A couple of interesting ideas out of Lafayette, Athens of the Midwest.
The Tippecanoe County Council isn’t happy about having to cough up $30,000 to mail out the property tax rebate checks mandated by the General Assembly. Adding further annoyance is the requirement that the rebate checks contain language that state that this is “tax relief being provided by the General Assembly.”
An editor of the Purdue Exponent was denied the right to vote because of Indiana’s restrictive voter ID law. (This one has been mentioned by other state blogs, Blue Indiana and Taking Down Words coming immediately to mind.) The editor is a student at Purdue who hails from New Jersey and has a New Jersey driver’s license. However he resides in Tippecanoe County and is registered to vote here. The BMV wouldn’t give him an Indiana ID and, in fact, gave him the run around about why he couldn’t vote. First they cited IC 9-24-16, and then they effectively told him he wasn’t an Indiana citizen eligible to vote until he registered his vehicle in Indiana. IC 9-24-16 governs the issuance of identification cards for nondrivers.
IC 9-24-16-10(b), in fact, requires issuance of an ID card without a fee to an individual who is or will be 18 before the next election and does not have a valid *Indiana* driver’s license. IC 3-7-13 sets out the voter eligibility requirements. You have to be 18, be a U.S. citizen, and reside in a precinct continuously for 30 days. Nothing in there about not being a licensed driver in another state or owning vehicles registered in other states. The Voter ID law is supposed to be nothing more and nothing less than a mechanism by which a citizen can prove that he or she is who they say they are. I don’t know whether this individual is complying with the state’s vehicle registration laws or driving licensure laws. Point is — it doesn’t matter. If he is who he says he is, and if he is eligible to vote, he should be allowed to vote – not have to wade through the BMV’s bureaucracy.
Reminds me of when the feds spent tens of millions of dollars to mail everyone a letter saying President Bush had signed a tax relief bill and we would be getting a check soon.
I still say the counties should print the Pat Bauer clause – “tax relief being provided by the General Assembly†– in the lightest shade of gray possible.
I look at the Purdue thing this way – perhaps it can be included in the upcoming court case on the law as to why it’s a bad idea.
Question.
If one has to reside in a precinct that means that they are a resident?
If so, aren’t residents required to switch their driver’s license and registration to the state in which they reside?
Also, how do we know that they aren’t holding onto their old residency qualification in an effort to vote there also? Isn’t that what the law is trying to do, prevent multiple voting, in order to uphold the ideal of one person, one vote?
I don’t know the answer, jut wondering if their is some overlap from other codes and requirements.
If the General Assembly wants to dictate that a person has complied with every requirement imposed on a resident of the state before permitting the resident to vote, I think they’ll need to say that more clearly.
Residents are required to pay their property taxes, for example. If they don’t pay their taxes, they’re not stripped of their right to vote. Why should relocating one’s driving privileges be a prerequisite?
If there is a question as to whether the person ought to have been allowed to register to vote, I think that should be taken up at the registration stage when there is presumably time to correct any issues.
I thought the “problem” that was being addressed was that someone might impersonate another voter. That’s the problem with these vague, unproven allegations of “voter fraud” — we don’t even know what the problem supposedly was.
Doug,
Of *course* we know what the problem was.
Democratic turnout.