Featured Press Release:

INDIANA VOTER ID LAW IS CONSTITUTIONAL

April 28, 2008 - For Immediate Release
Contact: William Perry Pendley

DENVER, CO. A challenge to an Indiana law that requires voters to present identification to demonstrate their right to vote failed today when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, consistent with a brief by a nationally known, public interest law firm, that the law imposes a minimal burden. Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), which represents the proponents of a successful Arizona voter-ID ballot initiative, had advised the Court that, given the threat of voter fraud and the duty of the State to protect the integrity of the voting process, Indiana was within its constitutional rights to impose the new requirements. By a 6-3 ruling, the Court held that the facial challenge to the Indiana statute fails because a State may impose “even handed restrictions” to protect the integrity and reliability of the electoral process if the burden of those restrictions is justified by “sufficiently weighty” state interests.

“The Court recognized that the burden imposed in this case, which was largely speculative, was a mere ‘inconvenience,’ especially given Indiana’s use of provisional ballots,” said William Perry Pendley, president and chief legal officer of Mountain States Legal Foundation. “We wish the Court would have gone further so as to prevent suits by individually burdened voters.”

In July 2005, Indiana law was changed to require persons seeking to vote in person to present a government-issued photo identification, unless the person either votes by absentee ballot or lives in a nursing home. Those who do not have any photo ID and must vote in person, if they vote at all, because they do not live in nursing homes and are ineligible to cast absentee ballots may obtain a free photo ID from the Indiana motor vehicle bureau by presenting a birth certificate (or certificate of naturalization if born outside the United States) or a certified copy of a birth certificate and a document, such as a utility bill, with the person’s name and address on it. Both indigent and non-indigent people who do not have (or do not have with them) a photo ID may cast a provisional ballot, after which the voter has 10 days either to file an affidavit of indigency or to procure and present a photo ID.

Some candidates for public office, voters, and groups challenged the statute as an undue burden on the right to vote. In April 2006, the Indiana federal district court upheld the law as a reasonable restriction to protect the integrity of the electoral process. On January 4, 2007, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed that judgment, although on different grounds. On July 2, 2007, the Indiana Democratic Party petitioned for U.S. Supreme Court review (Nos. 07-21 and 07-25), and on September 25, 2007, the Court granted certiorari. Oral arguments occurred January 9, 2008.

Mountain States Legal Foundation is a nonprofit, public interest law firm dedicated to individual liberty, the right to own and use property, limited and ethical government, and the free enterprise system. Its offices are in suburban Denver, Colorado.