State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

The constitutional amendment that would finally end our endless voter ID battle

The Washington Post: Of all the faults of the American electoral system, the squabbling over voter qualifications is perhaps the most disconcerting. This election cycle was marred by litigation over voter laws, with a variety of federal and state courts handing down rulings that didn’t always agree. Perhaps the most notable was the Supreme Court’s decision, three weeks before Election Day, that Texas could implement a tough new identification requirement. (It was in keeping with the court’s 2008 ruling that an ID requirement generally is constitutional because it does not impose a “substantial burden” on people who want to vote.) Critics howled that thousands of qualified people, especially the poor and the elderly, might not have been able to vote this year.

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