CRAWFORD et al. v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BOARD et al.

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181 OCTOBER TERM, 2007
Syllabus
CRAWFORD et al. v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION
BOARD et al.
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the seventh circuit
No. 07–21. Argued January 9, 2008—Decided April 28, 2008*
After Indiana enacted an election law (SEA 483) requiring citizens voting
in person to present government-issued photo identification, petitioners
filed separate suits challenging the law’s constitutionality. Following
discovery, the District Court granted respondents summary judgment,
finding the evidence in the record insufficient to support a facial attack
on the statute’s validity. In affirming, the Seventh Circuit declined to
judge the law by the strict standard set for poll taxes in Harper v.
Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U. S. 663, finding the burden on voters
offset by the benefit of reducing the risk of fraud.
Held: The judgment is affirmed.
472 F. 3d 949, affirmed.
Justice Stevens, joined by The Chief Justice and Justice Ken
nedy, concluded that the evidence in the record does not support a facial
attack on SEA 483’s validity. Pp. 189–204.
(a) Under Harper, even rational restrictions on the right to vote are
invidious if they are unrelated to voter qualifications. However, “even
handed restrictions” protecting the “integrity and reliability of the elec
toral process itself ” satisfy Harper’s standard. Anderson v. Celebrezze,
460 U. S. 780, 788, n. 9. A state law’s burden on a political party, an
individual voter, or a discrete class of voters must be justified by rele
vant and legitimate state interests “sufficiently weighty to justify the
limitation.” Norman v. Reed, 502 U. S. 279, 288–289. Pp. 189–191.
(b) Each of Indiana’s asserted interests is unquestionably relevant to
its interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral
process. The first is the interest in deterring and detecting voter
fraud. Indiana has a valid interest in participating in a nationwide ef
fort to improve and modernize election procedures criticized as anti
quated and inefficient. Indiana also claims a particular interest in pre
venting voter fraud in response to the problem of voter registration
rolls with a large number of names of persons who are either deceased
or no longer live in Indiana. While the record contains no evidence
*Together with No. 07–25, Indiana Democratic Party et al. v. Rokita,
Secretary of State of Indiana, et al., also on certiorari to the same court.

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Syllabus
that the fraud SEA 483 addresses—in-person voter impersonation at
polling places—has actually occurred in Indiana, such fraud has occurred
in other parts of the country, and Indiana’s own experience with voter
fraud in a 2003 mayoral primary demonstrates a real risk that voter
fraud could affect a close election’s outcome. There is no question about
the legitimacy or importance of a State’s interest in counting only eligi
ble voters’ votes. Finally, Indiana’s interest in protecting public confi
dence in elections, while closely related to its interest in preventing
voter fraud, has independent significance, because such confidence en
courages citizen participation in the democratic process. Pp. 191–197.
(c) The relevant burdens here are those imposed on eligible voters
who lack photo identification cards that comply with SEA 483. Because
Indiana’s cards are free, the inconvenience of going to the Bureau of
Motor Vehicles, gathering required documents, and posing for a photo
graph does not qualify as a substantial burden on most voters’ right to
vote, or represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of vot
ing. The severity of the somewhat heavier burden that may be placed
on a limited number of persons—e. g., elderly persons born out of State,
who may have difficulty obtaining a birth certificate—is mitigated by
the fact that eligible voters without photo identification may cast provi
sional ballots that will be counted if they execute the required affidavit
at the circuit court clerk’s office. Even assuming that the burden may
not be justified as to a few voters, that conclusion is by no means suffi
cient to establish petitioners’ right to the relief they seek. Pp. 197–200.
(d) Petitioners bear a heavy burden of persuasion in seeking to invali
date SEA 483 in all its applications. This Court’s reasoning in Wash
ington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, 552 U. S.
442, applies with added force here. Petitioners argue that Indiana’s
interests do not justify the burden imposed on voters who cannot afford
or obtain a birth certificate and who must make a second trip to the
circuit court clerk’s office, but it is not possible to quantify, based on the
evidence in the record, either that burden’s magnitude or the portion of
the burden that is fully justified. A facial challenge must fail where
the statute has a “ ‘plainly legitimate sweep.’ ” Id., at 449. When
considering SEA 483’s broad application to all Indiana voters, it “im
poses only a limited burden on voters’ rights.” Burdick v. Takushi,
504 U. S. 428, 439. The “precise interests” advanced by Indiana are
therefore sufficient to defeat petitioners’ facial challenge. Id., at 434.
Pp. 200–203.
(e) Valid neutral justifications for a nondiscriminatory law, such as
SEA 483, should not be disregarded simply because partisan interests
may have provided one motivation for the votes of individual legisla
tors. Pp. 203–204.

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183 Cite as: 553 U. S. 181 (2008)
Syllabus
Justice Scalia, joined by Justice Thomas and Justice Alito, was
of the view that petitioners’ premise that the voter-identification law
might have imposed a special burden on some voters is irrelevant. The
law should be upheld because its overall burden is minimal and justified.
A law respecting the right to vote should be evaluated under the ap
proach in Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U. S. 428, which calls for application of
a deferential, “important regulatory interests” standard for nonsevere,
nondiscriminatory restrictions, reserving strict scrutiny for laws that
severely restrict the right to vote, id., at 433–434. The different ways
in which Indiana’s law affects different voters are no more than different
impacts of the single burden that the law uniformly imposes on all vot
ers: To vote in person, everyone must have and present a photo identi
fication that can be obtained for free. This is a generally applicable,
nondiscriminatory voting regulation. The law’s universally applicable
requirements are eminently reasonable because the burden of acquiring,
possessing, and showing a free photo identification is not a significant
increase over the usual voting burdens, and the State’s stated interests
are sufficient to sustain that minimal burden. Pp. 204–209.
Stevens, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an
opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, J., joined. Scalia, J.,
filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Thomas and Alito,
JJ., joined, post, p. 204. Souter, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which
Ginsburg, J., joined, post, p. 209. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion,
post, p. 237.
Paul M. Smith argued the cause for petitioners in both
cases. With him on the briefs for petitioners in No. 07–25
were Sam Hirsch, William R. Groth, and Joseph E. Sandler.
Kenneth J. Falk, Jacquelyn Bowie Suess, Laughlin McDon
ald, Neil T. Bradley, Steven R. Shapiro, Pamela S. Karlan,
Jeffrey L. Fisher, Angela Ciccolo, and Victor L. Goode filed
briefs for petitioners in No. 07–21.
Thomas M. Fisher, Solicitor General of Indiana, argued
the cause for respondents in both cases. With him on the
brief for the state respondents were Steve Carter, Attorney
General, and Julie A. Brubaker and Heather L. Hagan, Dep
uty Attorneys General. Jon Laramore and James B. Os
born filed a brief for respondent Marion County Election
Board.

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184 CRAWFORD v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BD.
Counsel
Solicitor General Clement argued the cause for the
United States as amicus curiae urging affirmance. With
him on the brief were Acting Assistant Attorney Gen
eral Becker, Deputy Solici tor General Gar re, Doug
las Hallward-Driemeier, Diana K. Flynn, and Christy A.
McCormick.†
†Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal in both cases were filed for the
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund et al. by Jonathan P.
Guy and Kenneth Kimerling; for the Brennan Center for Justice et al. by
Sidney S. Rosdeitcher and Wendy R. Weiser; for Current and Former
State Secretaries of State by Daniel F. Kolb; for the Cyber Privacy Proj
ect et al. by Jonathan Albano; for the Electronic Privacy Information
Center et al. by Marc Rotenberg; for Historians et al. by J. Gerald Hebert,
Paul S. Ryan, and Charles J. Ogletree, Jr.; for the Lawyers’ Committee
for Civil Rights Under Law et al. by Walter E. Dellinger, Sri Srinivasan,
Jon M. Greenbaum, and Michael L. Murphy; for the Mexican American
Legal Defense and Educational Fund by Matthew M. Shors, Michael C.
Camun´ ez, John Trasvin´ a, and Nina Perales; for the NAACP Legal De
fense and Educational Fund, Inc., by Theodore M. Shaw, Jacqueline A.
Berrien, Debo P. Adegbile, Ryan P. Haygood, and Kristen M. Clarke; for
the National Congress of American Indians et al. by Vernle C. Durocher,
Jr., and Glenn M. Salvo; for the National Law Center on Homelessness &
Poverty et al. by Carter G. Phillips and Edward R. McNicholas; for Rock
the Vote et al. by Charles S. Sims and Emily Stern; for the Rutherford
Institute by John W. Whitehead; for R. Michael Alvarez et al. by Samuel
R. Bagenstos and Milton Sherman; for Richard L. Hasen by Mr. Hasen,
pro se; for Congressman Keith Ellison by Gerard Treanor; and for Senator
Dianne Feinstein et al. by Robert F. Bauer.
Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal in No. 07–21 were filed for AARP
et al. by Patricia A. Brannan, Daniel B. Kohrman, and Michael R.
Schuster; and for the Asian American Justice Center et al. by Mark
A. Packman, Jonathan M. Cohen, Karen Narasaki, Vincent Eng, and
Myron Quon.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance in both cases were filed for the
State of Texas et al. by Greg Abbott, Attorney General of Texas, R. Ted
Cruz, Solicitor General, Kent C. Sullivan, First Assistant Attorney Gen
eral, David S. Morales, Deputy Attorney General for Civil Litigation, and
Philip A. Lionberger, Assistant Solicitor General, by Roberto J. Sa´ nchez-
Ramos, Secretary of Justice of Puerto Rico, and by the Attorneys General
for their respective States as follows: Troy King of Alabama, John W.
Suthers of Colorado; Bill McCollum of Florida; Mark J. Bennett of Hawaii,

