Twenty years ago, there was no debate about voter IDs.
Why?
Because not a single state in the country required a government-issued photo identification to vote. There was nothing to debate.
Fast forward to today, and voter ID rules are one of the most hotly debated topics in American politics. Late last year, when Ohio enacted the strictest photo-ID law in the nation, it became the 35th state to raise its requirements.
Oddly, Ohio’s new law followed endless bragging by Ohio leaders that elections here are as clean and fraud-free as any in the nation. Our current Secretary of State has called Ohio “the best in the nation” and the “gold standard” on secure elections. And an audit after the 2016 election “found just 153 irregularities out of 5.6 million votes cast, an irregularity rate of .0000003 percent.”
So, you might ask, how could Ohio pass a law that so dramatically impacts voters (up to 900,000 don’t have the now-required IDs) when there is no concern or evidence that in-person voter fraud actually takes place in Ohio?
It’s a good question, but one with a surprisingly simple answer: that’s exactly how the first photo ID law emerged in 2005.
That first law emerged from Indiana, which claimed it was necessary to combat in-person voter fraud—but was unable to cite a single instance of such fraud happening in the history of the Hoosier State.
And in response to that complete lack of evidence, the highest court in the land said…
Go Right Ahead!
That’s right, Indiana was allowed to advance the nation’s first photo-ID law by claiming it was combatting fraud, even though Indiana failed to identify a single case of in-person voter fraud having ever happened.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Class 11 of my Voting Rights Academy reviews the case that upheld that first photo ID law, the surprising Supreme Court Justice who wrote the decision but later called it “unfortunate,” the explosion of ID laws that it sparked, and the impact on voters and American politics.
The Indiana Test Case
Back in 2005—as in, not that long ago—federal law required certain basic identification standards to vote, and no states required photo identification. There was little to no discussion of in-person voter fraud.
That year, Indiana’s legislature proposed and passed the nation’s first law requiring voters to show a photo ID. Georgia and Missouri passed laws around the same time, but courts initially halted both. Indiana’s passed muster in two lower courts, so when it arrived at the US Supreme Court in 2007, it became the test case that would change the nation in ways that shape America’s democracy still today:
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