A polling place in Jefferson City (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
A challenge to Missouri’s voter ID law will go to the state Supreme Court following a decision by Cole County upholding the 2022 legislation, opponents said Tuesday.
Circuit Judge Jon Beetem’s decision found that the individual voters and organizations that sued — the Missouri NAACP and the League of Women Voters — failed to show that they had been harmed by the law’s application and that they had no standing to file the case.
And on the specifics of their challenge, Beetem wrote that the burden was not heavy for any individual voter.
Would you like to contact us?
Do you have a news tip?
The law requires voters to show a Missouri or federal ID showing a photo, the holder’s date of birth and an expiration date. An ID that is less than one year old is acceptable.
“Missouri individual claimants and/or voters generally have no legally protectable interest in avoiding the day-to-day burdens of renewing an expired license,” Beetem wrote. “Each of the individual plaintiffs’ alleged injuries in this regard are common grievances shared by the population as a whole.”
The appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court will show that Beetem applied the wrong standard to its analysis, said Denise Lieberman, executive director of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition and one of the lead attorneys in the case. The focus should be on the sometimes insurmountable burdens thousands of Missourians face in obtaining the documents to secure needed identification, she said.
“The court got the test wrong,” Lieberman said. “It is the state’s job to demonstrate that there is no other way to advance its interests than through a law that burdens voters in this way.”
Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, the defendant in the case, hailed the outcome as a victory for election integrity.
“To maintain a secure voting system, it only makes sense that photo identification is essential,” Ashcroft said in a press release.
The timetable for the appeal is uncertain. The ruling won’t be final for another 30 days, so the Supreme Court won’t start setting a schedule until then.
If the law is overturned, the two-week period of “absence without excuse‘ vote that proved its popularity this year. The early voting period was part of a compromise deal to bring the voter ID measure to a vote in the Missouri Senate.
Establishing government-issued photo ID as the only acceptable form of identification when voting is a long-standing goal of Republican politicians in Missouri. Before the 2022 law, voters could also present a county-issued voter ID card, a student ID card, a birth certificate or a recent utility bill with their name and address as proof in order to vote.
After the courts rejected previous attempts to enact a photo ID law, Republicans placed a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2016 that specifically allowed it.
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
That vote was followed in 2017 by a law that allowed a voter who did not have a photo ID but had one of the other forms to have his vote counted if he signed an affidavit of his identity.
The Missouri Supreme Court overturned that law in 2020. The law challenged in the decision issued Monday has been in effect since 2022, while the case was being argued.
A voter who does not have proper identification can cast a provisional vote, which will be counted when he returns to the polls with his ID or if his signature matches the one on file.
To succeed in their challenge, Beetem wrote, the plaintiffs had to prove “that there is no set of circumstances under which the challenged provisions of (House Bill) 1878 are constitutional.”
That didn’t work, he wrote. None of the individual claimants have been denied a ballot in any election and the issues they have raised – the inability to obtain documents proving a name has been misspelled or the expiration of an ID and the problems associated continue to renew it – have not been obstacles to voting, he says. wrote.
The issues raised, he wrote, “do not pose a substantial or serious burden on the right to vote.”
The state has an interest in protecting elections and the public’s confidence that they are fair, Beetem wrote. However, there was no evidence that a photo ID would have prevented cheating.
“There were indications that possible voter impersonation has been brought to the attention of local election authorities,” Beeem wrote. “However, no credible evidence was presented of any voter impersonation, which would have been prevented by requiring photo ID.”
Beetem missed that voters lose confidence in elections if they are unsure whether their vote will be counted, Lieberman said.
“Missouri has had a voter ID law on the books since 2002 and it worked well because it allowed voters to show a variety of valid IDs, including a voter registration card,” she said.
The organizations supporting the challenge said the case should be appealed to make it easier for Missourians to vote.
“There is no evidence of voter impersonation in Missouri, so these extreme restrictions do not make our elections more secure,” said Marilyn McLeod, president of the League of Women Voters of Missouri.
The NAACP views the law as a discriminatory act aimed at lowering voter turnout among people in minority groups, older adults and college students, Nimrod Chapel Jr., president of the Missouri NAACP State Conference, said in a news release.
“While these laws aim to solve an imaginary problem,” he said, “the unnecessary and burdensome legal hurdles they create for voters are very real.”
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES IN YOUR INBOX
