Posted November 14, 2007 by J. Gerald Hebert

Legal Center Files Brief in High Court Review of Indiana Voter ID Law

Indiana’s controversial voter ID law is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Campaign Legal Center and law professor Charles Ogletree served as legal counsel to more than two dozens scholars and filed a brief yesterday as a friend of the court (amici curiae) in the cases (Crawford v. Marion County Election Board and Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita) tracing the history of disenfranchisement efforts in the U.S. since Reconstruction.   The similarities are striking between some of the old techniques later rendered illegal or unconstitutional--the poll tax is one example--and the Indiana photo ID law passed in 2005.   

As the brief makes clear, our nation has a sad history of disfranchising people of color and poor whites under the banner of "reform."  Voter ID laws are just the latest in a long list of disfranchising devices that include secret ballot laws, registration acts, "eight-box" laws, literacy tests, and the poll tax.  Such devices were often championed as "reform" measures, and were often billed as anti-fraud or anti-corruption devices in their day just as voter ID laws are currently.  Yet, through detailed provisions within them, these laws produced a discriminatory effect (one often intended by proponents) within the particular historical context in which they were imposed.