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185 Cite as: 553 U. S. 181 (2008)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
Justice Stevens announced the judgment of the Court
and delivered an opinion, in which The Chief Justice and
Justice Kennedy join.
At issue in these cases is the constitutionality of an Indiana
statute requiring citizens voting in person on election day,
or casting a ballot in person at the office of the circuit court
clerk prior to election day, to present photo identification is
sued by the government.
Referred to as either the “Voter ID Law” or “SEA 483,” 1
the statute applies to in-person voting at both primary and
general elections. The requirement does not apply to ab-
Michael A. Cox of Michigan, Jon Bruning of Nebraska, and Lawrence E.
Long of South Dakota; for Georgia Secretary of State Karen C. Handel by
Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General of Georgia, Dennis R. Dunn, Deputy
Attorney General, Stefan E. Ritter, Senior Assistant Attorney General,
Mark H. Cohen, and Anne W. Lewis; for the American Civil Rights Union
by Peter J. Ferrara; for the American Unity Legal Defense Fund by Bar
naby W. Zall; for the Center for Equal Opportunity et al. by John B.
Nalbandian and Geoffrey Slaughter; for the Conservative Party of New
York State by Martin S. Kaufman; for Democrat and Republican Election
Professionals by Mark F. Hearne II; for the Evergreen Freedom Founda
tion by Michael J. Reitz; for the Lawyers Democracy Fund by Charles H.
Bell, Jr., Harvey M. Tettlebaum, and Mark G. Arnold; for the Mountain
States Legal Foundation by William Perry Pendley; for the Republican
National Committee by Thomas J. Josefiak; for the Washington Legal
Foundation by Bert W. Rein, Daniel J. Popeo, and Richard A. Samp; and
for Doris Anne Sadler by Wayne C. Turner and Michael R. Limrick.
John H. Findley, Sharon L. Browne, and Steven Geoffrey Gieseler filed
a brief for the Pacific Legal Foundation as amicus curiae urging affirm
ance in No. 07–21.
Briefs of amici curiae were filed in both cases for the Association of
Community Organizations for Reform Now by David Overlock Stewart;
for the League of Women Voters of Indiana, Inc., et al. by Karen
Celestino-Horseman, Thomas N. Austin, Bruce G. Jones, Lewis J. Liman,
Nelson A. Nettles, and Raymond L. Faust; for Erwin Chemerinsky by
Richard W. Clary; for Christopher S. Elmendorf et al. by Daniel P. Tokaji;
for Senator Mitch McConnell et al. by Mr. Hearne; and for Dr. Frederic
C. Schaffer et al. by Bradley S. Phillips.
1 Senate Enrolled Act No. 483, 2005 Ind. Acts p. 2005.

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sentee ballots submitted by mail, and the statute contains an
exception for persons living and voting in a state-licensed
facility such as a nursing home. Ind. Code Ann. § 3–11–8–
25.1(e) (West Supp. 2007). A voter who is indigent or has a
religious objection to being photographed may cast a pro
visional ballot that will be counted only if she executes
an appropriate affidavit before the circuit court clerk within
10 days following the election. §§ 3–11.7–5–1 (West Supp.
2007), 3–11.7–5–2.5(c) (West 2006).2 A voter who has photo
identification but is unable to present that identification on
election day may file a provisional ballot that will be counted
if she brings her photo identification to the circuit court
clerk’s office within 10 days. § 3–11.7–5–2.5(b). No photo
identification is required in order to register to vote,3 and
the State offers free photo identification to qualified voters
able to establish their residence and identity. § 9–24–16–
10(b) (West Supp. 2007).4
Promptly after the enactment of SEA 483 in 2005, the In
diana Democratic Party and the Marion County Democratic
Central Committee (Democrats) filed suit in the Federal Dis
trict Court for the Southern District of Indiana against the
2 The affidavit must state that (1) the person executing the affidavit is
the same individual who cast the provisional ballot on election day; and
(2) the affiant is indigent and unable to obtain proof of identification with
out paying a fee or has a religious objection to being photographed. Ind.
Code Ann. § 3–11.7–5–2.5(c). If the election board determines that the
challenge to the affiant was based solely on a failure to present photo
identification, the “county election board shall . . . find that the voter’s
provisional ballot is valid.” § 3–11.7–5–2.5(d).
3 Voters registering to vote for the first time in Indiana must abide by
the requirements of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), 116 Stat.
1666, described infra, at 193.
4 Indiana previously imposed a fee on all residents seeking a state-issued
photo identification. At the same time that the Indiana Legislature
enacted SEA 483, it also directed the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) to
remove all fees for state-issued photo identification for individuals without
a driver’s license who are at least 18 years old. See 2005 Ind. Acts
p. 2017, § 18.

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state officials responsible for its enforcement, seeking a judg
ment declaring the Voter ID Law invalid and enjoining its
enforcement. A second suit seeking the same relief was
brought on behalf of two elected officials and several non
profit organizations representing groups of elderly, disabled,
poor, and minority voters.5 The cases were consolidated,
and the State of Indiana intervened to defend the validity of
the statute.
The complaints in the consolidated cases allege that the
new law substantially burdens the right to vote in violation
of the Fourteenth Amendment; that it is neither a necessary
nor appropriate method of avoiding election fraud; and that
it will arbitrarily disfranchise qualified voters who do not
possess the required identification and will place an unjusti
fied burden on those who cannot readily obtain such identifi
cation. Second Amended Complaint in No. 1:05–CV–0634–
SEB–VSS (SD Ind.), pp. 6–9.
After discovery, District Judge Barker prepared a com
prehensive 70-page opinion explaining her decision to grant
defendants’ motion for summary judgment. 458 F. Supp. 2d
775 (SD Ind. 2006). She found that petitioners had “not in
troduced evidence of a single, individual Indiana resident
who will be unable to vote as a result of SEA 483 or who
will have his or her right to vote unduly burdened by its
requirements.” Id., at 783. She rejected “as utterly in
credible and unreliable” an expert’s report that up to 989,000
registered voters in Indiana did not possess either a driver’s
license or other acceptable photo identification. Id., at 803.
She estimated that as of 2005, when the statute was enacted,
5 Specifically, the plaintiffs were William Crawford, Joseph Simpson,
Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis, Indianapolis Resource Center for In
dependent Living, Indiana Coalition on Housing and Homeless Issues,
Indianapolis Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, and United Senior Action of Indiana. Complaint in
No. 49012050 4PL01 6207 (Super. Ct. Marion Cty., Ind., Apr. 28, 2005), p. 2.

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around 43,000 Indiana residents lacked a state-issued driv
er’s license or identification card. Id., at 807.6
A divided panel of the Court of Appeals affirmed. 472
F. 3d 949 (CA7 2007). The majority first held that the Dem
ocrats had standing to bring a facial challenge to the consti
tutionality of SEA 483. Next, noting the absence of any
plaintiffs who claimed that the law would deter them from
voting, the Court of Appeals inferred that “the motivation
for the suit is simply that the law may require the Demo
cratic Party and the other organizational plaintiffs to work
harder to get every last one of their supporters to the polls.”
Id., at 952. It rejected the argument that the law should be
judged by the same strict standard applicable to a poll tax
because the burden on voters was offset by the benefit of
reducing the risk of fraud. The dissenting judge, viewing
the justification for the law as “hollow”—more precisely as
“a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day
turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic”—
would have applied a stricter standard, something he de
scribed as “close to ‘strict scrutiny light.’ ” Id., at 954, 956
(opinion of Evans, J.). In his view, the “law imposes an
undue burden on a recognizable segment of potential eligible
voters” and therefore violates their rights under the First
and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Id., at
956–957.
Four judges voted to grant a petition for rehearing en
banc. 484 F. 3d 436, 437 (CA7 2007) (Wood, J., dissenting
from denial of rehearing en banc). Because we agreed with
their assessment of the importance of these cases, we
granted certiorari. 551 U. S. 1192 (2007). We are, however,
6 She added: “In other words, an estimated 99% of Indiana’s voting age
population already possesses the necessary photo identification to vote
under the requirements of SEA 483.” 458 F. Supp. 2d, at 807. Given the
availability of free photo identification and greater public awareness of the
new statutory requirement, presumably that percentage has increased
since SEA 483 was enacted and will continue to increase in the future.

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persuaded that the District Court and the Court of Appeals
correctly concluded that the evidence in the record is not
sufficient to support a facial attack on the validity of the
entire statute, and thus affirm.7
I
In Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U. S. 663
(1966), the Court held that Virginia could not condition the
right to vote in a state election on the payment of a poll
tax of $1.50. We rejected the dissenters’ argument that the
interest in promoting civic responsibility by weeding out
those voters who did not care enough about public affairs to
pay a small sum for the privilege of voting provided a ra
tional basis for the tax. See id., at 685 (opinion of Harlan,
J.). Applying a stricter standard, we concluded that a State
“violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment whenever it makes the affluence of the voter or
payment of any fee an electoral standard.” Id., at 666 (opin
ion of the Court). We used the term “invidiously discrimi
nate” to describe conduct prohibited under that standard,
noting that we had previously held that while a State may
obviously impose “reasonable residence restrictions on the
availability of the ballot,” it “may not deny the opportunity
to vote to a bona fide resident merely because he is a member
of the armed services.” Id., at 666–667 (citing Carrington
v. Rash, 380 U. S. 89, 96 (1965)). Although the State’s justi
fication for the tax was rational, it was invidious because it
was irrelevant to the voter’s qualifications.
Thus, under the standard applied in Harper, even rational
restrictions on the right to vote are invidious if they are
unrelated to voter qualifications. In Anderson v. Cele
brezze, 460 U. S. 780 (1983), however, we confirmed the gen
eral rule that “evenhanded restrictions that protect the
7 We also agree with the unanimous view of those judges that the Demo
crats have standing to challenge the validity of SEA 483 and that there is
no need to decide whether the other petitioners also have standing.

