QUOTE
May 5, 2006
Dean to fight voter ID statute
By Mary Beth Schneider
An appeal will be filed today to try to overturn Indiana's voter ID law, Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean said Thursday.
Dean, in his second trip to Indianapolis in recent weeks, and Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker said Tuesday's primary election showed some Hoosiers were denied the right to vote. A hotline set up by the national party received a few hundred complaints, with more still coming in.
In April, U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker upheld Indiana's law, the most stringent in the nation, saying Democrats had not proved their contention that the law was too burdensome.
"After Tuesday, we now have our proof," Parker said. "Everything did not go smoothly. Everything did not go fine."
Dean cited some of the complaints the party has received about the law, which requires a government-issued photo ID with an expiration date. One was a newlywed in Marion County who was turned away because her photo ID showed her maiden name.
Another, he said, was a Vanderburgh County woman who went to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to get the required government-issued ID. She was turned away, and lost the right to vote, because her voter registration card, Social Security card and medical card weren't enough proof of identity, and she didn't have her birth certificate.
"If this law disenfranchises one voter, then all of us should care," Parker said.
Dean said the law is "part of a national Republican program to disenfranchise voters" and drive down voter turnout.
A similar law passed in Georgia was overturned by the courts, and Dean said he thinks the same will eventually happen to Indiana's law. Dean said the case could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We're going to take this as far as we have to," he said.
Secretary of State Todd Rokita, though, said reports Tuesday showed "no systemic problem" and that in any case the legal appeal will have to be on the evidence already offered in the court case.
"The way the law is crafted, there is always a way for (people without the necessary ID) to vote if they wanted to," he said, citing provisional ballots, which are counted if the person later produces the ID or cites religious scruples against the photo ID.
Rokita said the biggest problem in Tuesday's primary election came not from the new photo ID law, but from the fact that many polling places had been changed in order to make them accessible to the physically disabled.
Democrats in Congress insisted on those changes, which Rokita said "caused more disenfranchisement than anything else. . . . Yet you don't hear them complaining about that."
Indiana Republican Party Chairman Murray Clark issued a statement saying the voter ID law "did not create the uproar that Democrats had predicted."
For Dean "to again challenge a law that has improved the integrity of our electoral process is perplexing," Clark said. "Clearly Howard Dean does not speak for Hoosiers."
Gov. Mitch Daniels, asked about Dean's visit, said Dean is "out doing his job as he should."
"More power to him for being out in the country and not sitting in Washington."
Dean to fight voter ID statute
By Mary Beth Schneider
An appeal will be filed today to try to overturn Indiana's voter ID law, Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean said Thursday.
Dean, in his second trip to Indianapolis in recent weeks, and Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker said Tuesday's primary election showed some Hoosiers were denied the right to vote. A hotline set up by the national party received a few hundred complaints, with more still coming in.
In April, U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker upheld Indiana's law, the most stringent in the nation, saying Democrats had not proved their contention that the law was too burdensome.
"After Tuesday, we now have our proof," Parker said. "Everything did not go smoothly. Everything did not go fine."
Dean cited some of the complaints the party has received about the law, which requires a government-issued photo ID with an expiration date. One was a newlywed in Marion County who was turned away because her photo ID showed her maiden name.
Another, he said, was a Vanderburgh County woman who went to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to get the required government-issued ID. She was turned away, and lost the right to vote, because her voter registration card, Social Security card and medical card weren't enough proof of identity, and she didn't have her birth certificate.
"If this law disenfranchises one voter, then all of us should care," Parker said.
Dean said the law is "part of a national Republican program to disenfranchise voters" and drive down voter turnout.
A similar law passed in Georgia was overturned by the courts, and Dean said he thinks the same will eventually happen to Indiana's law. Dean said the case could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We're going to take this as far as we have to," he said.
Secretary of State Todd Rokita, though, said reports Tuesday showed "no systemic problem" and that in any case the legal appeal will have to be on the evidence already offered in the court case.
"The way the law is crafted, there is always a way for (people without the necessary ID) to vote if they wanted to," he said, citing provisional ballots, which are counted if the person later produces the ID or cites religious scruples against the photo ID.
Rokita said the biggest problem in Tuesday's primary election came not from the new photo ID law, but from the fact that many polling places had been changed in order to make them accessible to the physically disabled.
Democrats in Congress insisted on those changes, which Rokita said "caused more disenfranchisement than anything else. . . . Yet you don't hear them complaining about that."
Indiana Republican Party Chairman Murray Clark issued a statement saying the voter ID law "did not create the uproar that Democrats had predicted."
For Dean "to again challenge a law that has improved the integrity of our electoral process is perplexing," Clark said. "Clearly Howard Dean does not speak for Hoosiers."
Gov. Mitch Daniels, asked about Dean's visit, said Dean is "out doing his job as he should."
"More power to him for being out in the country and not sitting in Washington."