Wednesday, May 28, 2008

5th Circuit overturns Voter ID ruling

According to the Clarion Ledger, the 5th U.S. Circuit of Appeals has overturned an earlier court decision that would force Mississippians to register by political party and to show identification when voting.

From the CL:

The New Orleans court said Pepper’s ruling spawned a free-for-all on appeal.

The court noted the Democratic Party had appealed the mandatory photo ID requirement. The GOP appealed on grounds that Pepper’s order brought Republicans into a lawsuit they did not support. And attorneys for the Mississippi NAACP opposed the voter ID and re-registration portions of Pepper’s order.

There also were briefs filed by the attorney general, the governor and the secretary of state.

“The state is divided ... We will put the parties out of their litigation misery,” wrote Chief Judge Edith H. Jones.Jones said if the Democratic Party had taken steps to keep non-Democrats out of its primaries and been stopped, then the party would have had grounds to sue.

“It is certainly conceivable, for instance, that the party’s mere public announcement of its intent to challenge suspected non-Democrat voters would discourage raiding attempts,” wrote Jones.

However, Jones said whether state law permits party raiding could only be determined if the Democrats tried to stop someone it viewed as a non-Democrat from voting in its primaries.

Jones said the “open-ended nature of the dispute” led Pepper to propose a political remedy.

“When MSDP actually decides to adopt a closed primary, and when the implementation of state law has a demonstrated impact on the conduct of primary elections, a justifiable case or controversy will exist,” the 5th Circuit said.

9 comments:

  1. That sounds pretty reasonable from one of the most conservative appeals courts in the nation.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Votelaw has commentary on the 5th Circuit's ruling here.

    This post includes a link to the PDF of the court's opinion.

    Free Citizen

    ReplyDelete
  3. What's your opinion? You are kind of an expert and all. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's rather amusing to see liberals praising a partisan Republican like Chief Judge Edith Jones.

    I'm writing a detailed post on this case on my blog and will link to it here.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Here's a link to a quite lively discussion on the ruling and related issues at FOLO.

    ReplyDelete
  6. What are the current registration numbers in Mississippi, by party, and by county? Where can I find that?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Mississippi does not register voters by party.

    The elections division of the secretary of state's office can provide the figures for the number of registered voters in each county.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thank you, Steve, for that information, and thanks for the link to the discussion about the court decision, which was most interesting. I lived in Louisiana 1955-1999 and remember all those changes in election law, and now I will see how this plays out in Mississippi.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Most of my relatives live in Louisiana.

    As you may know, Louisiana has this year restored party primaries for its congressional elections.

    Washington state is this year starting to use a similar "top two" election system, and it's causing a lot of confusion.

    ReplyDelete