Voting Rights Update

U.S. Supreme Court Puts Wisconsin Voter ID Law on Hold

Thousands of Wisconsin voters will be able to vote in the upcoming midterm elections after the U.S. Supreme Court over the weekend stepped in and stopped from taking effect a Voter ID law meant to frustrate their ability to vote.

Opponents of the law have argued that it is too late for many people to obtain the required identifications. The court, which is deciding whether to take the case, ruled that it is too late to implement the IDs for the midterms.

And just yesterday, in a ruling that could affect a key U.S. Senate race, the Arkansas Supreme Court declared that state's voter ID law unconstitutional. The unanimous decision upheld a lower court and came just days before early balloting begins Monday for the Nov. 4 election.

Meanwhile, the picture is not so clear in Texas where a U.S. District Court judge last week shelved the state's Photo ID law, one of the strictest in the nation, as 'discriminatory' and 'unconstitutional' only to have the notorious Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals immediately put it back into effect.

The plaintiffs, including the U.S. Justice Department, have filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will now have to determine whether more than 600,000 Texans will get to vote on Nov. 4. Plaintiffs have argued that the law would leave that many Texans – mostly blacks and Hispanics – without sufficient identification to vote in November elections.

In the Wisconsin case, the state was rushing to put into effect the controversial law that the Republican-dominated state legislature enacted in 2011. Earlier court decisions had stopped the law from going into effect but, on September 12, a judge ruled the state could require that voters show photo identification.

The case was then appealed to the full court. But because the normally 11-member court is currently short a member, the court deadlocked 5-5 on whether to take the case, meaning the law could take effect. Then, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and halted it.

Judge Richard Posner, one of the judges who wanted to hear the case, wrote a scathing opinion on the proliferation of voter photo ID laws. Posner, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, is the most respected conservative jurist in the nation and could be called the grandfather of voter photo identification laws.

In his new opinion, Posner described voter ID laws as "a mere fig leaf for efforts to disenfranchise voters likely to vote for the political party that does not control the state government."

He called "evidence" of impersonation fraud put forward by proponents of Voter ID "downright goofy, if not paranoid."

"There is only one motivation for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud, if there is no actual danger of such fraud, and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the burdens," Posner wrote.