballots but it requires
an affidavit with a fee of $13 which for lower income
people black or white, is PUNITIVE.
Oh. That's right. This whole endeavor is to keep
an entire class of voters away from the polls.
Thank you now I get it - it's RUPERT!
How about that last paragraph! Acorn hired people who didn't do their jobs. No story here, not Barak's fault - on a board that gives money does not mean hires & sits in on employee performance evaluations - Barak Obama supports this groups mission, they want to help all americans vote. This writer is trying to suggest that Barak Obama is involved in a scheme to register voters (poor minorities) and oooooh he's involved with a group that wants to vote for him! The reality of this Propaganda is that probably every poor minority lining up to vote is against BushCo and corporate media - I feel it has become just too transparent lately, why is there no such thing as libel & slander laws in politics - it's being used against us, it's working and even when it doesn't they just tell us otherwise. This is why Rupert Murdock should not be allowed to buy or consolidate one more f-ing thing.
well, there you have it another underling from the DARK side. LOL!
Indiana had not one case of voter fraud. When they were challenged to produce even one case, they couldn't.
Do you know the term "election fraud"? This is what the Supreme Court validated in 2000. Where were you then? One of the participants, right?
If a community was free of the crime of murder would that be a good argument against making it illegal? No, it would not. So the idea of being pro-active on voter fraud is not a bad idea. It is important, of course, to make certain no law can be used to suppress the vote, but making certain only legal voters are casting votes is a good idea.
Rather than attacking Fund and his ideology why not refute the points he has made concerning Obama and his support for voter registration that is open to fraud? For once I'd appreciate reading a posting from an Obama supporter that explains and justifies his position rather than an attack posting, which is much more typical.
Being pro-active on voter fraud is one thing but you need to make sure that the "law cannot be used to suppress the vote" (your words). Not everyone has a photo ID, you can say that it is their own fault but I would say it should not void them of their right to vote. Who wouldn't have an ID in this day and age? Maybe elderly and poor people. If this law included some kind of voter ID that was issued when you register so that ALL can vote, that's good - BUT unless it was free it would still prevent people from voting and that is the intent here - I'm afraid we can't afford programs like these. BushCo has maxed us out. Preventing voter fraud is very important. I just want to make sure it doesn't smell like BushCo.
According to you and Obama voter fraud is something that should be stopped, but not if it causes any distress for an important group of supporters. Sell out, in other words.
Where is the PROOF of wide-spread "voter fraud?" What a smokescreen!!! What this ruling WILL ensure is WIDESPREAD VOTER DISENFRANCHISEMENT. Mr. Fund is very disingenuous, and has a history of anti-Obama posts.
Fund's bogus charge against Obama on so-called "voting fraud" is misleading on its face. It says that Omaba represented certain parties, successfully, against the State of Illinois when it refused to implement the Federal law on registration and voting. That should be lauded by all as an ANTI fraud action. That Acorn is on of the parties and that Obama agrees with Acorn's objectives and that certain Acorn volunteers in states other than Illinois may have been overly zealous to the degree of illegality has nothing to do with [a] Illinois elections corruption, or [b] Obama's (wrongly) inferred approval of those (few) alleged illegal actions.
The real outrage is that with its recent decision the Court has firmly established the anti-constitutional view taking away the RIGHT to vote - it has made the right to vote a privilege, not a right. A right is something you have and can exercise UNLESS THE STATE PROVES THAT YOU HAVE FORFEITED THAT RIGHT. I have a right to free speech and the government cannot insist that I show a document as a condition for exercising that right.
That's why Karl Rove went nuts over voter registration drives. Unless he could develop the impression that they were somehow 'dangerous' to the public - as, for example, in propagating fraud - no court would intervene in the abridgment of Acorn's right to register voters. Doing that proved much harder than causing the declaration of a few bogus yellow alerts on the eve of an election...
thank you a.s., i hadn't thought of this issue as one involving voter suppression and the civics lesson as well (seriously). i don't care about acorn, or obama for that fact, what i don't see here are ideas on how to best meet this dilemma when u.s. demographics are rapidly, and radically, changing. on its face, i see little wrong with insisting that we have some type of proof of citizenship in order to vote. must this include a picture i.d.? well, in order to purchase alcohol and cigarettes one has to have a picture id, raising the question is voting more/less important, or is this an attempt to compare apples and oranges? but going back to demographics, and the various changes experienced in our country as we whirl into the 21st century, the issue of sovereignty seems to be diminishing, perhaps even evaporating, as corporations take over control of borders. thus, are the methods currently applied, or supported by the justices, for voter identification even relevant?
Voter suppression is much more likely than voter fraud in the U.S. Fund like most conservatives is against everyone voting, democracy. He is for putting obstacles in the way of as many people as possible. I'm sure he would love to have only property owners eligible to vote, and could write that argument.
Both Karl Rove and Justice Rehnquist have taken part in voter suppression campaigns, democracy is a threat to right wing rule. As for Justice Stephens I don't know if Fund's titles of liberal and reformer ring true. He probably was not appointed as a liberal. Fund also says, "polls that show clear majorities of blacks and Hispanics back voter ID laws". I don't know what this means or if it's true.
Fund has an agenda here, to have as few people vote as possible.
Posted April 29, 2008 | 11:58 AM (EST)