S.C. voter ID law takes hits in court

WASHINGTON — Inside and outside a federal courtroom a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol, it appeared to be a rough week for South Carolina’s bid to obtain court approval to enact its controversial voter ID law.

During five days of often dramatic testimony on the disputed law, a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia repeatedly upheld objections that the state’s lawyers were asking leading questions of their witnesses or prodding them to recount third-party conversations the judges struck down as hearsay.

In a case that, under the Voting Rights Act, hinges partly on whether the voter ID law was motivated by discriminatory intent, the law’s chief architect, state Rep. Alan Clemmons, R-Myrtle Beach, was compelled to admit he’d responded sympathetically to a racist email sent to him about the measure as he was crafting it.

And Marci Andino, executive director of the State Election Commission, testified that her agency lacked the legal authority to impose on county election boards and poll workers a uniform standard on how to implement some of the disputed law’s key provisions.

Her testimony troubled the judges, who noted that it was at odds with what she and other South Carolina officials had said earlier in documents and depositions for the trial about how the law would be handled.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson signaled another potential shift by the state on Friday when he said voters without required photo IDs should not have to pay for completing “reasonable impediment” affidavits required by the law. A separate state law requires affidavits to be notarized, which normally carries a fee.

“We would consider it unconstitutional for notaries to charge,” Wilson said.

That new stance might have been in response to courtroom claims by the voter ID law’s opponents that notary fees would amount to a poll tax, among the most odious of the Jim Crow practices used for decades in Southern states to prevent blacks from voting.

Outside the courtroom, a different group of federal judges delivered disappointing news for advocates of voter ID laws.

On Thursday, a separate three-judge panel of the court ruled that Texas’ voter ID law is illegal because it violates the Voting Rights Act, the landmark law Congress passed in 1965 to enforce the constitutional right of blacks and other minority voters to cast ballots and have them count.

Evidence and testimony in the South Carolina trial, some of which lawyers for the state tried unsuccessfully to strike from the record, could lead to similar conclusions. The state’s law, which would require voters to present one of five forms of photo identification, was blocked by the Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act, prompting the lawsuit by South Carolina against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

With the Texas ruling and a week of mixed trial results behind it, South Carolina’s best hopes might lie with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Any appeals of federal district court rulings must, under the Voting Rights Act, bypass the federal appellate bench and go directly to the high court. If the district court judges reject the South Carolina voter ID law, the high court could consolidate it with the Texas law and rule on both together.

Lawyers trying to defeat South Carolina’s law pronounced themselves quite satisfied.

“We believe that the evidence presented during the trial overwhelmingly establishes that if the law goes into effect, it will disenfranchise thousands of minority persons in South Carolina, and that the purpose of the law was indeed to accomplish precisely this effect,” Garrard Beeney, a New York lawyer representing civil rights groups that have intervened in the case to oppose the state law.

Wilson’s assessment was more subdued. “I am pleased we had the opportunity to present our case to the court,” he said.