Mich. Supreme Court Weighs Requiring ID To Vote

Mich. Supreme Court Weighs Requiring ID To Vote

UPDATED: 7:28 pm EST November 13, 2006



The state Supreme Court weighed Monday whether voters can be required to show photo identification at the polls, an issue that has divided Democrats and Republicans for a decade.

At stake is the constitutionality of a 1996 state law, renewed last year, requiring voters to show photo ID to get a ballot. The law said that if voters don't have ID, they can sign an affidavit swearing to their identity and then vote.

The law hasn't taken effect because former Attorney General Frank Kelley, a Democrat, ruled nine years ago that it violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizens the right to vote.


Critics say the ID requirement would keep the poor, elderly, disabled and minorities away from the polls. But supporters, including Republicans, say it's needed to prevent election fraud.

No form of identification is now required to vote in Michigan.

The high court has agreed to issue an advisory opinion requested by the Republican-controlled state House, which means both sides of the issue were argued by Attorney General Mike Cox's office on Monday.

Assistant Attorney General Susan Leffler said requiring photo ID is a small burden for voters who often are asked to show ID in their everyday lives. She argued that making those without an ID sign an affidavit isn't much to ask to help prevent fraud and ensure confidence in the electoral process.

"I can't imagine a less minimal burden," Leffler said.

But Assistant Attorney General Ron Robinson said the law, which he called a "wolf in sheep's clothing," could harm 350,000 registered voters who don't have a driver's license or state-issued ID card. The law would automatically subject voters without identification to a challenge -- an inconvenient and embarrassing delay, Robinson said.

"This is an extreme response to a problem that does not exist in Michigan," he said of the ID requirement.

In response to a question from Justice Michael Cavanagh, Leffler acknowledged there's no evidence of widespread voter fraud but rather a "concern" about it.

Some justices on the GOP-controlled court questioned whether voters having to submit affidavits would automatically be challenged under the law. Justice Stephen Markman also said lawmakers have wanted to give registered voters who don't have an ID a state-issued card free of charge.

"Is it too much of a burden to get a free ID card and remember to bring it to the polls?" Markman asked.

The justices also grappled with what standard to apply when considering the state's interest in requiring photo ID: a tougher "strict scrutiny" test or the more lenient "rational basis" test.

The ID requirements in the 2005 law will take effect Jan. 1, but the court may rule later because there are no statewide elections coming up.

The case has attracted widespread interest, and the issue has flared up in other states. Groups or individuals who submitted friend-of-the-court briefs include both the Democratic and Republican parties, Gov. Jennifer Granholm, state legislative caucuses, the state elections bureau, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and others.

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/10310432/detail.html

Hi Darlene,

Sadly, the ACLU, National Communist La Raza (NCLR), and other whacko commie organizations will strike that down - it interfers with illegals voting.

So what's next? Well, Darlene, unless something is done...

No more voting after the year 2010 - cause we'll all be subjucated under the DICTATORSHIP of the North American Union. :evil:

I don't really think all Americans realize how brutal Communism is. No more private property, no more freedoms, no more choice of jobs, no more choices about anything. It's slavery - we would have to either lose our homes or share them with former illegals.
http://richard.meek.home.comcast.net...tTerrorist.JPG

We have the same problem in Minnesota. The Democrats think requiring a photo ID to vote is voter intimidation. I often hear allegations of voter intimidation when Democrats are losing in close elections, but when's the last time you hear of actual proven incidents of voter intimidation? Never!

Check out this video from YouTube. Shows volunteers for Amy Klobuchar, the Democrat candidate for U.S. Senate for MN, with voter registration cards. The problem is, they are at a rally of illegal immigrants demanding amensty! So who are they trying to register to vote?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGB9Ppnunos

Hi Coto,

Yeah! She definitely had a brow lift along with a lot of other things lifted. I hear they pound a nail into your head above the hair line and pull it up. Ouch! Gota hurt, but then you have that constantly amazed look on your face.

Quote:

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No more voting after the year 2010 - cause we'll all be subjucated under the DICTATORSHIP of the North American Union.

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Don't be blue Coto, we may be down, but we are not out yet. We have just begun to fight. They know we are on to them, that is why they seem to be rushing things. Look at how Eminent Domain faired on the ballet. Of course some judge will probably overturn it.

