Monday, April 28, 2008

LeVota Downplays Ruling, Blunt Offers Praise

A Supreme Court ruling Monday that found the federal Constitution does not prohibit states from requiring voters to show photo identification at their polling place won't have much impact in Missouri, according to House Minority Leader Paul LeVota.

LeVota said that's because Missouri's Supreme Court based its 2006 decision striking down the photo-ID law on the state constitution.

“In invalidating the Missouri law, the state Supreme Court said that Article VIII, Section 2 of the Missouri Constitution unequivocally guarantees the right of all legally registered Missouri voters to cast ballots and that the General Assembly may not impose additional requirements, such as photo ID, that aren’t specified in the state constitution," LeVota said in a statement.

“As the Missouri Supreme Court noted in declaring the 2006 law unconstitutional, not only was there no evidence that voter impersonation at the polls – the only type of election fraud a photo ID requirement could prevent – had occurred in Missouri, there was ample evidence it had not. Efforts to impose photo voter ID in this state remain nothing more than an attempt to disenfranchise certain Missourians under the guise of solving a nonexistent problem," he added.

Meanwhile, Congressman Roy Blunt praised the ruling. "By a convincing majority of six-to-three, the Supreme Court today affirmed a principle the American people have overwhelmingly supported for some time: asking citizens to produce a simple form of identification before voting is neither unreasonable nor unconstitutional – and if it helps impede voter fraud, absolutely necessary to ensure the basic integrity of the democratic process," Blunt said in a statement.

No comments: