New lawsuit seeks to block Missouri law requiring voters to show photo ID at polls
Two voting rights groups filed an additional lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to block a Missouri elections law that requires voters to show a government-issued photo ID to vote.
The lawsuit, filed in Cole County on behalf of the League of Women Voters and the Missouri NAACP, is the second lawsuit brought against the law by the two groups in less than a week. It argues that parts of the law that limit the types of IDs Missourians can use at the polls and in-person absentee violate the state constitution.
Unless a judge steps in to block the photo ID provision, it will be in effect for the Nov. 8 general election.
“So-called Voter ID laws have always been a part of a deceitful agenda by politicians in power to stoke fear and reduce participation of registered voters in elections without evidence of a problem,” Luz María Henríquez, executive director of the ACLU of Missouri, said in a statement. The ACLU of Missouri and the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition filed the suit on behalf of the two civic groups.
“This new law will disenfranchise Missourians, particularly people of color, people with limited income, rural Missourians, and voters with disabilities. These unnecessary and burdensome legal obstacles put in place by Missouri’s lawmakers are unconstitutional.”
Tuesday’s lawsuit seeks to block the voter ID requirements included in Missouri’s sweeping elections law signed by Republican Gov. Mike Parson in July. Another lawsuit filed Friday sought to block the law’s new voter registration restrictions. The elections law from the GOP-controlled legislature, which goes into effect Aug. 28, came after nearly two years of false claims from former President Donald Trump and his supporters about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
The suit also names Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a Republican who supported the law, as a defendant. Ashcroft’s office did not immediately return a call for comment.
The groups’ lawsuit specifically challenges provisions in the law that limit the forms of photo IDs Missourians can use to vote.
Previously, Missourians could use alternative options such as student IDs, expired driver’s licenses, bank statements and utility bills to vote. Under the new law, voters must use federal or state-issued, non-expired photo IDs.
“The burden of these provisions will fall heaviest on marginalized communities, people of color, elderly voters, voters with disabilities, low-income voters, and students,” the ACLU of Missouri said in a news release.
A lawsuit filed Friday by the same two groups argued that the elections law restricts voter registration activities and the distribution of absentee ballots. It sought to block those provisions before the Nov. 8 election.
Missouri’s lengthy new elections law also prohibits touchscreen voting machines after 2024 and allows Ashcroft’s office to audit voter rolls. It also gets rid of presidential primaries in Missouri — replacing them with a series of caucuses — and gives voters a two-week period to cast absentee ballots without an excuse.
It was a result of a sustained push from Missouri Republicans to enact some form of voter ID requirement. The Supreme Court of Missouri struck down a previous voter ID law in 2020 that would have required people who voted without a photo ID to sign a sworn statement stating they don’t have “a form of personal identification approved for voting.” Missouri Supreme Court Judge Mary Russell, in the court’s affirmative opinion, called the sworn statement “contradictory” and “misleading.”
She wrote that the affidavit requirement was not a reasonable way to combat voter fraud.
Democrats and voting rights advocates have decried the state’s new legislation as an attempt to stifle voting rights. They have argued the voter ID requirements would hurt minorities and seniors who don’t have forms of photo identification.