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integrity and reliability of the electoral process itself ” are
not invidious and satisfy the standard set forth in Harper.
460 U. S., at 788, n. 9. Rather than applying any “litmus
test” that would neatly separate valid from invalid restric
tions, we concluded that a court must identify and evaluate
the interests put forward by the State as justifications for
the burden imposed by its rule, and then make the “hard
judgment” that our adversary system demands.
In later election cases we have followed Anderson’s bal
ancing approach. Thus, in Norman v. Reed, 502 U. S. 279,
288–289 (1992), after identifying the burden Illinois imposed
on a political party’s access to the ballot, we “called for
the demonstration of a corresponding interest sufficiently
weighty to justify the limitation,” and concluded that the “se
vere restriction” was not justified by a narrowly drawn state
interest of compelling importance. Later, in Burdick v. Ta
kushi, 504 U. S. 428 (1992), we applied Anderson’s standard
for “ ‘reasonable, nondiscriminatory restrictions,’ ” 504 U. S.,
at 434, and upheld Hawaii’s prohibition on write-in voting
despite the fact that it prevented a significant number of
“voters from participating in Hawaii elections in a meaning
ful manner,” id., at 443 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). We reaf
firmed Anderson’s requirement that a court evaluating a
constitutional challenge to an election regulation weigh the
asserted injury to the right to vote against the “ ‘precise
interests put forward by the State as justifications for the
burden imposed by its rule.’ ” 504 U. S., at 434 (quoting An
derson, 460 U. S., at 789).8
8 Contrary to Justice Scalia’s suggestion, see post, at 204 (opinion con
curring in judgment), our approach remains faithful to Anderson and Bur
dick. The Burdick opinion was explicit in its endorsement and adherence
to Anderson, see 504 U. S., at 434, and repeatedly cited Anderson, see 504
U. S., at 436, n. 5, 440, n. 9, 441. To be sure, Burdick rejected the argu
ment that strict scrutiny applies to all laws imposing a burden on the right
to vote; but in its place, the Court applied the “flexible standard” set forth
in Anderson. 504 U. S., at 434. Burdick surely did not create a novel
“deferential ‘important regulatory interests’ standard.” See post, at 204.

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In neither Norman nor Burdick did we identify any litmus
test for measuring the severity of a burden that a state law
imposes on a political party, an individual voter, or a discrete
class of voters. However slight that burden may appear, as
Harper demonstrates, it must be justified by relevant and
legitimate state interests “sufficiently weighty to justify the
limitation.” Norman, 502 U. S., at 288–289. We therefore
begin our analysis of the constitutionality of Indiana’s stat
ute by focusing on those interests.
II
The State has identified several state interests that argua
bly justify the burdens that SEA 483 imposes on voters and
potential voters. While petitioners argue that the statute
was actually motivated by partisan concerns and dispute
both the significance of the State’s interests and the magni
tude of any real threat to those interests, they do not ques
tion the legitimacy of the interests the State has identified.
Each is unquestionably relevant to the State’s interest in
protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral
process.
The first is the interest in deterring and detecting voter
fraud. The State has a valid interest in participating in a
nationwide effort to improve and modernize election proce
dures that have been criticized as antiquated and inefficient.9
The State also argues that it has a particular interest in pre
venting voter fraud in response to a problem that is in part
the product of its own maladministration—namely, that Indi
ana’s voter registration rolls include a large number of names
of persons who are either deceased or no longer live in Indi
ana. Finally, the State relies on its interest in safeguarding
voter confidence. Each of these interests merits separate
comment.
9 See National Commission on Federal Election Reform, To Assure
Pride and Confidence in the Electoral Process 18 (2002) (with honorary
cochairs former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter).

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Election Modernization
Two recently enacted federal statutes have made it neces
sary for States to reexamine their election procedures.
Both contain provisions consistent with a State’s choice to
use government-issued photo identification as a relevant
source of information concerning a citizen’s eligibility to vote.
In the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA),
107 Stat. 77, 42 U. S. C. § 1973gg et seq., Congress established
procedures that would both increase the number of regis
tered voters and protect the integrity of the electoral proc
ess. § 1973gg. The statute requires state motor vehicle
driver’s license applications to serve as voter registration
applications. § 1973gg–3. While that requirement has in
creased the number of registered voters, the statute also
contains a provision restricting States’ ability to remove
names from the lists of registered voters. § 1973gg–6(a)(3).
These protections have been partly responsible for inflated
lists of registered voters. For example, evidence credited
by Judge Barker estimated that as of 2004 Indiana’s voter
rolls were inflated by as much as 41.4%, see 458 F. Supp. 2d,
at 793, and data collected by the Election Assistance Com
mittee in 2004 indicated that 19 of 92 Indiana counties had
registration totals exceeding 100% of the 2004 voting-age
population, Dept. of Justice Complaint in United States v.
Indiana, No. 1:06–cv–1000–RLY–TAB (SD Ind., June 27,
2006), p. 4, App. 313.
In HAVA, Congress required every State to create and
maintain a computerized statewide list of all registered vot
ers. 42 U. S. C. § 15483(a) (2000 ed., Supp. V). HAVA also
requires the States to verify voter information contained in
a voter registration application and specifies either an “appli
cant’s driver’s license number” or “the last 4 digits of the
applicant’s social security number” as acceptable verifica
tions. § 15483(a)(5)(A)(i). If an individual has neither num
ber, the State is required to assign the applicant a voter iden
tification number. § 15483(a)(5)(A)(ii).

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HAVA also imposes new identification requirements for in
dividuals registering to vote for the first time who submit
their applications by mail. If the voter is casting his ballot
in person, he must present local election officials with writ
ten identification, which may be either “a current and valid
photo identification” or another form of documentation such
as a bank statement or paycheck. § 15483(b)(2)(A). If the
voter is voting by mail, he must include a copy of the identi
fication with his ballot. A voter may also include a copy of
the documentation with his application or provide his driv
er’s license number or Social Security number for verifica
tion. § 15483(b)(3). Finally, in a provision entitled “Fail
safe voting,” HAVA authorizes the casting of provisional
ballots by challenged voters. § 15483(b)(2)(B).
Of course, neither HAVA nor NVRA required Indiana to
enact SEA 483, but they do indicate that Congress believes
that photo identification is one effective method of establish
ing a voter’s qualification to vote and that the integrity of
elections is enhanced through improved technology. That
conclusion is also supported by a report issued shortly after
the enactment of SEA 483 by the Commission on Federal
Election Reform chaired by former President Jimmy Carter
and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, which is
a part of the record in these cases. In the introduction to
their discussion of voter identification, they made these per
tinent comments:
“A good registration list will ensure that citizens are
only registered in one place, but election officials still
need to make sure that the person arriving at a polling
site is the same one that is named on the registration
list. In the old days and in small towns where everyone
knows each other, voters did not need to identify them
selves. But in the United States, where 40 million peo
ple move each year, and in urban areas where some peo
ple do not even know the people living in their own

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apartment building let alone their precinct, some form
of identification is needed.
“There is no evidence of extensive fraud in U. S. elec
tions or of multiple voting, but both occur, and it could
affect the outcome of a close election. The electoral
system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards
exist to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity
of voters. Photo [identification cards] currently are
needed to board a plane, enter federal buildings, and
cash a check. Voting is equally important.” Building
Confidence in U. S. Elections § 2.5 (Sept. 2005), App.
136–137 (Carter-Baker Report) (footnote omitted).10
Voter Fraud
The only kind of voter fraud that SEA 483 addresses is
in-person voter impersonation at polling places. The record
contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in
Indiana at any time in its history. Moreover, petitioners
argue that provisions of the Indiana Criminal Code punish
10 The historical perceptions of the Carter-Baker Report can largely be
confirmed. The average precinct size in the United States has increased
in the last century, suggesting that it is less likely that pollworkers will
be personally acquainted with voters. For example, at the time Joseph
Harris wrote his groundbreaking 1934 report on election administration,
Indiana restricted the number of voters in each precinct to 250. Election
Administration in the United States 208 (Brookings Institution 1934). An
Election Commission report indicates that Indiana’s average number of
registered voters per polling place is currently 1,014. Election Assistance
Commission, Final Report of the 2004 Election Day Survey, ch. 13 (Sept.
2005) (Table 13) (hereinafter Final Report) (prepared by Election Data
Services, Inc.), online at http://www.eac.gov/clearinghouse/clearinghouse/
2004-election-day-survey (all Internet materials as visited Apr. 16, 2008,
and available in Clerk of Court’s case file). In 1930, the major cities that
Harris surveyed had an average number of voters per precinct that ranged
from 247 to 617. Election Administration in the United States, at 214.
While States vary today, most have averages exceeding 1,000, with at
least eight States exceeding 2,000 registered voters per polling place.
Final Report, ch. 13 (Table 13).

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ing such conduct as a felony provide adequate protection
against the risk that such conduct will occur in the future.
It remains true, however, that flagrant examples of such
fraud in other parts of the country have been documented
throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and
journalists,11 that occasional examples have surfaced in re
cent years,12 and that Indiana’s own experience with fraudu
lent voting in the 2003 Democratic primary for East Chicago
Mayor 13—though perpetrated using absentee ballots and not
11 Infamous examples abound in the New York City elections of the late
19th century, conducted under the influence of the Tammany Hall political
machine. “Big Tim” Sullivan, a New York state senator and—briefly—a
United States Congressman, insisted that his “repeaters” (individuals paid
to vote multiple times) have whiskers:
“ ‘When you’ve voted ’em with their whiskers on you take ’em to a bar
ber and scrape off the chin-fringe. Then you vote ’em again with side
lilacs and a moustache. Then to a barber again, off comes the sides and
you vote ’em a third time with the moustache. If that ain’t enough and
the box can stand a few more ballots clean off the moustache and vote ’em
plain face. That makes every one of ’em good for four votes.’ ” M. Wer
ner, Tammany Hall 439 (1928).
12 Judge Barker cited record evidence containing examples from Califor
nia, Washington, Maryland, Wisconsin, Georgia, Illinois, Pennsylvania,
Missouri, Miami, and St. Louis. The Brief for Brennan Center for Justice
et al. as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners addresses each of these
examples of fraud. While the brief indicates that the record evidence of
in-person fraud was overstated because much of the fraud was actually
absentee ballot fraud or voter registration fraud, there remain scattered
instances of in-person voter fraud. For example, after a hotly contested
gubernatorial election in 2004, Washington conducted an investigation of
voter fraud and uncovered 19 “ghost voters.” Borders v. King Cty.,
No. 05–2–00027–3 (Super. Ct. Chelan Cty., Wash., June 6, 2005) (verbatim
report of unpublished oral decision), 4 Election L. J. 418, 423 (2005). After
a partial investigation of the ghost voting, one voter was confirmed to
have committed in-person voting fraud. Le & Nicolosi, Dead Voted in
Governor’s Race, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jan. 7, 2005, p. A1.
13 See Pabey v. Pastrick, 816 N. E. 2d 1138, 1151 (Ind. 2004) (holding
that a special election was required because one candidate engaged in
“a deliberate series of actions . . . making it impossible to determine the
candidate who received the highest number of legal votes cast in the elec

