Supreme Court Must Strike Down Discriminatory Voter ID Law
November 30, 2007
Imagine going to vote and having poll workers ask you to present your naturalization certificate. They say it’s required under state law, but no other voters are required to show their certificates. This happened to one voter in Flushing, New York.
It’s often because of voter ID checks that certain voters are racially profiled. Just like African American and Latino voters in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, Asian Americans have to overcome discriminatory barriers to exercise their right to vote.
Such barriers have reached national proportions, and the Supreme Court will be deciding the constitutionality of Indiana’s restrictive photo ID requirement for voters in two cases, William Crawford v. Marion County Election Board and Indiana Democratic Party v. Todd Rokita.
The state of Indiana requires all eligible voters to present government-issued photo identification in order to vote. A federal appeals court in Chicago upheld Indiana’s voter ID law by disregarding the severe burdens placed on an individual’s right to vote.
The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, along with several other local Asian American groups, has monitored elections across the country during the last decade and has found that voter ID requirements have discriminatory impacts on Asian American voters.
In the 2004 elections, AALDEF and other Asian American groups monitored almost 200 poll sites and conducted a multilingual exit poll of 10,789 Asian American voters in 23 cities in eight states. They found that voter ID checks have disenfranchised Asian Americans and prevented racial and language minorities from exercising their fundamental right to vote.
In New York, identification is not required to vote, but 23 percent of all Asian American voters surveyed were asked to show ID. Of those, 69 percent were not required to do so under the Help America Vote Act, which requires only a limited group of first-time voters to present ID. In Chinatown, a police officer turned away all Asian American voters who did not have a photo ID with them. South Asian American voters also complained of being racially profiled.
In New Jersey, where identification is not required to vote, 25 percent of voters surveyed had to provide identification; of those, 51 percent were not required to show ID under the Help America Vote Act. One elderly, first-time Korean American voter was asked to provide several forms of identification. After he presented his voter registration card and other documents from the Board of Elections, he was still required to show a driver’s license, utility bills and other forms of ID before he could vote.
In Massachusetts, 24 percent of Asian American voters had to show identification; of those, 57 percent were not required to show ID under the Help America Vote Act. One voter presented his United States passport but was told that it was insufficient and was turned away.
In Virginia, where some form of identification is required from all voters, a South Asian voter complained that he was asked to show identification but his white companion was not.
AALDEF and local community groups sent formal complaints to elections officials after each of these elections, but poll workers continued to make improper demands for identification. For example, in the 2006 elections in Boston, an interpreter appointed by the Elections Department required all Chinese-speaking voters to show IDs before they could receive a translated ballot; none of the English-speaking voters were similarly asked for IDs.
Citing these examples, AALDEF along with pro bono co-counsel Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP filed an amicus “friend of the court” brief with the Supreme Court on behalf of 25 Asian American groups, challenging the law.
Photo identification requirements like Indiana’s are frequently misapplied and often applied only to minority voters. Even when voters had acceptable forms of ID, poll workers rejected them and demanded additional documents.
Voter ID requirements disenfranchise Asian American voters, and the Supreme Court should strike them down.
Glenn D. Magpantay is a staff attorney at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. The group’s amicus brief in the Crawford case can be found at aaldef.org.
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DISABLED ALSO DISENFRANCHISED
Many disabled do not drive (blind, paralyzed) and are too poor to travel much, so do not have passports– which are the two main sources of government ID cards!
And there are an estimated 40 million disabled Americans citizens of voting age…