You have no right to vote
The Constitution doesn't guarantee it, the Republicans know it, and real democratic values in our country are under assault.
By Garrett Epps
Read more: Opinion, 2006 Elections
Sept. 21, 2006 | Last week, a Missouri judge reminded the state Legislature that citizens of the state have a right to vote. And because it is a right, not a privilege granted by the powerful, Missourians can cast their ballots this November without having to meet identification requirements that seemed designed to make it harder for certain people -- the poor, the elderly, minorities and women -- to exercise that right.
That's the good news. The bad news is that this right comes from the Missouri state Constitution. The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly guarantee a right to vote, and our federal courts currently read the document not to include it.
The Missouri case should spark some national discussion about why it is that our country, almost alone among advanced democratic nations, does not find this right worth including in its Constitution. It should also inspire closer scrutiny of a kind of a electoral gamesmanship that is going on around the country, as Republicans seek to exploit this gap in our democratic guarantees.
The Republican majority of the Missouri Legislature has been haunted by a fear that is widespread in red America: a fear that the wrong kinds of people are voting. As a result, they passed a "Voter Protection Act," which required a state-issued photo ID for any voter who shows up at the polls. A state driver's license would do. But those who didn't already have a license -- even if they had been voting at the same address for the past half-century -- would be required to get a state-issued ID. To get one of those IDs, they would need to produce proof of citizenship, like a birth certificate or a passport, as well as documents showing that they were lawfully present at their current addresses. If they had ever changed their names -- if, for example, they were women voting under their married names -- they would be required to produce documents legitimizing the name change as well.
At first glance, this might seem like a minor thing. The bill's sponsor, Republican state Sen. Delbert Scott, noted that "you have to use [photo ID] to get on an airplane, to buy cigarettes." And, after all, the requirement would impact a small group of citizens -- a mere 170,000. That's only about 4 percent of the electorate, hardly a significant number. It is only, for example, eight times the margin of victory by which Sen. Jim Talent (coincidentally running for re-election this fall) defeated Democratic incumbent Jean Carnahan in 2002.
Most people don't really have to show ID to buy cigarettes. Beyond that, to state the obvious, neither air travel nor cigarette smoking is a fundamental component of democratic self-government. Voting is. A law that increases the cost and difficulty of voting will predictably reduce the number of people who vote, and a democracy that excludes large numbers of its citizens from the franchise isn't worthy of the name.
Many middle-class whites don't realize that for the poor and minorities, voting can be a difficult and even scary proposition. I first learned this as a poll-watcher in 1976, when I saw a white registrar in Virginia solicitously asking a black voter whether he was sure his registration form had been properly filled out. "You know fraudulent voting is a federal crime, don't you?" she purred, smiling sweetly. Southern Republicans often blanket poor black neighborhoods warning would-be voters that they might be arrested at the polls if they have unpaid traffic tickets.
Intriguingly, the Republican sponsors of the Missouri bill weren't really able to argue that it was needed to prevent fraud as such. Despite their best efforts, they couldn't find much evidence of fraudulent voting. So they argued instead that the law was needed because without it, solid Missouri citizens -- the kind of people who vote Republican, for example -- might be tempted to think there was fraud at the polls. Gov. Matt Blunt explained that the bill would "restore Missourians' confidence in state elections." (Blunt's margin of victory in 2004 -- certified by himself as secretary of state -- was 3 percent of the vote.) The Springfield News Leader, which supported the bill, said it would provide "peace of mind for voters who want to know that cheaters aren't improperly influencing an election."
But on Sept. 14, Cole County Circuit Judge Richard Callahan blocked the law from taking effect. Callahan pointed out that Article VII of Missouri's Constitution says that "All citizens of the United States ... who are residents of this state ... are entitled to vote at all elections by the people." The ID rule, he reasoned, would allow the Legislature to add an onerous qualification to those spelled out in the Constitution.