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in-person fraud—demonstrate that not only is the risk of
voter fraud real but that it could affect the outcome of a
close election.
There is no question about the legitimacy or importance
of the State’s interest in counting only the votes of eligible
voters. Moreover, the interest in orderly administration
and accurate recordkeeping provides a sufficient justification
for carefully identifying all voters participating in the elec
tion process. While the most effective method of prevent
ing election fraud may well be debatable, the propriety of
doing so is perfectly clear.
In its brief, the State argues that the inflation of its voter
rolls provides further support for its enactment of SEA 483.
The record contains a November 5, 2000, newspaper article
asserting that as a result of NVRA and “sloppy record
keeping,” Indiana’s lists of registered voters included the
names of thousands of persons who had either moved, died,
or were not eligible to vote because they had been convicted
of felonies.14 The conclusion that Indiana has an unusually
inflated list of registered voters is supported by the entry of
a consent decree in litigation brought by the Federal Govern
ment alleging violations of NVRA. Consent Decree and
Order in United States v. Indiana, No. 1:06–cv–1000–RLY–
TAB (SD Ind., June 27, 2006), App. 299–307. Even though
Indiana’s own negligence may have contributed to the seri
ous inflation of its registration lists when SEA 483 was
enacted, the fact of inflated voter rolls does provide a neutral
tion”). According to the uncontested factual findings of the trial court,
one of the candidates paid supporters to stand near polling places and
encourage voters—especially those who were poor, infirm, or spoke little
English—to vote absentee. The supporters asked the voters to contact
them when they received their ballots; the supporters then “assisted” the
voter in filling out the ballot.
14 Theobald, Bogus Names Jam Indiana’s Voter List, Indianapolis Star,
Nov. 5, 2000, App. 145.

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and nondiscriminatory reason supporting the State’s decision
to require photo identification.
Safeguarding Voter Confidence
Finally, the State contends that it has an interest in pro
tecting public confidence “in the integrity and legitimacy of
representative government.” Brief for State Respondents
53. While that interest is closely related to the State’s in
terest in preventing voter fraud, public confidence in the in
tegrity of the electoral process has independent significance,
because it encourages citizen participation in the democratic
process. As the Carter-Baker Report observed, the “ ‘elec
toral system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards
exist to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of
voters.’ ” Supra, at 194.
III
States employ different methods of identifying eligible
voters at the polls. Some merely check off the names of
registered voters who identify themselves; others require
voters to present registration cards or other documentation
before they can vote; some require voters to sign their names
so their signatures can be compared with those on file; and
in recent years an increasing number of States have relied
primarily on photo identification.15 A photo identification
requirement imposes some burdens on voters that other
methods of identification do not share. For example, a voter
may lose his photo identification, may have his wallet stolen
on the way to the polls, or may not resemble the photo in the
identification because he recently grew a beard. Burdens of
that sort arising from life’s vagaries, however, are neither so
serious nor so frequent as to raise any question about the
constitutionality of SEA 483; the availability of the right to
15 For a survey of state practice, see Brief for State of Texas et al. as
Amici Curiae 10–14, and nn. 1–23.

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cast a provisional ballot provides an adequate remedy for
problems of that character.
The burdens that are relevant to the issue before us are
those imposed on persons who are eligible to vote but do not
possess a current photo identification that complies with the
requirements of SEA 483.16 The fact that most voters al
ready possess a valid driver’s license, or some other form of
acceptable identification, would not save the statute under
our reasoning in Harper, if the State required voters to pay
a tax or a fee to obtain a new photo identification. But just
as other States provide free voter registration cards, the
photo identification cards issued by Indiana’s BMV are also
free. For most voters who need them, the inconvenience of
making a trip to the BMV, gathering the required docu
ments, and posing for a photograph surely does not qualify as
a substantial burden on the right to vote, or even represent a
significant increase over the usual burdens of voting.17
16 Ind. Code Ann. § 3–5–2–40.5 (West 2006) requires that the document
satisfy the following:
“(1) The document shows the name of the individual to whom the docu
ment was issued, and the name conforms to the name in the individual’s
voter registration record.
“(2) The document shows a photograph of the individual to whom the
document was issued.
“(3) The document includes an expiration date, and the document:
“(A) is not expired; or
“(B) expired after the date of the most recent general election.
“(4) The document was issued by the United States or the state of
Indiana.”
17 To obtain a photo identification card a person must present at least
one “primary” document, which can be a birth certificate, certificate of
naturalization, U. S. veterans photo identification, U. S. military photo
identification, or a U. S. passport. Ind. Admin. Code, tit. 140, § 7–4–3
(2008), http://www.in.gov/ legislative/ iac/T01400/A00070.pdf ?. Indiana,
like most States, charges a fee for obtaining a copy of one’s birth certifi
cate. This fee varies by county and is currently between $3 and $12. See
Indiana State Department of Health Web page, http://www.in.gov/isdh/
bdcertifs/lhdfees/toc.htm. Some States charge substantially more. Af
fidavit of Robert Andrew Ford, App. 12.

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Both evidence in the record and facts of which we may
take judicial notice, however, indicate that a somewhat heav
ier burden may be placed on a limited number of persons.
They include elderly persons born out of State, who may have
difficulty obtaining a birth certificate; 18 persons who because
of economic or other personal limitations may find it difficult
either to secure a copy of their birth certificate or to assem
ble the other required documentation to obtain a state-issued
identification; homeless persons; and persons with a religious
objection to being photographed. If we assume, as the evi
dence suggests, that some members of these classes were
registered voters when SEA 483 was enacted, the new iden
tification requirement may have imposed a special burden on
their right to vote.
The severity of that burden is, of course, mitigated by the
fact that, if eligible, voters without photo identification may
cast provisional ballots that will ultimately be counted. To
do so, however, they must travel to the circuit court clerk’s
office within 10 days to execute the required affidavit. It is
unlikely that such a requirement would pose a constitutional
problem unless it is wholly unjustified. And even assuming
that the burden may not be justified as to a few voters,19 that
18 As petitioners note, Brief for Petitioners in No. 07–21, p. 17, n. 7, and
the State’s “Frequently Asked Questions” Web page states, it appears that
elderly persons who can attest that they were never issued a birth certifi
cate may present other forms of identification as their primary document
to the Indiana BMV, including Medicaid/Medicare cards and Social Secu
rity benefits statements. http://www.in.gov/faqs.htm; see also Ind.
Admin. Code, tit. 140, § 7–4–3(a) (“The commissioner or the commissioner’s
designee may accept reasonable alternate documents to satisfy the re
quirements of this rule”).
19 Presumably most voters casting provisional ballots will be able to ob
tain photo identifications before the next election. It is, however, difficult
to understand why the State should require voters with a faith-based ob
jection to being photographed to cast provisional ballots subject to later
verification in every election when the BMV is able to issue these citizens
special licenses that enable them to drive without any photo identification.
See Ind. Code Ann. § 9–24–11–5(c) (West Supp. 2007).

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conclusion is by no means sufficient to establish petitioners’
right to the relief they seek in this litigation.
IV
Given the fact that petitioners have advanced a broad at
tack on the constitutionality of SEA 483, seeking relief that
would invalidate the statute in all its applications, they bear
a heavy burden of persuasion. Only a few weeks ago we
held that the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had
failed to give appropriate weight to the magnitude of that
burden when it sustained a preelection, facial attack on a
Washington statute regulating that State’s primary election
procedures. Washington State Grange v. Washington State
Republican Party, 552 U. S. 442 (2008). Our reasoning in
that case applies with added force to the arguments ad
vanced by petitioners in these cases.
Petitioners ask this Court, in effect, to perform a unique
balancing analysis that looks specifically at a small number
of voters who may experience a special burden under the
statute and weighs their burdens against the State’s broad
interests in protecting election integrity. Petitioners urge
us to ask whether the State’s interests justify the burden
imposed on voters who cannot afford or obtain a birth cer
tificate and who must make a second trip to the circuit court
clerk’s office after voting. But on the basis of the evidence
in the record it is not possible to quantify either the magni
tude of the burden on this narrow class of voters or the por
tion of the burden imposed on them that is fully justified.
First, the evidence in the record does not provide us with
the number of registered voters without photo identification;
Judge Barker found petitioners’ expert’s report to be “ut
terly incredible and unreliable.” 458 F. Supp. 2d, at 803.
Much of the argument about the numbers of such voters
comes from extrarecord, postjudgment studies, the accuracy
of which has not been tested in the trial court.

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Further, the deposition evidence presented in the District
Court does not provide any concrete evidence of the burden
imposed on voters who currently lack photo identification.
The record includes depositions of two case managers at a
day shelter for homeless persons and the depositions of mem
bers of the plaintiff organizations, none of whom expressed
a personal inability to vote under SEA 483. A deposition
from a named plaintiff describes the difficulty the elderly
woman had in obtaining an identification card, although her
testimony indicated that she intended to return to the BMV
since she had recently obtained her birth certificate and that
she was able to pay the birth certificate fee. App. 94.
Judge Barker’s opinion makes reference to six other el
derly named plaintiffs who do not have photo identifications,
but several of these individuals have birth certificates or
were born in Indiana and have not indicated how difficult it
would be for them to obtain a birth certificate. 458 F. Supp.
2d, at 797–799. One elderly named plaintiff stated that she
had attempted to obtain a birth certificate from Tennessee,
but had not been successful, and another testified that he did
not know how to obtain a birth certificate from North Caro
lina. The elderly in Indiana, however, may have an easier
time obtaining a photo identification card than the non
elderly, see n. 17, supra, and although it may not be a com
pletely acceptable alternative, the elderly in Indiana are able
to vote absentee without presenting photo identification.
The record says virtually nothing about the difficulties
faced by either indigent voters or voters with religious ob
jections to being photographed. While one elderly man
stated that he did not have the money to pay for a birth
certificate, when asked if he did not have the money or did
not wish to spend it, he replied, “both.” App. 211–212.
From this limited evidence we do not know the magnitude
of the impact SEA 483 will have on indigent voters in Indi
ana. The record does contain the affidavit of one homeless

