Because it is constitutionally significant, and not coincidentally because it coincides with the longest presidential campaign in modern history, Indiana's voter-ID law is getting a lot of national attention as it is considered by the Surpreme Court. Here, James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal responds to an anti-ID column by a former Democratic congressman and makes a sly point I haven't seen anywhere else:
For that matter, if minorities have a lesser propensity to get driver's licenses, doesn't that mean the "motor voter" law, championed by Democrats, is discriminatory because it disproportionately gives opportunities for white (and younger, and higher-income) people to register to vote?
Read the whole thing, and link to an earlier article he wrote on the same subject, and you'll get a pretty good sense of the case for voter IDs. Probably the weakest part of his argument (which has been made by many others, including me) is the mere listing of all the other things for which a photo ID is required. The other side maintains, correctly, that voting is a fundamental right guranteed in the Constitution, many degrees of magnitude more important than being able to rent a movie or open a bank account. That means the scrutiny of measures restricting the right has to be of equal degrees of greater magnitude.
