Thread: With no photo IDs, nuns denied ballots in Indiana

With no photo IDs, nuns denied ballots in Indiana
By GREG GORDONMcClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- At least 10 retired nuns in South Bend, Ind., were barred from voting in Tuesday's Indiana Democratic primary election because they lacked photo IDs required under a state law that the Supreme Court upheld last week.

John Borkowski, a South Bend lawyer volunteering as an election watchdog for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said several of the retired nuns had been voting all of their lives but were told they lacked the required identification cards and could only file provisional ballots.

Since 2005, Indiana's toughest-in-the-nation law requires every voter to produce a state or federal photo ID card. The Supreme Court, after weighing scores of legal briefs from conservatives who backed the statute and liberals who opposed it, upheld the law by a 6-3 vote, saying there was little evidence that it was unduly burdensome for voters.

Borkowski said Sister Julie McGuire, one of several nuns on poll duty, wasn't pleased to turn away the nuns, some of whom were in their 80s and 90s and no longer had driver's licenses.

"Here's the supreme irony," Borkowski said. "This law was passed supposedly to prevent and deter voter fraud, even though there was no real record of serious voter fraud in Indiana. Here you have a bunch of nuns whose votes can't be accepted by a bunch of nuns ... who live with them in the polling place in their convent because they don't have an ID."

At least six other people also were relegated to filing provisional ballots at the polling place on the ground floor of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, said Amy Smessaert, a spokeswoman for the convent.

Among them was Lauren McCallick, an 18-year-old freshman at St. Mary's College in South Bend, who said she got "teary-eyed" and then angry at being rejected the first time she was old enough to vote.

"The nuns and this young woman are the face of the Supreme Court case," said Jonah Goldman, who directs the Lawyers Committee's Campaign for Fair Elections. He said his group, which has bird-dogged polling places in primaries across the country over the past three months, also has found widespread confusion in other states over voter identification requirements.

"We've seen people in every contest that we've covered being disenfranchised by a perceived, incorrect or illegal restrictive identification requirement," partly because some poll workers have demanded more identification than was required by law, Goldman said.

Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, who's charged with overseeing the new law, issued a statement Tuesday that didn't directly mention the nuns.

"The Indiana voter ID law applies to everyone," Rokita said. He said a "safety net" allows voters ages 65 and older to vote by absentee ballot and that those limited to filing provisional ballots have 10 days to "show their proper photo ID."

Borkowski said that two of the nuns with whom he spoke were very frustrated and so upset that they refused to cast provisional ballots. He said one of the nuns told him that many others among the 137 retired sisters living at the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross convent were dissuaded from voting upon learning that several had been turned away.

McCallick, the student, said she was forced to cast a provisional ballot because she could produce only a California driver's license and a college identification card.

"I was really upset," she said. "I went to see (Democratic presidential candidate Barack) Obama when he visited a high school near South Bend. My roommate and I waited in line to see him. I was just excited about the whole process."

Under the Indiana law, McCallick has 10 days to show up at the county clerk's office with proper identification, but she's due to leave town in three days.

When a poll worker told her she lacked the right identification, McCallick said, "I thought she was joking."

A native of Placentia, Calif., McCallick said she had a final examination in her political science class later in the day.

"I was thinking about writing an entire essay about this," she said. "Part of my essay is supposed to be about the Supreme Court."

http://www.star-telegram.com/667/story/627204.html

provisional ballots This means they voted but it may not count because of the lack of ID.

Also, those pittiful bleeding heart old nuns had plenty of time to get an identification card. Nuns know how to follow strict rules, if they don't know how to do anything else and the rule is, have a photo ID. Your not fooling anyone sisters!

Dixie

IT IS EASY TO GET A STATE ID. WHEN THEY GOT TO THE AGE THAT THEY NO LONGER COULD DRIVE, ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS REPLACE THEIR DRIVERS LICENSE WITH A STATE ID. I KNOW THIS BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT MY 85 YEAR OLD MOTHER DID. AND SHE VOTED IN THE LAST ELECTION. SADLY IT WAS HER LAST VOTE. BUT THE POINT IS THAT THIS IS NOT DIFFICULT OR COMPLICATED. AND IT IS NOT COSTLY EITHER. THE ELDERLY NEED ID TO CASH SS CHECKS AND RECEIVE MEDICAL CARE ANYWAY. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR ANYONE NOT TO HAVE ID.

Borkowski said Sister Julie McGuire, one of several nuns on poll duty, wasn't pleased to turn away the nuns, some of whom were in their 80s and 90s and no longer had driver's licenses.

Sister Julie McGuire, on poll duty, would have known of the photo ID requirement and informed the other nuns. Am suspicious this was a set up to protest photo ID being required.

Is this where the SOB begins? If you can get an ID to cash your welfare check, ss check, checks checks check and FREE money then how is it you can't show an ID to show you have a right to vote??? why is this even an issue? If it takes people being denied the right to vote because they did not do what they needed to do in order to vote then so be it, I feel it's more important to let those vote who we know have the right even though some might be left out which is their own doing than let everyone vote and their legality go unchecked.

THATS RIGHT *MYAMERICA*. THE NUNS IN CHARGE OF THE POLLS COULD HAVE MADE SURE THAT THEIR FELLOW SISTERS HAD WHAT THEY NEEDED TO VOTE. ITS A SNOW JOB FOR SURE.

For the nuns: Non-driver ID's would have been the ID needed.

For the college student, did she plan to vote in CA and IN?? She could only vote in one state and ignorance is no excuse with all the voter registration drives they've had!

These two examples are very poor.

I suspect this was nothing more than a simple publicity stunt for the news media.