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Jewish World Review May 9, 2008 / 4 Iyar 5768 Sister Act: Is Indiana really disenfranchising elderly nuns? By John H. Fund
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The week after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana's law requiring that voters show a photo ID at the polls, voting in the Hoosier State's primary appeared to run smoothly. A state hotline for voter complaints turned up no major incidents. Sean Greene, of the nonpartisan electionline.org, was monitoring precincts in Lafayette. "It's going pretty well," he told the Associated Press. "Most of the people I've seen today are prepared and used to this. They have their IDs out already."
Then came a report from St. Mary s Convent in South Bend. At first glance, the story was heartrending. A dozen Indiana nuns in their 80s and 90s living in a retirement home at the convent were turned away at their local polling place by a fellow nun. Sister Julie McGuire, who ran the convent precinct where the nuns were registered, said it pained her to turn away her convent companions because they either had outdated identification or none at all.
But the story turns out to be much more complicated. The nuns had all been told earlier that they would need an up-to-date ID to vote. But none of them had asked to be taken to get an ID, and some flatly said they did not want to. Then on Election Day the nuns all showed up to vote.
They could have been given provisional ballots, which would have counted if they had shown up at a county clerk's office within 10 days to show an ID or sign an affidavit testifying to their identity.
The nuns would have none of it. According to the Associated Press, they told Sister McGuire that they were not interested in getting an official state ID. She decided it was futile to offer them a provisional ballot. She says it would have been impossible for them to get them to a motor vehicle branch--the nearest one is two miles away--within the allotted 10 days after the election.
But if their mobility is restricted, the Indiana law provides other ways in which they could have voted. Nursing homes can get a waiver of the ID requirement for residents to vote. And any Indianan over 65 is automatically eligible to cast an absentee ballot.
Secretary of State Todd Rokita, a Republican, defends his state ID law. A former Catholic school student, he says that while he has sympathy for the nuns, they of all people should understand the need for everyone to follow the same rules. But defiance might have been the point of the exercise. A local election official told me that that the lawyer representing a local voting-rights group immediately called the media rather than try to help the nuns obtain ID or cast a provisional ballot.
The right to vote is fundamental, but so is the right not to have one's vote canceled out by a fraudulent vote. An Indiana state study concluded that 99% of registered voters already have a photo ID. Yet voter ID opponents seem determined to undermine the law rather than help the few without IDs to vote. One voter in Indiana had a valid drivers license but insisted on showing an invalid federal ID anyway so he could be "denied" the right to cast a ballot and thus ''make a point."
Now that the Supreme Court has resolved this matter, wouldn't it make sense for everyone to work together to get an ID into the hands of those who need them? Andrew Young, a former Atlanta mayor, believes that in an era when people have to show ID to rent a video or buy an Amtrak ticket, "requiring ID can help poor people." He expressed support for deploying mobile buses to issue free voter IDs and allowing groups like the NAACP to arrange for visits to specific sites and neighborhoods. One stop ought to be St. Mary's Convent in South Bend.
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JWR contributor John H. Fund is author, most recently, of "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) Comment on this column by clicking here.
© 2006, John H. Fund |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
