In a surprise decision yesterday, an Indiana state appellate court overturned a controversial law that requires voters to show photo identification at the polls, claiming it violated the Indiana Constitution. Specifically, the three-judge panel unanimously ruled that by exempting mail-in absentee voters and residents of state-licensed care facilities from the requirement, the law violated the state's equal protection clause because it was not applied in a "uniform and impartial" manner.

Critics like Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels have slammed the decision as politically-motivated and have said they expect the Indiana Supreme Court to reverse it. But what Daniels and supporters of the law seem to ignore, and which the court ostensibly recognizes, is that the law itself is politically-motivated. Voter fraud is not a problem in Indiana, just as it is not a problem anywhere else in the country. After devoting substantial resources to combating this purported scourge, the Justice Department under President Bush failed to turn up any substantive evidence that widespread "fraud" exists. Before the election last year, conservative officials in Indiana -- aided and abetted by a deeply uninformed media -- raised concerns about potential voter fraud. Yet again, no evidence turned up of any coordinated effort to steal the election there. Indeed, Indiana's voter ID law is a solution to a problem that simply doesn't exist. All it does is place an extra burden on certain voters (many of them Democrat-leaning). From the New York Times' article today:

But Daniel P. Tokaji, an associate professor at Moritz College of Law, at Ohio State University, said the Indiana Constitution “does indeed provide broader protection for voting rights” than the federal Constitution. Professor Tokaji suggested that the judges did not believe that the law, adopted by a Republican-controlled legislature, was really intended to reduce voter fraud.

The ruling should also serve as a warning to any Illinois Republicans who, like last year, may be pondering a voter ID law of their own. For starters, it's not likely to pass the Dem-controlled General Assembly. But even if it did squeak through, our state courts could knock it down. “The state courts are much more amenable to these kinds of lawsuits than the federal courts are,” Indiana University Law School Professor Michael Pitts told the Times, “and this is where these battles are going to be played out."

Instead, lawmakers should focus on real flaws in our electoral system. After all, four to five million Americans did not vote in the 2008 presidential election because they encountered registration problems or failed to receive absentee ballots. Unfortunately, when given the opportunity to lower the barriers to civic engagement, the GOP often sits on the sidelines.

Image used under a Creative Commons license by Flickr user Gwen's River City Images.