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woman who has a copy of her birth certificate, but was de
nied a photo identification card because she did not have an
address. Id., at 67. But that single affidavit gives no indi
cation of how common the problem is.
In sum, on the basis of the record that has been made in
this litigation, we cannot conclude that the statute imposes
“excessively burdensome requirements” on any class of vot
ers. See Storer v. Brown, 415 U. S. 724, 738 (1974).20 A
facial challenge must fail where the statute has a “ ‘ “plainly
legitimate sweep.” ’ ” Washington State Grange, 552 U. S.,
at 449 (citing and quoting Washington v. Glucksberg, 521
U. S. 702, 739–740, and n. 7 (1997) (Stevens, J., concurring
in judgments)). When we consider only the statute’s broad
20 Three comments on Justice Souter’s speculation about the nontriv
ial burdens that SEA 483 may impose on “tens of thousands” of Indiana
citizens, post, at 209 (dissenting opinion), are appropriate. First, the fact
that the District Judge estimated that when the statute was passed in
2005, 43,000 citizens did not have photo identification, see 458 F. Supp. 2d
775, 807 (SD Ind. 2006), tells us nothing about the number of free photo
identification cards issued since then. Second, the fact that public trans
portation is not available in some Indiana counties tells us nothing about
how often elderly and indigent citizens have an opportunity to obtain a
photo identification at the BMV, either during a routine outing with family
or friends or during a special visit to the BMV arranged by a civic or
political group such as the League of Women Voters or a political party.
Further, nothing in the record establishes the distribution of voters who
lack photo identification. To the extent that the evidence sheds any light
on that issue, it suggests that such voters reside primarily in metropolitan
areas, which are served by public transportation in Indiana (the majority
of the plaintiffs reside in Indianapolis and several of the organizational
plaintiffs are Indianapolis organizations). Third, the indigent, elderly, or
disabled need not “travel all the way to their county seats every time they
wish to vote,” post, at 236, if they obtain a free photo identification card
from the BMV. While it is true that obtaining a birth certificate carries
with it a financial cost, the record does not provide even a rough estimate
of how many indigent voters lack copies of their birth certificates. Suppo
sition based on extensive Internet research is not an adequate substitute
for admissible evidence subject to cross-examination in constitutional
adjudication.

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application to all Indiana voters we conclude that it “imposes
only a limited burden on voters’ rights.” Burdick, 504 U. S.,
at 439. The “ ‘precise interests’ ” advanced by the State are
therefore sufficient to defeat petitioners’ facial challenge to
SEA 483. Id., at 434.
Finally we note that petitioners have not demonstrated
that the proper remedy—even assuming an unjustified bur
den on some voters—would be to invalidate the entire stat
ute. When evaluating a neutral, nondiscriminatory regula
tion of voting procedure, “[w]e must keep in mind that ‘ “[a]
ruling of unconstitutionality frustrates the intent of the
elected representatives of the people.” ’ Ayotte v. Planned
Parenthood of Northern New Eng., 546 U. S. 320, 329 (2006)
(quoting Regan v. Time, Inc., 468 U. S. 641, 652 (1984) (plural
ity opinion)).” Washington State Grange, 552 U. S., at 451.
V
In their briefs, petitioners stress the fact that all of the
Republicans in the General Assembly voted in favor of SEA
483 and the Democrats were unanimous in opposing it.21 In
her opinion rejecting petitioners’ facial challenge, Judge
Barker noted that the litigation was the result of a partisan
dispute that had “spilled out of the state house into the
courts.” 458 F. Supp. 2d, at 783. It is fair to infer that
partisan considerations may have played a significant role in
the decision to enact SEA 483. If such considerations had
provided the only justification for a photo identification re
quirement, we may also assume that SEA 483 would suffer
the same fate as the poll tax at issue in Harper.
21 Brief for Petitioners in No. 07–25, pp. 6–9. Fifty-two Republican
House members voted for the bill, 45 Democrats voted against, and 3 Dem
ocrats were excused from voting. 3 Journal of the House of Representa
tives of the State of Indiana, Roll Call 259 (Mar. 21, 2005). In the Senate,
33 Republican Senators voted in favor and 17 Democratic Senators voted
against. 3 Journal of the Senate of the State of Indiana, Roll Call 417
(Apr. 12, 2005).

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Scalia, J., concurring in judgment
But if a nondiscriminatory law is supported by valid neu
tral justifications, those justifications should not be disre
garded simply because partisan interests may have provided
one motivation for the votes of individual legislators. The
state interests identified as justifications for SEA 483 are
both neutral and sufficiently strong to require us to reject
petitioners’ facial attack on the statute. The application of
the statute to the vast majority of Indiana voters is amply
justified by the valid interest in protecting “the integrity
and reliability of the electoral process.” Anderson, 460
U. S., at 788, n. 9.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Justice Scalia, with whom Justice Thomas and Jus
tice Alito join, concurring in the judgment.
The lead opinion assumes petitioners’ premise that the
voter-identification law “may have imposed a special burden
on” some voters, ante, at 199, but holds that petitioners have
not assembled evidence to show that the special burden is
severe enough to warrant strict scrutiny, ante, at 202–203.
That is true enough, but for the sake of clarity and finality
(as well as adherence to precedent), I prefer to decide these
cases on the grounds that petitioners’ premise is irrelevant
and that the burden at issue is minimal and justified.
To evaluate a law respecting the right to vote—whether
it governs voter qualifications, candidate selection, or the
voting process—we use the approach set out in Burdick v.
Takushi, 504 U. S. 428 (1992). This calls for application of
a deferential “important regulatory interests” standard for
nonsevere, nondiscriminatory restrictions, reserving strict
scrutiny for laws that severely restrict the right to vote.
Id., at 433–434 (internal quotation marks omitted). The
lead opinion resists the import of Burdick by characterizing
it as simply adopting “the balancing approach” of Anderson
v. Celebrezze, 460 U. S. 780 (1983) (majority opinion of Ste
vens, J.). See ante, at 190; see also ibid., n. 8. Although

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Burdick liberally quoted Anderson, Burdick forged Ander
son’s amorphous “flexible standard” into something resem
bling an administrable rule. See Burdick, supra, at 434.
Since Burdick, we have repeatedly reaffirmed the primacy
of its two-track approach. See Timmons v. Twin Cities
Area New Party, 520 U. S. 351, 358 (1997); Clingman v. Bea
ver, 544 U. S. 581, 586–587 (2005). “[S]trict scrutiny is ap
propriate only if the burden is severe.” Id., at 592. Thus,
the first step is to decide whether a challenged law severely
burdens the right to vote. Ordinary and widespread bur
dens, such as those requiring “nominal effort” of everyone,
are not severe. See id., at 591, 593–597. Burdens are se
vere if they go beyond the merely inconvenient. See Storer
v. Brown, 415 U. S. 724, 728–729 (1974) (characterizing the
law in Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U. S. 23 (1968), as “severe”
because it was “so burdensome” as to be “ ‘virtually impossi
ble’ ” to satisfy).
Of course, we have to identify a burden before we can
weigh it. The Indiana law affects different voters differ
ently, ante, at 198–199, but what petitioners view as the law’s
several light and heavy burdens are no more than the differ
ent impacts of the single burden that the law uniformly im
poses on all voters. To vote in person in Indiana, everyone
must have and present a photo identification that can be ob
tained for free. The State draws no classifications, let alone
discriminatory ones, except to establish optional absentee
and provisional balloting for certain poor, elderly, and insti
tutionalized voters and for religious objectors. Nor are vot
ers who already have photo identifications exempted from
the burden, since those voters must maintain the accuracy of
the information displayed on the identifications, renew them
before they expire, and replace them if they are lost.
The Indiana photo-identification law is a generally applica
ble, nondiscriminatory voting regulation, and our precedents
refute the view that individual impacts are relevant to deter
mining the severity of the burden it imposes. In the course
of concluding that the Hawaii laws at issue in Burdick “im

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Scalia, J., concurring in judgment
pose[d] only a limited burden on voters’ rights to make free
choices and to associate politically through the vote,” 504
U. S., at 439, we considered the laws and their reasonably
foreseeable effect on voters generally. See id., at 436–437.
We did not discuss whether the laws had a severe effect on
Mr. Burdick’s own right to vote, given his particular circum
stances. That was essentially the approach of the Burdick
dissenters, who would have applied strict scrutiny to the
laws because of their effect on “some voters.” See id., at
446 (opinion of Kennedy, J.); see also id., at 448 (“The major
ity’s analysis ignores the inevitable and significant burden a
write-in ban imposes upon some individual voters . . . ”
(emphasis added)). Subsequent cases have followed Bur
dick’s generalized review of nondiscriminatory election laws.
See, e. g., Timmons, supra, at 361–362; Clingman, 544 U. S.,
at 590–591 (plurality opinion); id., at 592–593 (opinion of the
Court). Indeed, Clingman’s holding that burdens are not
severe if they are ordinary and widespread would be ren
dered meaningless if a single plaintiff could claim a severe
burden.
Not all of our decisions predating Burdick addressed
whether a challenged voting regulation severely burdened
the right to vote, but when we began to grapple with the
magnitude of burdens, we did so categorically and did not
consider the peculiar circumstances of individual voters
or candidates. See, e. g., Jenness v. Fortson, 403 U. S. 431,
438–441 (1971). Thus, in Rosario v. Rockefeller, 410 U. S.
752 (1973), we did not link the State’s interest in inhibiting
party raiding with the petitioners’ own circumstances. See
id., at 760–762. And in Storer v. Brown, supra, we observed
that the severity of the burden of a regulation should be
measured according to its “nature, extent, and likely im
pact.” Id., at 738 (emphasis added). We therefore in
structed the District Court to decide on remand whether
“a reasonably diligent independent candidate [could] be ex
pected to satisfy the signature requirements, or will it be

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Scalia, J., concurring in judgment
only rarely that the unaffiliated candidate will succeed in get
ting on the ballot?” Id., at 742 (emphasis added). Notably,
we did not suggest that the District Court should consider
whether one of the petitioners would actually find it more
difficult than a reasonably diligent candidate to obtain the
required signatures. What mattered was the general as
sessment of the burden.
Insofar as our election-regulation cases rest upon the re
quirements of the Fourteenth Amendment, see Anderson,
460 U. S., at 786, n. 7, weighing the burden of a nondiscrimina
tory voting law upon each voter and concomitantly requiring
exceptions for vulnerable voters would effectively turn back
decades of equal-protection jurisprudence. A voter com
plaining about such a law’s effect on him has no valid equal
protection claim because, without proof of discriminatory in
tent, a generally applicable law with disparate impact is not
unconstitutional. See, e. g., Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S.
229, 248 (1976). The Fourteenth Amendment does not re
gard neutral laws as invidious ones, even when their burdens
purportedly fall disproportionately on a protected class. A
fortiori it does not do so when, as here, the classes complain
ing of disparate impact are not even protected.* See Har
ris v. McRae, 448 U. S. 297, 323, and n. 26 (1980) (poverty);
Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U. S. 432, 442
(1985) (disability); Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452, 473
(1991) (age); cf. Employment Div., Dept. of Human Re
*A number of our early right-to-vote decisions, purporting to rely upon
the Equal Protection Clause, strictly scrutinized nondiscriminatory voting
laws requiring the payment of fees. See, e. g., Harper v. Virginia Bd. of
Elections, 383 U. S. 663, 670 (1966) (poll tax); Bullock v. Carter, 405 U. S.
134, 145 (1972) (ballot-access fee); Lubin v. Panish, 415 U. S. 709, 716–719
(1974) (ballot-access fee). To the extent those decisions continue to stand
for a principle that Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U. S. 428 (1992), does not
already encompass, it suffices to note that we have never held that legisla
tures must calibrate all election laws, even those totally unrelated to
money, for their impacts on poor voters or must otherwise accommodate
wealth disparities.

