WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Thursday stopped officials in Wisconsin from requiring voters there to provide photo identification before casting their ballots in the coming election.
Three of the court's more conservative members dissented, saying they would have allowed officials to require identification.
The requirement, one of the strictest in the nation, is part of a state law enacted in 2011 but mostly blocked by various courts in the interim. A federal trial judge had blocked it, saying it would 'deter or prevent a substantial number of the 300,000-plus registered voters who lack ID from voting,' disproportionately affecting black and Hispanic voters.
The law was provisionally reinstated last month by a unanimous three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Chicago just hours after it heard arguments in the case. The full court was deadlocked, five to five, on a request for a new hearing.
'It is simply impossible, as a matter of common sense and of logistics, that hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin voters will both learn about the need for photo identification and obtain the requisite identification in the next 36 days,' the appeals court judges opposed to the requirement wrote.
The three-judge panel issued a decision on Monday upholding the law, reasoning that it was similar to one from Indiana that the Supreme Court upheld in 2008.
Posted by Unknown on Thursday, October 9, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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