Republicans Urge Supreme Court to Allow Preemptive Strikes in Elections

A new legal strategy that allows states to pass repressive election laws in the name of fighting voter fraud -- even if there is scant evidence such fraud exists or threatens election outcomes -- is emerging before the 2008 election, and the Department of Justice's Voting Section appears to be its biggest champion.

In legal briefs filed at the Supreme Court before a January hearing over the constitutionality of Indiana's 2005 voter I.D. law, the Department of Justice and other defenders of the ID law are making several new arguments that, if accepted by the court, would allow states to create barriers to voting without showing these laws address real problems.

Most significantly, the Justice Department is seeking to apply the principle of "pre-emption," or acting now to offset future threats -- as the Bush Administration argued before invading Iraq -- to voting rights. When applied to elections, the Department said there does not need to be evidence of actual voter fraud, or individuals impersonating other voters, before states can pass new laws to police that possibility.

"There is no requirement that the State show evidence of past in-person voter impersonation for the State's interest in preventing such fraud to qualify as important," the Department of Justice wrote in its brief. "A state need not wait to suffer harm; it can adopt prophylactic measures to prevent it from occurring in the first place. This is particularly true in a situation, like voter fraud, where the temptation is obvious and the consequence of undeterred and undetected violations are enormous."

Opponents of Indiana's voter ID law, which range from the state's Democratic Party to virtually every major voting rights group in the country, say the actual occurrence of voters impersonating other voters is anything but enormous. Rather, it is so rare and politically insignificant that it almost never affects election outcomes, especially in regional or statewide contests.

However, since 2004 various states with GOP-majority legislatures, including Indiana, have passed tough new laws that restrict voter registration and require stricter voter ID. The most significant feature of those new laws is they target a state's entire electorate, not the few individuals who may try to game voting for personal or partisan gain. The Justice Department's endorsement of these unnecessarily stringent restrictions is what bothers voting rights activists who want to see as many Americans as possible vote.

"It is unfortunate to see our government institutions formed for the purpose of protecting voters coming down on the side of vote suppression," said Wendy Weiser of New York University Law School's Brennan Center for Justice. "The Department of Justice is taking an extreme legal position, which, if accepted, would mean that there could be virtually no challenges to laws suppressing the votes before an election."

Indiana's voter ID law is coming before the Supreme Court in a challenge over the law's constitutionality, specifically whether it disenfranchises poor and minority voters. That makes the case a bellwether for those in American politics who want voting to be a more open and inclusive process, and for those who want to limit electoral participation. The Indiana law requires virtually all voters to have a state-issued photo ID. The state has created difficult bureaucratic hurdles for people lacking documentation to get that ID.

But extending the doctrine of pre-emption to state election law is only part of the new and emerging strategy coming from Republican ballot security activists. Another argument in the Supreme Court briefs supporting Indiana's law is to apply a standard from the Court's landmark 1976 ruling on campaign finance, Buckley v. Valeo. This argument posits that states can adopt rules like tough voter ID laws because it will prevent the appearance of corruption associated with voter fraud.