The Court of Appeals’ decision striking down the Voter ID law as unconstitutional under Indiana’s Equal Privileges and Immunities clause drew a petulant response from Gov. Daniels.
At a news conference, Gov. Mitch Daniels, a second-term Republican, called the ruling “preposterous” and said that “there’s nothing in the Indiana Constitution that goes beyond what the federal Constitution provides here.”
He is alluding here to the case of Crawford v. Marion County which was in a different procedural posture and didn’t address the same issues. And, in any case, Indiana courts are the controlling authority on the Indiana constitution (to the extent it isn’t in conflict with the United States Constitution.) Note what he doesn’t address: the fundamental issue of why absentee voters should be treated more leniently in terms of identification than in-person voters. That was the crux of the Court of Appeals decision. Critics of the appellate court’s decision simply lack credibility if they do not address that central question.
Gov. Daniels just bellyaches about prior litigation which has no preclusive effect on the present case. I thought he had a law degree. He obviously knows better. He just doesn’t care and chooses to ignore the central question and start huffing about judicial arrogance. He didn’t get his way and decided to have himself a little tantrum.
For future reference – not that I suppose the Governor is going to take advice from the likes of me – I would suggest something along the lines of, “I respectfully disagree with the Court of Appeals’ decision and believe it will be overturned by the Indiana Supreme Court. Less stringent identification is appropriate for absentee voters than for in-person voters because ______.” And then use that big old brain to fill in the blank more convincingly than the attorney general was able to do in front of the Court of Appeals.
Incidentally, the legislature can probably fix this simply by applying the voter identification requirements equally to all voters.
Update Doghouse has a nice entry on the Governor’s return to Car Bomb form, complete with video. And his is much more fun to read. My favorite line, “He’s like a guy who starts a small business, not to get rich, not for love of his product, but just so he can fire minimum-wage earners at will.”
i’ve seen a lot of teeth-gnashing and foot-stamping from the right about this ruling, but one thing i haven’t seen is anyone even attempting to explain why this ruling was wrong on the merits.
Well, Doug, you said that nicer, smarter, and more succinctly than I did, which is not exactly a news flash, but th’ fug is this guy’s problem? He’s had four years to anticipate a court defeat, and four years to come up with a reasonable response, and when the time comes he throws a hissy fit? (By the way, I grabbed video from 8 and 13; if you’ve only read his responses you can’t fully appreciate the jaw-dropping idiocy of the performance.)
And, yeah, he–and Acting Governor Rokita—are willing, in public, to insult the intelligence of anyone who knows state courts have jurisdiction over state matters, or anyone who was about to learn that from news coverage, the better to hurl spitballs. Really. And this is the guy who jokes about how he doesn’t have a mistress in Argentina. Would we really be any worse off if he did his thinking with the little head?
Thanks, Doghouse. Yours is more fun to read though.
okay, here’s gary welsh’s attempt to argue against the ruling on a legal basis.
his argument boils down to saying that absentee voters were exempted from showing ID so as not to disenfranchise seniors and the disabled. but this ignores the basic fact that lots of people vote absentee who are neither disabled nor seniors. these voters are treated differently than other voters simply because they happen to vote absentee rather than in-person. the court ruled that this was an arbitrary discrepancy that violate the equal privileges and immunities clause (this was the whole point of the ruling).
Okay, this has passed into the realm of the metaphorically incestuous, but I’ve got the afternoon free. As I just replied at stAllio’s, at the time the burden placed on the elderly was part and parcel with the objection about the burden placed on the poor, and it was quickly brushed aside. So no sale now. “They all vote absentee” is not an answer, and not a rational statement coming from anybody who’s ever stood in line at the polls.
Secondly, I ask you–who votes absentee? Military personnel vote absentee, and are certainly considered a reliable Republican bloc, or were back in 2005, when we were just mopping up a few dead enders at the close of Mitch’s $2 billion war. My guess is that a single mention of an additional burden placed on the men and women in the military “in a time of War”, as it was then obligatory to add, would have been enough to scuttle the whole enterprise.
I’d like to endorse the paragraph that starts off “For future reference…”
We attorneys have choice words for judges who we feel ignore the law. But when it comes to public pronouncements, we try to be more tactful in the words we use. For better or worse, state appellate judges have essentially life terms. You’re going to have to live with them down the road. No good comes out of calling them “stupid” and “partisan” to their face.
Correctr me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there a standing issue in the case that went before the SCOTUS?
Frankly, I don’t think that anyone has given a satisfying explanation for why it should be so easy to vote via absentee ballot vs. voting in person. Seems to me that if someone really wanted to commit fraud that it would be much easier to do so by voting absentee than by showing up at the polls and impersonating someone else. The governor is not going to give a reasonable explanation for the differential treatment because there is none. He’s prone to throwing hissy fits, anyway. Someone should keep his nastier quotes and videos at the ready just in case he tries to make a run for POTUS.
All recent cases of voter fraud in Indiana have been precisely in the area of absentee voting yet the sanctimonious Republicans could only pass a restrictive law dealing with a non-existent crime. Peculiar, eh?
The Indiana State Bar Association is not amused with Daniels’ reaction:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-in-voterid-daniels,0,3368935.story
It will be interesting to see whether this is the end of things concerning Mitch’s statements. The Indiana Supreme Court, in its role as attorney disciplinarian, suspended (although ultimately reduced the sanction to a reprimand) an appellate attorney for the following statement:
I thought the Supreme Court’s decision to discipline that attorney was problematic in a number of ways, but I think Mitch’s comments, directly accusing a judge of disregarding the law for purely partisan motivations, is worse than the footnote that got this particular attorney in hot water.