Court Overturns Mississippi Voter ID Ruling

Source: Associated Press

Court overturns Miss. voter ID ruling

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS • MAY 28, 2008

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday overturned a ruling that would have forced Mississippians to register by political party and to show photo identification at the polls to be able to vote. U.S. District Judge Allen Pepper in Mississippi ruled last year that the state should re-register all voters to allow people to declare themselves as Democrats, Republicans or members of another party. Or, Pepper said, people could register as unaffiliated with any party. Pepper said Mississippi must restructure its party primary system by Aug. 31, 2008.

Under current law, Mississippians do not declare a party affiliation when they register to vote. Pepper had also ordered the state to enact a voter identification law in time for the 2009 elections.

The Mississippi Democratic Party, which brought the lawsuit in 2006 seeking to keep nonparty members from voting in its primaries, appealed Pepper’s ruling. Some black Democrats have complained that whites sympathetic to Republicans have been voting in the Democratic primaries. Joining the Democrats in the appeal were the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the state and the Mississippi Republican Party.

Ellis Turnage of Cleveland, attorney for the Democratic Party, was out of his office and was not available for comment. Brad White, executive director of the Mississippi GOP, said the decision puts everyone back to where they were before the Democrats’ lawsuit. “We continue to say our primaries are open to all individuals who share our beliefs and support Republican candidates. We’re not about making it more difficult for people to vote in our primaries,” White said.

Read more: http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080528/NEWS/80528023&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

K&R

Isn't that a logical conclusion? :shrug:

This wasn't a law; it was apparently a ruling. What the law was the judge based his ruling on isn't indicated, but I suspect that he didn't like it and just told the legislature to write a new law. Courts do that from time to time.

The Miss Dem Party apparently filed suit to mandate a closed primary. They won their case: Pepper apparently said that you had to identify your party affiliation, or declare yourself unaffiliated, and primaries had to be legislated closed by the end of August 2008. Dems won round 1 entirely, but weren't happy--there was a bitter pill in their cake. I infer that part of the ruling also mandated photo IDs.

Dems appealed their own victory, displeased with the photo ID requirement. The appeals court struck that requirement down, and the law as written stands--it was never amended, so no photo ID. It's a win, but a pyrrhic one involving the loss of their suit overall.

The repubs, not part of the original suit, appealed because the remedy that the judge imposed in response to the dems' suit involved the Republican party--his remedy to produce a closed primary meant that the repubs primary would be closed, and their members would also have to register. In this, the judge seems to have over-reached, and shouldn't have done things to affect the repubs. It's a minor win for the repubs. But by saying the judge overreached in closing the primaries and saying his ruling there was voided, the appellate court gutted the original win, and made the reason for photo IDs vanish entirely. So that part of the ruling was untenable and also vacated; that the dems wanted this was arguably beside the point, the requirement would have vanished had they appealed or not. At the same time, the repubs incidentally caused the dems' initial victory--gaining closed primaries--to be annulled, and the law as currently written stands. The primaries will continue to be open unless the legislature decides to change things for their own reasons, and the dems' original suit has failed.

At least that's how I read the article.

In other words, "Hooray, we lost!"

But I doubt the suit actually dealt with the merit of photo IDs, instead just saying that since the primaries will remain open per law, any remedy is vacated--registering as dem or repub when you register to vote, or photo IDs. It also didn't deal with any law, since none was written. In any event, I don't think Indiana's subject to the 5th Circuit Court, so even if the case dealt with the merits of photo IDs, and the written laws were the same in both states, it wouldn't matter. The best is that it could be bounced up to the Supreme Court.