Protecting the integrity of the ballot box is essential to our democracy.
Laws requiring voters to show identification at the polls are commonsense
measures to prevent fraud and corruption, and ensure that each year's
election returns accurately reflect the will of the people.
Yet President Obama's administration and political allies are pursuing a
dual-track approach to vilify such tools, in a crass political ploy to aid
the president's reelection.
In 2008, the Supreme Court held in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board
that Indiana's voter ID law is constitutional. The Court noted that the
challengers could not produce a single voter disenfranchised by that law.
Now 32 states have voter ID laws to protect their electoral process.
Nonetheless, when southern states have passed these laws, Attorney General
Eric Holder has invoked Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to block these
measures as having the effect of disparately impacting racial minorities.
Mr. Holder has blocked laws in Texas and South Carolina, and litigation is
now underway.
Section 5 specifies that certain southern states that suppressed minority
voting half a century ago must obtain preclearance from the Justice
Department or the federal district court in Washington, D.C., before
changing their voting laws. Even the liberal Warren Court upheld Section 5
in the 1966 case South Carolina v. Katzenbach only because endemic racial
hostility at that time justified extraordinary federal power under the
Fifteenth Amendment, and indicated that if American society progressed, such
continued federal supervision over this quintessential state function would
no longer be constitutional.
Today an African-American can be elected president of the United States, or
serve in top Cabinet posts, congressional leadership, or the Supreme Court.
So in 2009 the Supreme Court signaled that it was ready to reconsider
Section 5's validity. A case currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the D.C. Circuit, Shelby County v. Holder, may provide that opportunity next
year.
But while Mr. Holder is abusing Section 5 to block laws that do not go as
far as Indiana's law upheld in Crawford, Mr. Obama's longtime political
allies at the NAACP have gone to the United Nations Human Rights Council to
protest voter ID laws -- a council comprised of the likes of Cuba, Russia and
China, with no jurisdiction over American elections. This thus becomes a
dual-track approach to gin up a political issue to help Mr. Obama in his
reelection efforts, invoking an outdated law and an international body whose
members include notorious violators of voting rights.
Voting is unique as a constitutional right. First, the right to cast a
ballot includes a corollary right not to have your legal vote canceled by
someone else's fraud. You have the right to have your undiluted vote
counted.
Second, this fundamental right is also a citizen's duty. Part of that duty
requires you to register, and to appear at a certain place on a certain day
to vote. Complying with those requirements is doing your civic duty to
ensure a free and fair election.
Voter ID laws both protect this corollary right, while also augmenting a
reasonable aspect of your civic duty to make sure the electoral machinery
functions properly on Election Day. The fact that states make special
accommodations for people in nursing homes or with special circumstances,
and can even provide identification free of charge to those who cannot
afford it, strikes the proper balance to ensure that every qualified voter
can reasonably cast a ballot that will not be tainted by anyone's fraud or
misdeeds.
America's focus on having free and fair elections is one of the reasons the
United States is the oldest democratic republic on earth. Failing to ensure
the integrity of the democratic process in elections is a mistake a free
people often makes only once.
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Mr. Blackwell was Ohio secretary of state and U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations Human Rights Commission. Mr. Klukowski is a fellow with the American
Civil Rights Union and on faculty at Liberty University School of Law.