Comments on Advance Indiana™: Opponents Of Voter ID Fall Flat In Supreme Court Argument

GaryWhat law designated the two major party system...

2008-01-10T14:52:00.000-05:00

Gary

What law designated the two major party system in Indiana only and does not allow for independents to be selected?

Is it unconstitutional?

Absolutely excellent post, Gary. If voter ID requi...

2008-01-10T13:33:00.000-05:00

Absolutely excellent post, Gary.

If voter ID requirements "supress" a single vote, it is entirely within the ability of the voter to remedy that situation. If one is too lazy or indifferent to meet the requirement (which Indiana has made extremely easy to do), then I presume said person is too lazy or indifferent to make careful judgements about the election. The right to vote comes with responsibilities, and if one of those is to obtain an easily-obtainable identification card, that's not too much to expect for the privilege of living in a republic. The opponents of this law depricate those responsibilities. Freedom isn't free.

indyernie said..."This is not about voter fraud......

2008-01-10T11:47:00.000-05:00

indyernie said...
"This is not about voter fraud...it is about GOP vote suppression."

BLA-BLA-BLA, utter nonsense.
It’s about fair honest voting. One vote per person.
The democrat sponsored intercity “vote until you drop program” is finished.

He hit the nail on the head.

Lets take politics out of it and do what's right. One person-one vote. Common sense must prevail at some point and the only way to get one vote per person is to prove who you are when you register and when you vote.

Pretty simple really.

"This is not about voter fraud...it is about GOP v...

2008-01-10T10:47:00.000-05:00

"This is not about voter fraud...it is about GOP vote suppression."

BLA-BLA-BLA, utter nonsense.
It’s about fair honest voting. One vote per person.
The democrat sponsored intercity “vote until you drop program” is finished.

You don't have to declare a party affiliation prio...

2008-01-10T10:18:00.000-05:00

You don't have to declare a party affiliation prior to the primary election. Indiana has a closed primary system, which means that in a primary, you can only vote for Republican or Democratic candidates, you can't vote for both. That requires you to choose between a Republican or Democratic ballot if you vote in a primary. You can switch back and forth between parties from election to election. In the general election, you make no declaration as to your party affiliation.

GaryWhy do voters need to declare a political part...

2008-01-10T10:06:00.000-05:00

Gary

Why do voters need to declare a political party prior to voting in the Indiana Primary Elections?

I am an independent voter and choose to vote for the person and not the Party. Other states have open primary elections.

Is it not unconstitutional to reveal which way a citizen is going vote?

Can you cite the law that states I must declare a political party in order to vote?

On Bush v. Gore, the Left has done a good job of r...

2008-01-10T08:51:00.000-05:00

On Bush v. Gore, the Left has done a good job of rewriting history. I watched the case unfold very closely. I watched the televised hearings of the case in front of the Florida Supreme Court. I was shocked by the complete rewriting of Florida election law that the Florida court was undertaking in an obvious attempt to aid the recount efforts of Gore. There was only one attorney in those arguments who understood Florida election law and that was the attorney for the Florida Secrtary of State's office. Gore's attorney, David Bowles, had obviously never read an election statute before this case. There was a clear procedure under Florida law for certifying the initial vote, and then allowing for a contest if one of the candidates wished to challenge the certified vote results. Gore's lawyers got the Court to completely disregard the certification process and immediately begin recounts--in Gore rich counties only. The standards for how votes were being counted varied among the counties. I've seen Democrats do this before in recounts. You isolate a sufficient enough number of contested votes to change the outcome and then adopt a rule for counting those votes which ensures your candidate enough votes to win. It happened in a recount I witnessed in an Illinois Stare House race. It happened in the McCloskey race here in Indiana. If the Supreme Court hadn't intervened, you would have had a situation where essentially an out of control state supreme court got to decide who our next president was. Clearly, the certified vote results had Bush the winner. Gore could have only won if enough votes for Bush had been tossed out to make Gore the winner. In other words, voters would have been disenfranchised in the process of changing the outcome. I happen to think the U.S. Supreme Court's decision was poorly written, but I think the result was right. Unfortunately, the justices gave the appearance their political affiliation had more to do with their decision than the actual merits of the case.

Well, no, it's not the same court, Doug, but your ...

2008-01-10T08:01:00.000-05:00

Well, no, it's not the same court, Doug, but your point is well-taken nonetheless:

Gone is Justice O'Connor, whose much-admired reasoning powers were somehow absent in BVG.

Gone is the Chief, Rehnquist, whose rigid ideology hampered the Court throughout his tenure as CJ. And don't forget, this is the same Chief who fashioned the new CJ robe and hat, for fashion's sake. (Ugh) (he needed a gay advisor). And who unilaterally changed his title from Chief Justice of the SC to Chief Justice of the United States. Subtle power grab: when his history is written, that's really all you need to know about him.

Replacements? Roberts as CJ and Alito as AJ.

Net result? four hard-liners (Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas). Kennedy became the O'Connor swing vote.

This Court is decidedly more conservative than the 2000 BVG court. And that 2000 court will go down in history, among court-watchers, as having intervened improperly in the national political dialogue. Their BVG decision was wrong, it was stupid and it was ill-timed. Rarely have their predecessors been so poorly positioned in history.

So, Doug: you are right to assume that this Court is not likely to overturn Indiana's law. But not because it's the BVG 200 Court. Because it's even more right-wing-beholden than 2000 BVG's Court.

Not a proud moment for Court watchers and lovers of justice.

anon 7:34 said, "You forgot the best part"No, that...

2008-01-10T07:58:00.000-05:00

anon 7:34 said, "You forgot the best part"

No, that's why I said, "The back and forth over Indiana's failure to do a good job maintaining its voter registration rolls and its registration versus its voting requirements didn't help the state's argument."

Doug said, "So, I tend to agree with you that the potential of disenfranchisement due to Indiana's rigid ID requirements and the lack of any evidence of a problem in the first place is hardly going to bother them."

Just like it didn't bother the Petitioners when thousands of Marion County residents were denied the right to vote in the May primary because the clerk's office failed so badly on putting on the election?

These are mostly the same folks who issued Bush v....

2008-01-10T07:34:00.001-05:00

These are mostly the same folks who issued Bush v. Gore. So, I tend to agree with you that the potential of disenfranchisement due to Indiana's rigid ID requirements and the lack of any evidence of a problem in the first place is hardly going to bother them.

While Smith might've struggled through the standin...

2008-01-10T07:34:00.000-05:00

While Smith might've struggled through the standing questions on oral, the question was well-responded to in the briefs.

The justices asked pointed questions of both sides, and you forgot the best part, where Fisher stated that the Voter ID law was necessary to curb the potential for fraud caused by overinflated voter registration rolls. The justices seemed incredulous that the state's Solicitor General just admitted that Indiana needed the strict Voter ID law because the state wasn't doing a good job maintaining voter registration records. That's right, Fisher admitted that we needed a stricter id law because the state wasn't enforcing another law.

CJ Roberts: "You're saying (the state) does such a lousy job on registration that (the state) should be able to have a more stringent voting requirement. Why (does Indiana) do such a lousy job on registration?" This comment drew much laughter and was followed by both Souter and Ginsburg following up. Souter: "Are you making the argument that (the state) can place a heavier burden on voters to identify themselves because your state officials refust to follow the law? Surely you're not going to rest your case on that?"

This is not about voter fraud...it is about GOP vo...

2008-01-10T06:33:00.000-05:00

This is not about voter fraud...it is about GOP vote suppression.