Print Column: Appeals Court Smacks Down Ugly Democratic Rhetoric About North Dakota Voter ID Law
MINOT, N.D.—This week the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of a lower court injunction which prevented North Dakota’s voter identification law from being enforced.
At issue was state law saying only ID’s with current residential addresses on them were valid for voting. The lower court had enjoined that law, saying the state must allow identification even if it had only something like a post office box address on it.
The argument is the residential address requirement unduly burdened Native American voters (a group of whom are the plaintiffs in the suit challenging the law), but the state appealed arguing identification without a current, residential address isn’t good enough and puts the security of the ballot box at risk.
The appeals court agreed, finding the state could be irreparably harmed if the lower court’s injunction was allowed to stand because it might allow people to vote outside of the districts where they reside using identification listing a post office box there.
The court also said the state was likely to be successful in defeating the legal challenge to the ID requirement.
This is a victory for common sense.
