High Court sets back right to vote

On April 28, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 in Crawford v. Marion County to uphold Indiana’s strict voter photo identification requirement—a stunning blow against the right to vote.

The dissenting Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter compared the Indiana law to the old Virginia poll tax, and said it “[has] the object of deterring poorer residents from exercising the franchise.” (New York Times, April 29)

The high court’s biased decision means that thousands of Indiana’s eligible voters who don’t have drivers’ licenses or passports, or the funds, transportation or means to obtain them, will be barred from voting.

John Payton of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund warns, “Thousands of otherwise eligible African Americans and other minority voters who would have wanted to participate in what is perhaps the most historic election in our lifetime will not be able to vote [in Indiana] under mandatory voter ID requirements.” (naacpldf.org)

The Supreme Court’s ruling has ominous national ramifications. It gives the green light to many other states to maintain or enact rigid voter identification requirements, thus discriminating against and effectively disenfranchising millions of people, especially those in poor and oppressed communities, the elderly, youth, women and the disabled.

Twenty-four states now require voter identifications; six of them, besides Indiana, require photo IDs. They are Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Michigan and South Dakota. Ten other states are considering such laws.

Therefore, the high court’s ruling will impact on the more than 13 million people nationwide, mostly low-income, who have no government-issued IDs and who face a costly, laborious process to obtain them.

In Indiana, Republican legislators pushed through the voter requirements, which were opposed by Democrats. This is true throughout the country as the Republicans enact nefarious schemes and rules to conspire to keep out of the voting booths those who most likely would vote for Democratic candidates.

Although both are capitalist parties with imperialist foreign policies, the Democrats and Republicans have some tactical and social differences; the Democrats’ base includes many people in organized labor and from oppressed communities.

The Republican Party has shown that it will do everything possible to suppress votes to win elections. In 2000 Republicans in the Florida presidential elections, with the complicity of state election officials, “stole” the vote by disenfranchising tens of thousands of African-American, Haitian and Spanish-speaking people.

The Indiana law and others requiring voter identification frontally attack the fundamental right to vote. This right was won by hard-fought struggle by the Civil Rights Movement, which sought to break the grip of white supremacy and racist Jim Crow laws in the South.

That monumental struggle pressured Congress into enacting the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which enabled many African-American people to vote and run for office, although the struggle is far from over.

The Voting Rights Act specified ending barriers to voting, such as harassment, poll taxes, English-only voting instructions, literacy tests, racist gerrymandering and other disenfranchisement tools. It forbid racial discrimination by governments to impede voters.

Now, instead of poll taxes and literacy tests, racist, reactionary forces are using voter identification laws to turn the clock back and undermine the gains made by the Civil Rights Movement, to win elections at a time when many are still struggling for the right to vote, including immigrants.

Hilary Shelton, NAACP Washington Bureau director, warned, “Mandated photo ID programs would create a modern-day poll tax for voters throughout the country. This is both discriminatory and inconsistent with historic policies to eliminate poll taxes.”

The Supreme Court is itself a reactionary, undemocratic body, a pillar of the capitalist system which maintains class rule and privilege. It is only when the momentum of a mass movement pushes the government to grant rights or benefits that the court makes any progressive rulings, be it for civil liberties, civil rights or those of women or working people.

The right to vote should be inviolable. As part of the struggle for democratic rights it should be expanded to all who want to exercise it. This issue is even more highlighted this year when so many people are heartened by Barack Obama’s candidacy.

Monica Moorehead wrote in Workers World, “The right to vote is a hard-won bourgeois democratic right that is still being denied to tens of millions of oppressed people, including immigrant workers. ...

“To forge class unity among workers of all nationalities, concrete support for the most marginalized and oppressed people must be mounted, including defending their right to vote, no matter who they vote for. The struggle for the right to vote is a continuation of earlier struggles to break the monopoly on the political process exercised by rich, white men of property.” (Nov. 11, 2004)

The movement to abolish all restrictive voting requirements is part of the continuing overall struggle for social justice and to end all forms of discrimination.