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208 CRAWFORD v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BD.
Scalia, J., concurring in judgment
sources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872, 878–879 (1990) (First
Amendment does not require exceptions for religious objec
tors to neutral rules of general applicability).
Even if I thought that stare decisis did not foreclose adopt
ing an individual-focused approach, I would reject it as an
original matter. This is an area where the dos and don’ts
need to be known in advance of the election, and voter-by
voter examination of the burdens of voting regulations would
prove especially disruptive. A case-by-case approach natu
rally encourages constant litigation. Very few new election
regulations improve everyone’s lot, so the potential allega
tions of severe burden are endless. A State reducing the
number of polling places would be open to the complaint it
has violated the rights of disabled voters who live near the
closed stations. Indeed, it may even be the case that some
laws already on the books are especially burdensome for
some voters, and one can predict lawsuits demanding that a
State adopt voting over the Internet or expand absentee
balloting.
That sort of detailed judicial supervision of the election
process would flout the Constitution’s express commitment
of the task to the States. See Art. I, § 4. It is for state
legislatures to weigh the costs and benefits of possible
changes to their election codes, and their judgment must pre
vail unless it imposes a severe and unjustified overall burden
upon the right to vote, or is intended to disadvantage a par
ticular class. Judicial review of their handiwork must apply
an objective, uniform standard that will enable them to de
termine, ex ante, whether the burden they impose is too
severe.
The lead opinion’s record-based resolution of these cases,
which neither rejects nor embraces the rule of our prece
dents, provides no certainty, and will embolden litigants who
surmise that our precedents have been abandoned. There
is no good reason to prefer that course.

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209 Cite as: 553 U. S. 181 (2008)
Souter, J., dissenting
* * *
The universally applicable requirements of Indiana’s
voter-identification law are eminently reasonable. The bur
den of acquiring, possessing, and showing a free photo identi
fication is simply not severe, because it does not “even repre
sent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting.”
Ante, at 198. And the State’s interests, ante, at 191–197,
are sufficient to sustain that minimal burden. That should
end the matter. That the State accommodates some voters
by permitting (not requiring) the casting of absentee or pro
visional ballots, is an indulgence—not a constitutional imper
ative that falls short of what is required.
Justice Souter, with whom Justice Ginsburg joins,
dissenting.
Indiana’s “Voter ID Law” 1 threatens to impose nontrivial
burdens on the voting right of tens of thousands of the
State’s citizens, see ante, at 198–199 (lead opinion), and a
significant percentage of those individuals are likely to be
deterred from voting, see ante, at 199. The statute is uncon
stitutional under the balancing standard of Burdick v. Ta
kushi, 504 U. S. 428 (1992): a State may not burden the right
to vote merely by invoking abstract interests, be they legiti
mate, see ante, at 191–197, or even compelling, but must
make a particular, factual showing that threats to its inter
ests outweigh the particular impediments it has imposed.
The State has made no such justification here, and as to some
aspects of its law, it has hardly even tried. I therefore re
spectfully dissent from the Court’s judgment sustaining the
statute.2
1 Senate Enrolled Act No. 483, 2005 Ind. Acts p. 2005.
2 I agree with the lead opinion that the petitioners in No. 07–25 have
standing and that we therefore need not determine whether the remaining
petitioners also have standing. See ante, at 189, n. 7.

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210 CRAWFORD v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BD.
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I
Voting-rights cases raise two competing interests, the one
side being the fundamental right to vote. See Burdick,
supra, at 433 (“It is beyond cavil that ‘voting is of the most
fundamental significance under our constitutional struc
ture’ ” (quoting Illinois Bd. of Elections v. Socialist Workers
Party, 440 U. S. 173, 184 (1979))); see also Purcell v. Gonza
lez, 549 U. S. 1, 3–4 (2006) (per curiam); Dunn v. Blumstein,
405 U. S. 330, 336 (1972); Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533,
561–562 (1964); Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356, 370 (1886).
The Judiciary is obliged to train a skeptical eye on any quali
fication of that right. See Reynolds, supra, at 562 (“Espe
cially since the right to exercise the franchise in a free and
unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and
political rights, any alleged infringement of the right of citi
zens to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized”).
As against the unfettered right, however, lies the “[c]om
mon sense, as well as constitutional law . . . that government
must play an active role in structuring elections; ‘as a practi
cal matter, there must be a substantial regulation of elec
tions if they are to be fair and honest and if some sort of
order, rather than chaos, is to accompany the democratic
processes.’ ” Burdick, supra, at 433 (quoting Storer v.
Brown, 415 U. S. 724, 730 (1974)); see also Burdick, 504 U. S.,
at 433 (“Election laws will invariably impose some burden
upon individual voters”).
Given the legitimacy of interests on both sides, we have
avoided preset levels of scrutiny in favor of a sliding-scale
balancing analysis: the scrutiny varies with the effect of the
regulation at issue. And whatever the claim, the Court has
long made a careful, ground-level appraisal both of the prac
tical burdens on the right to vote and of the State’s reasons
for imposing those precise burdens. Thus, in Burdick:
“A court considering [such] a challenge . . . must weigh
‘the character and magnitude of the asserted injury
to the rights protected by the First and Fourteenth

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211 Cite as: 553 U. S. 181 (2008)
Souter, J., dissenting
Amendments that the plaintiff seeks to vindicate’
against ‘the precise interests put forward by the State
as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule,’ tak
ing into consideration ‘the extent to which those inter
ests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff ’s rights.’ ”
Id., at 434 (quoting Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U. S. 780,
789 (1983)).
The lead opinion does not disavow these basic principles.
See ante, at 190–191 (discussing Burdick); see also ante, at
191 (“However slight [the] burden may appear, . . . it must
be justified by relevant and legitimate state interests suffi
ciently weighty to justify the limitation” (internal quotation
marks omitted)). But I think it does not insist enough on
the hard facts that our standard of review demands.
II
Under Burdick, “the rigorousness of our inquiry into the
propriety of a state election law depends upon the extent to
which a challenged regulation burdens First and Fourteenth
Amendment rights,” 504 U. S., at 434, upon an assessment of
the “ ‘character and magnitude of the asserted [threatened]
injury,’ ” ibid. (quoting Anderson, supra, at 789), and an esti
mate of the number of voters likely to be affected.
A
The first set of burdens shown in these cases is the travel
costs and fees necessary to get one of the limited variety of
federal or state photo identifications needed to cast a regular
ballot under the Voter ID Law.3 The travel is required for
3 Under Indiana’s law, an ID does not qualify as proof of identification
unless it “satisfies all [of] the following”:
“(1) The document shows the name of the individual to whom the docu
ment was issued, and the name conforms to the name in the individual’s
voter registration record.
“(2) The document shows a photograph of the individual to whom the doc
ument was issued.
[Footnote 3 is continued on p. 212]

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212 CRAWFORD v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BD.
Souter, J., dissenting
the personal visit to a license branch of the Indiana Bureau
of Motor Vehicles (BMV), which is demanded of anyone
applying for a driver’s license or nondriver photo identifica
tion. See 458 F. Supp. 2d 775, 791 (SD Ind. 2006). The
need to travel to a BMV branch will affect voters according
to their circumstances, with the average person probably
viewing it as nothing more than an inconvenience. Poor,
old, and disabled voters who do not drive a car, however,
may find the trip prohibitive,4 witness the fact that the BMV
“(3) The document includes an expiration date, and the document:
“(A) is not expired; or
“(B) expired after the date of the most recent general election.
“(4) The document was issued by the United States or the state of Indi
ana.” Ind. Code Ann. § 3–5–2–40.5 (West 2006).
4 The State asserts that the elderly and disabled are adequately accom
modated through their option to cast absentee ballots, and so any burdens
on them are irrelevant. See Brief for State Respondents 41. But as peti
tioners’ amici AARP and the National Senior Citizens Law Center point
out, there are crucial differences between the absentee and regular ballot.
Brief for AARP et al. as Amici Curiae 12–16. Voting by absentee ballot
leaves an individual without the possibility of receiving assistance from
pollworkers, and thus increases the likelihood of confusion and error.
More seriously, as the Supreme Court of Indiana has recognized, Indiana
law “treats absentee voters differently from the way it treats Election
Day voters,” in the important sense that “an absentee ballot may not be
recounted in situations where clerical error by an election officer rendered
it invalid.” Horseman v. Keller, 841 N. E. 2d 164, 171 (2006). The State
itself notes that “election officials routinely reject absentee ballots on sus
picion of forgery.” Brief for State Respondents 62. The record indicates
that voters in Indiana are not unaware of these risks. One elderly affiant
in the District Court testified: “I don’t trust [the absentee] system. . . .
Because a lot of soldiers vote like that and their votes wasn’t counted in
the last election according to what I read, absentee.” App. 209 (deposi
tion of David Harrison).
It is one thing (and a commendable thing) for the State to make absen
tee voting available to the elderly and disabled; but it is quite another to
suggest that, because the more convenient but less reliable absentee ballot
is available, the State may freely deprive the elderly and disabled of the
option of voting in person.

