Indiana, it is said, has the strictest voter ID law in the nation. So it's not surprising that our law is going to become the test case before the U.S. Supreme Court:
The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide whether voter identification laws unfairly deter poor and minority Americans from voting, stepping into a contentious partisan issue in advance of the 2008 elections.
The justices will hear arguments early next year in a challenge to an Indiana law that requires voters to present photo ID before casting their ballots. The state has defended the law as a way to combat voter fraud.
The state Democratic party and civil rights groups complained that the law unfairly targets poor and minority voters, without any evidence that in-person voter fraud exists in Indiana.
Well, it's true that evidence of fraud wasn't presented. On the other hand, the Democrats haven't offered any evidence that any voter been disenfranchised by the law. With the lack of evidence on either side, people have been lining up on one side or the other based on politics. In every state where this has come up, Republicans are for it and Democrats are against it. That same partisanship seems to have seeped into the courts, too. Every time such a law has been considered at the appellate level, almost without exception there has been the same split between Republican or Republican-appointed judges and Democratic and Democrat-appointed judges.
Given the current philosophical makeup of the current court, my guess is the law stands.