I read an article written by Pat Buchanan the other day and although it is not on the subject of illegal immigration, it gave me some hope about the judicial tyranny and what can be done. I hold Pat up to being knowledgeable in many things and I respect his wisdom.

Maybe this will give you a glimmer of hope also.

Impeachment The Answer To Judicial Tyranny— In NJ, In U.S.

By Patrick J. Buchanan

If Gov. Jon Corzine wished to make himself a hero to Middle America, the opportunity is at hand. All he need do is inform the New Jersey Supreme Court he will neither submit nor sign the law it has ordered enacted—to put homosexual unions on a par with marriage.

At root, what that 4-3 decision, ordering the legislature to enact a new law sanctioning civil unions or gay marriage, is about is: Who governs New Jersey? It is about who decides what law shall be—elected legislators or judges appointed for life.

In our War of Independence, in which New Jersey was overrun repeatedly by British troops, at issue was whether George III and a Parliament sitting in London, in which Americans had no voice, would govern us, or whether we would rule ourselves. From April 1775 to Yorktown in 1781, Americans fought and died to end that rule of kings—only to have their meek and timid heirs submit to a rule of judges.

Let us go back to the era of Earl Warren that began in 1954, and consider what, in the span of a half-century, U.S. judges and Supreme Court justices, abetted by state jurists, have done to America.

God, Bible study, prayer and the Ten Commandments have been ordered out of all public schools and the public square of a nation that once proudly boasted of itself as God's country. Pornography has been declared protected by the First Amendment. Cities have been ripped apart, as judges have ordered students, based on color alone, bussed across crime-ridden cities to achieve an artificial racial balance. Abortion, homosexual sodomy and naked dancing in public bars have been declared to be new constitutional rights.

Of all these outrages and idiocies, one thing may be said: No legislature, no executive at the state or federal level would have survived imposing such measures upon us. They would have been hurled from office at the next election. When homosexual marriage was put on the ballot in 13 states in 2004, it was routed in every one by landslides as great as six to one. America rejects it.

Upon what ground, then, does the New Jersey Supreme Court stand to order an elected legislature to enact a law the people do not want? Answer: The court said that to deny homosexuals the same rights as married couples is to treat them unequally, and this violates the Constitution of New Jersey: "Although we cannot find that a fundamental right to same-sex marriage exists in this state, the unequal dispensation of rights and benefits to committed same-sex partners can no longer be tolerated under our state constitution." [ N.J. court opens door to gay marriage, by Geoff Mulvihill, Associated Press, October 25, 2006]

The operative words here are "no longer be tolerated." What the court is saying is that, though there is no right to same-sex marriage in New Jersey, and the state has never voted the rights and benefits to homosexuals it has for married couples, we, the judges in our wisdom, declare this to be intolerable.

Therefore, you, the legislators of New Jersey, and you, Gov. Corzine, are ordered to change the laws of New Jersey to conform to our idea of equality. A tiny minority of judges in America now dictates to the Great Silent Majority.

This is exactly what happened in Massachusetts in 2003. And had Gov. Romney told the Massachusetts Supreme Court that its 4-3 decision had no constitutional basis, and that he and the legislature had no intention of obeying its order, Mitt Romney would be the front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2008.

When Shay's Rebellion of farmers broke out in Massachusetts in 1786, Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison, "I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." It is time for a little rebellion in New Jersey, and America. For what is taking place, what has taken place, is a bloodless coup by judges who have arrogated to themselves the powers of legislatures to make laws and remake society in their own image—without recourse to referenda or free elections.

When judges in New Jersey can order legislators to write new laws that conform to their ideology, laws the people have not only not demanded, but viscerally and violently oppose, we have ceased to be a free country or a democratic republic.

"Who rules?" That is what is at issue in New Jersey.

For 50 years, this nation permitted the Warren Court, and its successors and imitators in the state courts, to create a body of judge-made law that has altered the character of our country, very much for the worse.

Again and again, the people have voted for candidates for president, Congress and governor who promised to ring down the curtain on this half-century of judicial tyranny. But still the judges persist in issuing orders that have no basis either in precedent or in the written constitutions they have sworn to defend.

Such judges need to be defied and they need to be impeached. Not obeyed.

Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, can be ordered from Amazon.com


http://vdare.com/buchanan/061026_tyranny.htm



Maybe reading this article can give you some hope for the future.