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213 Cite as: 553 U. S. 181 (2008)
Souter, J., dissenting
has far fewer license branches in each county than there
are voting precincts.5 Marion County, for example, has
over 900 active voting precincts, see Brief for Respondent
Marion County Election Board 4,6 yet only 12 BMV license
branches; 7 in Lake County, there are 565 active voting
precincts, see n. 6, supra, to match up with only 8 BMV
locations; 8 and Allen County, with 309 active voting pre
cincts, see ibid., has only 3 BMV license branches.9 The
same pattern holds in counties with smaller populations.
Brown County has 12 active voter precincts, see ibid., and
only 1 BMV office; 10 while there were 18 polling places avail
able in Fayette County’s 2007 municipal primary,11 there was
only 1 BMV license branch; 12 and Henry County, with 42
polling places approved for 2008 elections,13 has only 1 BMV
office.
The burden of traveling to a more distant BMV office
rather than a conveniently located polling place is probably
5 Under Indiana law, county executives must locate a polling place within
five miles of the closest boundary of each voting precinct, and, with limited
exceptions, no precinct may cover more than 1,200 active voters at the
time it is established. See Brief for Respondent Marion County Election
Board 3 (citing Ind. Code Ann. §§ 3–11–8–3(b), 3–11–1.5–3). The result is
that the number of polling places tends to track the number of voting
precincts in a county. In Henry County, for example, there are 42 active
precincts, see n. 6, infra, and 42 polling places have been approved for the
2008 elections, see n. 13, infra.
6 See also Count of Active Precincts by County, online at http://www.in.
gov/sos/pdfs/Precincts_by_County_and_State_022706.pdf (all Internet ma
terials as visited Apr. 21, 2008, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file).
7 See Marion County License Branches, http://www.in.gov/ bmv/3134.htm.
8 See Lake County, http://www.in.gov/ bmv/3150.htm.
9 See Allen County, http://www.in.gov/ bmv/2954.htm.
10 See Brown County, http://www.in.gov/ bmv/3302.htm.
11 See http://www.co.fayette.in.us/2007%20polling_locations_munic.htm.
12 See Fayette County, http://www.in.gov/ bmv/3246.htm.
13 See News Release, Henry County, Indiana, Polling Places Approved
for the 2008 Elections, http://www.henryco.net/cm/node/52.

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214 CRAWFORD v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BD.
Souter, J., dissenting
serious for many of the individuals who lack photo identifi
cation.14 They almost certainly will not own cars, see Brief
for Current and Former State Secretaries of State as Amici
Curiae 11, and public transportation in Indiana is fairly lim
ited. According to a report published by Indiana’s Depart
ment of Transportation in August 2007, 21 of Indiana’s 92
counties have no public transportation system at all,15 and as
of 2000, nearly 1 in every 10 voters lived within 1 of these
21 counties.16 Among the counties with some public system,
21 provide service only within certain cities, and 32 others
restrict public transportation to regional county service,
14 The travel burdens might, in the future, be reduced to some extent by
Indiana’s commendable “BMV2You” mobile license branch, which will
travel across the State for an average of three days a week, and provide
BMV services (including ID services). See http://www.in.gov/ bmv/
3554.htm. The program does not count in my analysis, however, because
the program was only recently opened in August 2007, see Indiana BMV
Opens License Branch at State Fair, http://www.in.gov/newsroom.htm?
detailContent=93_10400.htm, and its long-term service schedule has yet to
be determined.
15 Indiana Public Transit: Annual Report 2006, p. 29 (hereinafter Annual
Report), http://www.in.gov/indot/files/INDOT_2006.pdf. The 21 counties
with no public transportation, according to the study, are: Adams, Black
ford, Brown, Carroll, Clay, De Kalb, Gibson, Jennings, Lagrange, Parke,
Perry, Posey, Putnam, Rush, Spencer, Steuben, Tipton, Vermillion, War
ren, Warrick, and Whitley. See ibid.
A Website of the American Public Transportation Association, which
compiles public transit information across the States, confirms that each
of those 21 counties lacks any public transportation offerings, and in fact
adds another 13 counties to this category: Boone, Decatur, Fayette, Fulton,
Hancock, Hendricks, Huntington, Miami, Morgan, Noble, Pike, Shelby, and
Wells. See Transit Systems in Indiana, http://www.publictransportation.
org/systems/state.asp?state=IN#A44. The discrepancy appears to arise,
in part, from the fact that the American Public Transportation Association
has not counted demand response systems that have been established in
at least 6 of these 13 counties. See Annual Report 36, 50, 56, 96, 110, 144.
16 In 2000, approximately 9% of Indiana’s population lived within 1 of
these 21 counties. See County and City Extra: Special Decennial Census
Edition 169, 176 (D. Gaquin & K. DeBrandt eds. 2002).

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215 Cite as: 553 U. S. 181 (2008)
Souter, J., dissenting
leaving only 18 that offer countywide public transportation,
see n. 15, supra. State officials recognize the effect that
travel costs can have on voter turnout, as in Marion County,
for example, where efforts have been made to “establis[h]
most polling places in locations even more convenient than
the statutory minimum,” in order to “provid[e] for neighbor
hood voting.” Brief for Respondent Marion County Elec
tion Board 3–4.
Although making voters travel farther than what is con
venient for most and possible for some does not amount to a
“severe” burden under Burdick, that is no reason to ignore
the burden altogether. It translates into an obvious eco
nomic cost (whether in worktime lost, or getting and paying
for transportation) that an Indiana voter must bear to ob
tain an ID.
For those voters who can afford the round trip, a second
financial hurdle appears: in order to get photo identification
for the first time, they need to present “a birth certificate,
certificate of naturalization, U. S. veterans photo identifica
tion, U. S. military photo identification, or a U. S. passport.”
Ante, at 198, n. 17 (lead opinion) (citing Ind. Admin. Code,
tit. 140, § 7–4–3 (2008)). As the lead opinion says, the two
most common of these documents come at a price: Indiana
counties charge anywhere from $3 to $12 for a birth certifi
cate (and in some other States the fee is significantly higher),
see ante, at 198, n. 17, and that same price must usually be
paid for a first-time passport, since a birth certificate is re
quired to prove U. S. citizenship by birth. The total fees for
a passport, moreover, are up to about $100.17 So most vot
ers must pay at least one fee to get the ID necessary to cast
17 See Dept. of State, How to Apply in Person for a Passport, http://
travel.state.gov/passport/get/first/first_830.html; Dept. of State, Passport
Fees (Feb. 1, 2008), http://travel.state.gov/passport/get/fees/fees_837.html
(total fees of $100 for a passport book and $45 for a passport card for
individuals 16 and older).

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216 CRAWFORD v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BD.
Souter, J., dissenting
a regular ballot.18 As with the travel costs, these fees are
far from shocking on their face, but in the Burdick analysis
it matters that both the travel costs and the fees are dispro
portionately heavy for, and thus disproportionately likely to
deter, the poor, the old, and the immobile.
B
To be sure, Indiana has a provisional-ballot exception to
the ID requirement for individuals the State considers “indi
gent” 19 as well as those with religious objections to being
photographed, see ante, at 199–200 (lead opinion), and this
sort of exception could in theory provide a way around the
costs of procuring an ID. But Indiana’s chosen exception
does not amount to much relief.
The law allows these voters who lack the necessary ID to
sign the pollbook and cast a provisional ballot. See 458
F. Supp. 2d, at 786 (citing Ind. Code Ann. § 3–11–8–25.1 (West
Supp. 2007)). As the lead opinion recognizes, though, ante,
at 199–200, that is only the first step; to have the provisional
ballot counted, a voter must then appear in person before the
circuit court clerk or county election board within 10 days of
the election, to sign an affidavit attesting to indigency or
religious objection to being photographed (or to present an
18 The lead opinion notes that “the record does not provide even a rough
estimate of how many indigent voters lack copies of their birth certifi
cates.” Ante, at 202, n. 20. But the record discloses no reason to think
that any appreciable number of poor voters would need birth certificates
absent the Voter ID Law, and no reason to believe that poor people would
spend money to get them if they did not need them.
19 To vote by provisional ballot, an individual must (at the circuit court
clerk’s office) sign an affidavit affirming that she is “indigent” and “unable
to obtain proof of identification without the payment of a fee.” Ind. Code
Ann. § 3–11.7–5–2.5(c)(2)(A) (West 2006). Indiana law does not define the
key terms “indigent” or “unable,” but I will assume for present purposes
that the Indiana Supreme Court will eventually construe these terms
broadly, so that the income threshold for indigency is at least at the federal
poverty level, and so that the exception covers even individuals who are
facing only short-term financial difficulties.

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217 Cite as: 553 U. S. 181 (2008)
Souter, J., dissenting
ID at that point),20 see 458 F. Supp. 2d, at 786. Unlike the
trip to the BMV (which, assuming things go smoothly, needs
to be made only once every four years for renewal of non
driver photo identification, see id., at 791), this one must be
taken every time a poor person or religious objector wishes
to vote, because the State does not allow an affidavit to count
in successive elections. And unlike the trip to the BMV
(which at least has a handful of license branches in the more
populous counties), a county has only one county seat. Forc
ing these people to travel to the county seat every time they
try to vote is particularly onerous for the reason noted
already, that most counties in Indiana either lack public
transportation or offer only limited coverage. See supra,
at 213–215.
That the need to travel to the county seat each election
amounts to a high hurdle is shown in the results of the 2007
municipal elections in Marion County, to which Indiana’s
Voter ID Law applied. Thirty-four provisional ballots were
cast, but only two provisional voters made it to the county
clerk’s office within the 10 days. See Brief for Respondent
Marion County Election Board 8–9. All 34 of these aspiring
voters appeared at the appropriate precinct; 33 of them pro
vided a signature, and every signature matched the one on
file; and 26 of the 32 voters whose ballots were not counted
had a history of voting in Marion County elections. See
id., at 9.
All of this suggests that provisional ballots do not obviate
the burdens of getting photo identification. And even if that
were not so, the provisional-ballot option would be inade
20 Indiana law allows voters to cast a provisional ballot at the county
clerk’s office starting 29 days prior to election day until noon of the day
prior to election day, see Ind. Code Ann. § 3–11.7–5–2.5, and this might
enable some voters to make only one burdensome trip to the county seat.
But for the voters who show up at the polls to vote and are there told that
they lack the photo identification needed to cast a regular ballot, the Voter
ID Law effectively forces them to make two trips.

