The state’s new voter-identification law illegally usurps the authority of the Arkansas Constitution and will keep qualified voters, most of them poor and already marginalized, from casting ballots, according to attorneys who filed a lawsuit Wednesday to have the law thrown out.
The constitution puts only four restrictions on voters - requirements on age, citizenship, residency and registration.
But Act 595 of 2013’s requirement that Arkansas residents now must present a government-issued photo identification to vote imposes restrictions beyond the ones in the constitution,imposing financial and physical burdens that will keep significant numbers of residents from voting, states the lawsuit filed by the Arkansas Public Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas.
“We warned the Arkansas Legislature. This law stands between qualified voters and the ballot box,” said ACLU legal director Holly Dickson.
The plaintiffs want the law declared unconstitutional and struck down before the May 20 primary.
Representatives of the law center and the ACLU announced the litigation on the steps of the Pulaski County Courthouse. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of four Pulaski County voters, three of whom cannot - without significant hardship and cost - get the paperwork required to establish their identities to satisfy the requirements of the identification law, she said.
Plaintiff Joe Nathan Flakes is a 78-year-old North Little Rock man whose birth at home was not recorded, so he never received a birth certificate, Dickson said.
Since Flakes, who registered to vote three weeks ago, doesn’t have the three forms of identification required to get a “delayed” certificate, he would have to incur the cost and effort of going to court to get a judge to order one for him, she said.
Toylanda Smith, 23, and Freedom Lynn Kohls, 33, moved to Little Rock from out of state, don’t have their birth certificates and are unable to get copies, Dickson said.
Smith, a two-year resident from Chicago who registered to vote three weeks ago, lives in poverty and has been unable to get new identification, according to the ACLU.
Kohls, who has been registered to vote since April 2013, lost her identification and birth certificate, along with all of her belongings, in Hurricane Katrina before moving to Arkansas, she said.
The women are in a “Catch-22” because they don’t have the photo identification they need to get the certificates that they have to have to get photo identification, Dickson said.
The fourth plaintiff is 66-year-old Barry Hansen Haas of Little Rock, a former Pulaski County poll worker, who has the necessary identification but is a “conscientious objector” who refuses to show it to vote, Dickson said. He has lived in Arkansas since 1967 and has been registered to vote in Pulaski County since 1970.
Haas, also known for his work as a water-protection advocate, spoke out against the measure in a state Senate committee meeting last year, warning that it would prevent as many as 250,000 Arkansans - including the elderly, military veterans and students - from voting.
But criticism that the law is somehow a constitutional violation has been studied, considered and rejected by lawmakers after a thorough review by their legal staffs, said state Sen. Bryan King, who co-sponsored the legislation.
“That’s the same argument. We went through that argument. I feel confident it [the law] will stand up in court,” the Green Forest Republican said Wednesday. “It was the most debated bill of the 2013 session.”
He scoffed at the ACLU’s stated grounds for filing the suit, saying the group’s interest in election fraud waxes and wanes depending on which political party can be blamed.
The identification provision is supported by most Americans, credible polls show, King said.
King also denounced accusations that lawmakers who support the photo-ID requirement have any interest in disenfranchising any voters.
“That’s just more of their rhetoric,” he said.
Accusations that the provision is intended to suppress voter turnout don’t hold water, he said. People who rent movies and take airplane trips have to show picture IDs,King said.
“Are those efforts to suppress people from getting on a plane … getting a movie?” he said.
The Republican Party of Arkansas did not respond to an email requesting comment, but party lawyers on behalf of Chairman Doyle Webb have recently described the ID law as an example of how the GOP has followed through on a goal of introducing integrity to the state’s election process.
The measure became law last year after legislators overrode a veto by Gov. Mike Beebe, a former attorney general. He said at the time that he had rejected the legislation as unconstitutional and that it “unnecessarily restricts and impairs our citizens’ right to vote.”
Beebe’s office did not respond to emails requesting comment, but he warned in March 2013 that the law violates the voting rights protections in Article 3 of the state constitution.
The ACLU lawsuit uses the same argument to challenge the ID law as contradicting the constitution on two counts, violating Section 1 of Article 3, which lists the legal qualifications of voters, and Section 2, which prohibits any law that impairs elections from being free and equal.
“No power, civil or military, shall ever interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage; nor shall any law be enacted whereby such right shall be impaired or forfeited, except for the commission of a felony, upon lawful conviction thereof,” the constitution states in Section 2.
In a March 2013 opinion, issued the same day the bill was vetoed, Attorney General Dustin McDaniel tentatively predicted that the law would survive a challenge under Section 2 of Article 3, in part because the law provides for free photo IDs to voters who don’t have identification.
But, in that seven-page analysis done on behalf of Democratic state Rep. Jim Nickels of Sherwood, state lawyers would not speculate on whether a court would find that the ID law illegally added a requirement for voters.
Voter rights and protections in the Arkansas Constitution are just too different from those in other states to predict what a judge would do, according to the opinion.
With early voting for next month’s election scheduled for May 5 - 19 days from the lawsuit-filing date - and absentee ballots already sent out, the next step is to petition the court for a hearing on a temporary injunction to prevent the law from being applied again, said plaintiff attorney Jeff Priebe of Little Rock.
The May 20 election would be the first time the law has been used in statewide contests, although it’s been in effect for two regional ballot issues.
Rita Sklar, ACLU executive director, said the plaintiffs could win a temporary halt to the law because voters who can’t get the required identification won’t be able to cast ballots, which would inflict “irreparable harm,” a finding required by the courts to impose a temporary injunction.
“You lose your vote, you don’t get it back,” she said. “You’ve lost your voice.”
The lawsuit was assigned to Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox, who is already presiding over a lawsuit concerning the voter-ID law that has the same defendants as the ACLU suit - Secretary of State Mark Martin and the state Board of Election Commissioners.
That litigation, instigated last month by the Pulaski County Election Commission, is challenging the state board’s adoption of rules that would allow absentee voters an opportunity to submit identification after an election to ensure their votes are counted.
The county commission claims that the board doesn’t have the authority to make that rule, and Fox has fast tracked the lawsuit to collect all of the arguments by the middle of next week.
The attorney general is already defending the state election officials and expects to continue in that role for the ACLU lawsuit, a McDaniel spokesman said.
“We just received a copy of the lawsuit and are reviewing it,” Aaron Sadler said. “We anticipate that we will continue our defense of the state Election Commission with regard to this act.”
A Martin spokesman said his office is studying the suit and would respond at the appropriate time.
“Right now we are at the stage where we will review the lawsuit, and file a response in due time,” Alex Reed said.
The partnership between the ACLU and the Public Law Center has already seen success this year, with a March ruling from another judge that struck down as unconstitutional regulations endorsed by Martin and McDaniel on the petition procedure that allows Arkansans to bypass the Legislature and directly pass laws.
The ruling that Act 1413 is illegally vague was in response to a lawsuit filed by the two groups on behalf of the leadership of Regnats Populas and Arkansas Community Organizations, two grass-roots advocacy organizations that have used the petition process to propose laws to the public. The decision is on appeal to the state Supreme Court.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/17/2014