Supremes ruling opens door for voter ID laws

Voting rights are a hot topic at Facing South this week, and Monday's Supreme Court decision OK'ing Indiana's voter ID law will have an especially big impact in the South.

In at least two major states, voter ID laws had been held up but will now likely move towards passage, The New York Times reported on Tuesday:

In Texas, debate over photo ID in 2007 paralyzed the State Senate for weeks before the bill was rejected. In response to the new ruling, the Republican-controlled Legislature will probably be recalled to work on a new ID measure, voting experts said.[...]

Voting experts said a bill pending in Florida to make its ID law more restrictive was now more likely to pass.

But the decision was especially big news in Georgia, there a voter ID bill was thrown out in 2005 and blocked again in 2006 for threatening to disenfranchise voters. Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel called the decision "a victory for voter protection and the integrity of the elections process," and the assumption is that the ruling now validates the Georgia law.

Indeed, the Times piece quotes Hans A. von Spakovsky -- a brainchild of the conservative "voter integrity" movement, whose bid for FEC Commissioner was opposed by career DOJ staff and blocked in the Senate last December --as vindication for Georgia's law and its support by Bush officials:

"This decision not only confirms the validity of photo ID laws, but it completely vindicates the Bush Justice Department and refutes those critics who claimed that the department somehow acted improperly when it approved Georgia's photo ID law in 2005," said Hans A. von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission and a former Justice Department official.

The Georgia law still faces a legal challenge before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. According to the Associated Press, the lawyer representing critics of the Georgia law thinks "the Georgia challenge is stronger and more well developed than the Indiana case the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on," but acknowledges it will be an uphill battle.