Too bad the Supremes took so long

Yesterday the Supreme Court in a surprise 6-3 ruling upheld Indiana’s voter photo identification law. Michelle Malkin is one commentator who weighed in on this decision as many others have or will in coming days, terming it “victory.”

And while Justice Souter whined that, “the law imposes an unreasonable and irrelevant burden on voters who are poor and old,” (no it doesn’t) he was outvoted in a rare common-sense move by our highest court; one that hopefully will be the impetus for additional states to enact similar safeguards to the electoral process. While I’m going to send the bat-signal out to an expert like Elbert to chime in about Delaware’s procedures (or other experts from other states who happen to frequent monoblogue), I can certify that Maryland has no such law and all efforts to bring a measure of fraud prevention to our electoral process have steadily been beaten down by majority Democrats in our General Assembly.

But since the folks on the left seem to believe that courts, rather than legislators, should decide what’s proper and correct in jurisprudence, it should now be a no-brainer for the General Assembly to pass a law similar to Indiana’s – voter photo ID has the seal of approval from the highest court in the land. (Now if the Supremes would do something about that McCain-Feingold garbage we may really be on to something here.)

Unfortunately, this decision comes about 45 days too late for legislation that could’ve passed in our General Assembly session this year, so we have to wait until after the 2008 election unless by some miracle a Special Session to address this defect is called by Democrat Governor Martin O’Malley. (Yeah, and the sales tax will go back to 5% and pigs will fly, too.) And with Maryland voters also slated to decide the fate of early voting this November, a quicker decision may have impacted that balloting as well.

So the task of those of us in the Free State who still believe that the ballot is sacred is now threefold:

  • Defeat early (and often) voting this November. Absentee ballots are easy to get and achieve the same purpose without needing additional funding for ballot and voting machine security in remote locations during the early voting period.
  • Hold legislators’ feet to the fire, particularly on the House Judiciary Committee (that means you, Delegate Vallario) when a new version of this year’s HB288 is reintroduced next year. This is important since the Board of Elections doesn’t check citizenship and the MVA hands out voter registration cards like candy to whoever wants a drivers’ license.
  • Also, make sure your Delegates are made aware that this Supreme Court decision paves the way for something along the lines of this session’s ill-fated HB1199, and especially pass the word on to Delegate Hixson, who chairs Ways and Means.

We need this three-prong effort to maintain and improve the electoral process because every vote cast illegally may just negate the one you cast. It’s food for thought on this lunchtime post.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

One thought on “Too bad the Supremes took so long”

  1. Michael,

    You are right about Maryland lacking any such rule. In fact, if you even try to present picture ID, they get nervous. During the primary, the birthdate on the computer was wrong– but it was right on my voter registration card. When I went to show them the card, they recoiled like I was Satan.

    “We can’t ask for that” they loudly proclaimed.

    “Too bad”, said I.

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