COLUMBIA, Mo. — a law Missouri voters are asking showing a government-issued photo ID will count for regular voting after a lower court judge ruled it unconstitutional on Tuesday.
Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem’s decision upholds the law, which was made possible by a voter-approved one in 2016. constitutional change to allow legislators to impose photo ID requirements.
“In order to maintain a secure voting system, it stands to reason that photo identification should be essential,” Missouri Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft said in a statement praising the ruling.
Proponents of voter photo ID, such as Ashcroft, say the practice is a deterrent voter fraud and improves public confidence in the election results. Voting rights advocates say obtaining the records necessary for proper photo identification can be difficult, especially for older voters and people with disabilities.
National Conference of State Legislatures It reports on 36 states they request or require identification to vote, and at least 21 of them require a photo ID.
Under Missouri law, people without a government-issued photo ID can cast a provisional ballot to be counted if they return later that day with a photo ID or if election officials verify the signature.
The law also requires the state to issue a free photo ID card to those absent from voting.
The Missouri NAACP and the League of Women Voters, along with two individual voters, sued to overturn the law in 2022. They argued that some voters faced significant barriers to obtaining accurate and up-to-date government-issued photo IDs and were concerned about provisional voting. may put them at greater risk of not having their votes counted.
At the beginning of Beetem dismissed the casethe two individual voters had no “specific, concrete, speculative injury or legally protectable interest in challenging the alleged photo ID requirement.”
The ACLU of Missouri and the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, which sued on behalf of the plaintiffs, added another voter to the suit and again asked Beetem to declare the voter ID requirement unconstitutional.
Beetem noted in his ruling Tuesday that all of the individual plaintiffs have successfully voted since the law took effect.
“The claim that their provisional votes may be dismissed is pure speculation,” Beetem wrote. “Additionally, trial evidence confirms that rejection rates for provisional ballots are low, and signature mismatch rates are particularly low.”
He concluded that the law’s photo ID rules “protect the fundamental right to vote by preventing hard-to-detect voter fraud.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said they will appeal Beetem’s ruling.
“The league believes the state should make it easier, not harder, for Missourians to exercise their fundamental right to vote,” Missouri League of Women Voters President Marilyn McLeod said in a statement. “There is no proof of voter ID in Missouri, so these restrictions do not make our elections any safer or more secure.”
The 2022 law also includes permits to vote in person for any reason up to two weeks before the election, a compromise negotiated by Senate Democrats.
