Wednesday, March 22, 2017
http://harrisondaily.com/opinion/editorial-voter-id-laws-here-to-stay/article_cf1305ba-0e57-11e7-be85-bbc121a40fea.html
I'm writing this from Columbia Missouri. Once upon a time Missouri had a right to free and open elections, so when voter ID came before the Republican Missouri Supreme Court in 2005, it was struck down for interfering with free and open elections. Then, last fall, voters passed a change to the state constitution to allow for voter ID. Secretary of state Jay Ashroft, son of a guy I used to work for, was the head cheerleader.
The new statute is nowhere near as bad as Indiana's. It alllows an affidavit option for those with secondary nonphoto ID, and allows provisional ballots to be counted if the signature matches.
For these reasons, I would expect it to hold up in court, although that's less than certain.
Perhaps I could find an Indiana legislator willing to amend Indiana's unconstitutional voter ID based on this Missouri plan. Unlikely, but not out of the question. I don't know whether Justice-to-be Gorsuch will be quite as hostil to voter ID as Justice Scalia was; there's little reason to be hopefult there. But he couldn't be worse.
I will need to write a furture blog post contrasting the unknown Gorsuch views on anonymous campaign speech with Scalia's overt hostility to such speech.
I'm writing this from Columbia Missouri. Once upon a time Missouri had a right to free and open elections, so when voter ID came before the Republican Missouri Supreme Court in 2005, it was struck down for interfering with free and open elections. Then, last fall, voters passed a change to the state constitution to allow for voter ID. Secretary of state Jay Ashroft, son of a guy I used to work for, was the head cheerleader.
The new statute is nowhere near as bad as Indiana's. It alllows an affidavit option for those with secondary nonphoto ID, and allows provisional ballots to be counted if the signature matches.
For these reasons, I would expect it to hold up in court, although that's less than certain.
Perhaps I could find an Indiana legislator willing to amend Indiana's unconstitutional voter ID based on this Missouri plan. Unlikely, but not out of the question. I don't know whether Justice-to-be Gorsuch will be quite as hostil to voter ID as Justice Scalia was; there's little reason to be hopefult there. But he couldn't be worse.
I will need to write a furture blog post contrasting the unknown Gorsuch views on anonymous campaign speech with Scalia's overt hostility to such speech.
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