Voters left in the lurch

Saturday, May 3, 2008 | 2:07 a.m.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld an Indiana law that requires voters to present government-issued photo identification at the polls before casting their ballots.

In ruling 6-3 in favor of the Indiana measure Monday, the Supreme Court has paved the way for other states to pass similar legislation.

Supporters of the measure have said it is necessary to prevent voter fraud. Civil rights groups, Democrats and others who opposed the law say that it disenfranchises millions of Americans who do not have the type of identification the law requires, including older voters and people with low incomes who may not be able to obtain a passport or a driver’s license.

In the court’s opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that “the application of the statute to the vast majority of Indiana voters is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.”

Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen G. Breyer dissented. Souter wrote that the law “threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting right of tens of thousands of (Indiana’s) citizens and a significant percentage of those individuals are likely to be disenfranchised from voting.”

Souter also wrote that “without a shred of evidence that in-person voter impersonation is a problem in the state, much less a crisis, Indiana has adopted some of the most restrictive photo identification requirements in the country.”

It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court will allow such a poorly conceived notion to be written into voting laws. If ever there was a case of a law in search of a problem, this is it. We hope that other states don’t follow Indiana’s backward example.

Voting is a fundamental right in the United States, and one for which proof of residency is presented at the time people register. Adding layers of identification requirements at the polls serves only to make the process more complicated and less accessible.