Obama Versus the Supremes on Photo ID

[Valin]

NRO/The Corner:

Christian Schneider

March 14, 2012

 

Nearly a decade ago, I regularly carpooled to work with my left-of-center neighbor, who had just emigrated from Indiana to Wisconsin. One election day, we decided to hit the polling place before work — but as we got halfway there, she jerked herself upright. “I forgot my driver’s license,” she said, worriedly. I reassured her that she didn’t need to show photo ID to vote. She paused. “That’s crazy,” she said.

 

Several years later, another prominent liberal would agree with my neighbor’s assessment of the voter verification process. In Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008), U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens would uphold the Indiana photo-ID law (although his explanation was slightly less succinct than my neighbor’s.) In his six to three majority opinion, Stevens upheld Indiana’s voter-identification law, noting that “public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process has independent significance, because it encourages citizen participation in the democratic process.”

 

When Stevens retired in 2010, President Barack Obama hailed him as an “impartial guardian” of the law, saying the “brilliant” justice had “worn the judicial robe with honor and humility.”

 

Yet in Crawford, Stevens had apparently been too “impartial” for Obama’s tastes. On Monday, Obama’s Justice Department, headed up by beleaguered Attorney General Eric Holder, blocked a Texas voter-ID law, arguing the statute would disproportionately affect Hispanic voters. (In December, Holder’s department stopped implementation of a similar law in South Carolina.)

 

(Snip)