This week in the war on voting: 2,500 felons get voting rights back in VA, voter ID law okayed in WI ::posted Sat, 02 Aug 2014 16:00:02 +0000:: ift.tt/1u9RTP9 rss@dailykos (Meteor Blades) This week in the war on voting is a joint project of Joan McCarter and Meteor Blades In two rulings announced Thursday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court backed the states photo voter ID law in split votes. The court ruled 4-3 in one case and 5-2 in the other. In the short run, this doesnt matter because the law is under review by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals after a lower federal court ruled against the mandated ID. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported: In one case, the court majority crafted a saving construction of the voter ID law to keep it from being unconstitutional. That was aimed at preventing the state from requiring voters to pay any government fees to get a state-issued ID card. How that would work is unclear. The ruling requires the state Division of Motor Vehicles to give out IDs to those who cant afford birth certificates and other documents, but provides no guidance to how officials could determine people are who they say they are without such documentation. [...] People can get free ID cards for voting from the state, but they have to produce certified copies of their birth certificates—which cost $20 apiece in Wisconsin—to get them. The majority saw that as a problem. Under those circumstances, the ID requirement could be considered a poll tax, illegal for federal elections under the 24th Amendment—passed in 1964. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1966 made the prohibition apply also to state elections under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment in its ruling in the case of Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections. The League of Women Voters was plaintiff in the second case. League attorneys argued that the state constitution only allows three qualifications for voting—age, U.S. citizenship and Wisconsin residency. In addition, the mentally incompetent and felons can be barred from voting. But requiring a specific kind of ID to vote added a fourth class of people, the league said, and that violates the state constitution. The court majority disagreed. More on the war on voting can be found beneath the orange butterfly ballot. [Forwarded by the MyLeftBlogosphere news engine. Link to original post below:]
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 22:46:37 +0000
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