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218 CRAWFORD v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BD.
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quate for a further reason: the indigency exception by defi
nition offers no relief to those voters who do not consider
themselves (or would not be considered) indigent but as a
practical matter would find it hard, for nonfinancial reasons,
to get the required ID (most obviously the disabled).
C
Indiana’s Voter ID Law thus threatens to impose serious
burdens on the voting right, even if not “severe” ones, and
the next question under Burdick is whether the number of
individuals likely to be affected is significant as well. Rec
ord evidence and facts open to judicial notice answer yes.
Although the District Court found that petitioners failed
to offer any reliable empirical study of numbers of voters
affected, see ante, at 200 (lead opinion),21 we may accept that
court’s rough calculation that 43,000 voting-age residents
lack the kind of identification card required by Indiana’s law.
See 458 F. Supp. 2d, at 807. The District Court made that
estimate by comparing BMV records reproduced in petition
ers’ statistician’s report with U. S. Census Bureau figures for
Indiana’s voting-age population in 2004, see ibid., and the
State does not argue that these raw data are unreliable.
The State, in fact, shows no discomfort with the District
Court’s finding that an “estimated 43,000 individuals” (about
1% of the State’s voting-age population) lack a qualifying ID.
Brief for State Respondents 25. If the State’s willingness
to take that number is surprising, it may be less so in light
of the District Court’s observation that “several factors . . .
suggest the percentage of Indiana’s voting age population
with photo identification is actually lower than 99%,” 458
21 Much like petitioners’ statistician, the BMV “has not been able to de
termine the approximate number of Indiana residents of voting age who
are without an Indiana driver’s license or identification card,” 458 F. Supp.
2d 775, 791 (SD Ind. 2006), but the BMV does acknowledge “that there
are persons who do not currently have [the required ID] and who are, or
who will be, eligible to vote at the next election,” ibid.

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Souter, J., dissenting
F. Supp. 2d, at 807, n. 43,22 a suggestion in line with national
surveys showing roughly 6%–10% of voting-age Americans
without a state-issued photo identification card. See Brief
for Petitioners in No. 07–21, pp. 39–40, n. 17 (citing National
Commission on Election Reform, To Assure Pride and Con
fidence: Task Force Reports, ch. VI: Verification of Iden
tity, p. 4 (Aug. 2001), http://webstorage3.mcpa.virginia.edu/
commissions/comm_2001_taskforce.pdf). We have been of
fered no reason to think that Indiana does a substantially
better job of distributing IDs than other States.23
22 The District Court explained:
“[O]ur simple comparison of raw numbers does not take into account: indi
viduals who have died but whose Indiana driver’s license or identification
cards have not expired; individuals who have moved outside the state and
no longer consider themselves Indiana residents but who still retain a
valid Indiana license or identification card; individuals who have moved
into Indiana and now consider themselves Indiana residents but have not
yet obtained an Indiana license or identification; and individuals, such as
students, who are residing in Indiana temporally, are registered to vote in
another state, but have obtained an Indiana license or identification.” Id.,
at 807, n. 43.
The District Court also identified three factors that, in its view, might
require deductions of the 43,000 figure. First, the District Court noted
that BMV records do not cover all forms of identification that may be used
to vote under the Voter ID Law (e. g., federal photo identification, such as
a passport). This is a valid consideration, but is unlikely to overcome the
additions that must be made for the various factors listed above. Second,
the court noted that the BMV records do not account for the exceptions
to the photo identification requirement (such as the indigency and
absentee-ballot exceptions). This factor does not warrant a deduction of
the 43,000 number because, as I have argued, the indigency exception im
poses serious burdens of its own, see supra, at 216–218, and the absentee
ballot exception is not a wholly adequate substitute for voting in person,
see n. 4, supra. Finally, the District Court noted that many individuals
are not registered to vote. For reasons I lay out in n. 24, infra, I am not
convinced that this fact is relevant at all.
23 Although the lead opinion expresses confidence that the percentage of
voters without the necessary photo ID will steadily decrease, see ante, at
188, n. 6, and suggests that the number may already have dropped, see
ante, at 202, n. 20, there is reason to be less sanguine. See ACLU Sues

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220 CRAWFORD v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BD.
Souter, J., dissenting
So a fair reading of the data supports the District Court’s
finding that around 43,000 Indiana residents lack the needed
identification, and will bear the burdens the law imposes.
To be sure, the 43,000 figure has to be discounted to some
extent, residents of certain nursing homes being exempted
from the photo identification requirement. 458 F. Supp. 2d,
at 786. But the State does not suggest that this narrow
exception could possibly reduce 43,000 to an insubstantial
number.24
The upshot is this. Tens of thousands of voting-age resi
dents lack the necessary photo identification. A large pro
portion of them are likely to be in bad shape economically,
To Halt License Revocation, Fort Wayne J. Gazette, Feb. 9, 2008, p. 3C
(“The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the state to prevent the
possible revocation of up to 56,000 driver’s licenses that don’t match infor
mation in a Social Security database. Many of the mismatches were cre
ated by typographical errors or by people getting married and changing
their last names, the [BMV] said last week when it announced it had sent
warning letters to about 206,000 people in Indiana”); see also Dits, Court
Date Is Set for Bid To Stop BMV Revoking Licenses, South Bend Tribune,
Feb. 21, 2008, p. B1; Who To Blame in Name Game? Many Caught in Name
Game; Merging BMV, Social Security Databases Forcing Many To Hire
Lawyers, Post-Tribune, Jan. 8, 2008, p. A5; Snelling, Name Issue Blocks
License, id., Jan. 7, 2008, p. A6.
24 The State does imply that we should further discount the 43,000 esti
mate to exclude citizens who are not registered to vote, or who are regis
tered but not planning to vote. See Brief for State Respondents 25; see
also ante, at 200 (lead opinion) (“[T]he evidence in the record does not
provide us with the number of registered voters without photo identifica
tion”). But that argument is flatly contradicted by this Court’s settled
precedent. As our cases have recognized, disfranchisement is disfran
chisement, whether or not the disfranchised voter would have voted if
given the choice. That is why in Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U. S. 330 (1972),
the Court did not ask whether any significant number of individuals de
prived of the right to vote by durational residence requirements would
actually have chosen to vote. And in Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections,
383 U. S. 663 (1966), the Court did not pause to consider whether any of
the qualified voters deterred by the $1.50 poll tax would have opted to
vote if there had been no fee. Our cases make clear that the Constitution
protects an individual’s ability to vote, not merely his decision to do so.

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221 Cite as: 553 U. S. 181 (2008)
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see 472 F. 3d 949, 951 (CA7 2007) (“No doubt most people
who don’t have photo ID are low on the economic ladder”);
cf. Bullock v. Carter, 405 U. S. 134, 144 (1972) (“[W]e would
ignore reality were we not to recognize that this system falls
with unequal weight on voters . . . according to their eco
nomic status”).25 The Voter ID Law places hurdles in the
way of either getting an ID or of voting provisionally, and
they translate into nontrivial economic costs. There is ac
cordingly no reason to doubt that a significant number of
state residents will be discouraged or disabled from voting.
Cf. 458 F. Supp. 2d, at 823 (“We do not doubt that such indi
viduals exist somewhere, even though Plaintiffs were unable
to locate them”); 472 F. 3d, at 952 (“No doubt there are at
least a few [whom the law will deter from voting] in
Indiana . . . ”); see also ante, at 199–200 (lead opinion).
Petitioners, to be sure, failed to nail down precisely how
great the cohort of discouraged and totally deterred voters
will be, but empirical precision beyond the foregoing num
bers has never been demanded for raising a voting-rights
claim. Cf. Washington State Grange v. Washington State
Republican Party, 552 U. S. 442, 461–462 (2008) (Roberts,
C. J., concurring) (“Nothing in my analysis requires the par
ties to produce studies regarding voter perceptions on this
score”); Dunn, 405 U. S., at 335, n. 5 (“[I]t would be difficult
to determine precisely how many would-be voters through
out the country cannot vote because of durational residence
25 Studies in other States suggest that the burdens of an ID requirement
may also fall disproportionately upon racial minorities. See Overton,
Voter Identification, 105 Mich. L. Rev. 631, 659 (2007) (“In 1994, the U. S.
Department of Justice found that African-Americans in Louisiana were
four to five times less likely than white residents to have government
sanctioned photo identification”); id., at 659–660 (describing June 2005
study by the Employment and Training Institute at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which found that while 17% of voting-age whites
lacked a valid driver’s license, 55% of black males and 49% of black females
were unlicensed, and 46% of Latino males and 59% of Latino females were
similarly unlicensed).

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222 CRAWFORD v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BD.
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requirements”); Bullock, supra, at 144 (taking account of
“the obvious likelihood” that candidate filing fees would “fall
more heavily on the less affluent segment of the community,
whose favorites may be unable to pay the large costs”).
While of course it would greatly aid a plaintiff to establish
his claims beyond mathematical doubt, he does enough to
show that serious burdens are likely.
Thus, petitioners’ case is clearly strong enough to prompt
more than a cursory examination of the State’s asserted in
terests. And the fact that Indiana’s photo identification re
quirement is one of the most restrictive in the country, see
Brief for Current and Former State Secretaries of State as
Amici Curiae 27–30 (compiling state voter-identification
statutes); see also Brief for State of Texas et al. as Amici
Curiae 10–13 (same),26 makes a critical examination of the
26 Unlike the Help America Vote Act of 2002, 116 Stat. 1666, 42 U. S. C.
§ 15301 et seq. (2000 ed., Supp. V), which generally requires proof of identi
fication but allows for a variety of documents to qualify, see ante, at 192–
193 (lead opinion), Indiana accepts only limited forms of federally issued
or state-issued photo identification, see n. 3, supra, and does not allow
individuals lacking the required identification to cast a regular ballot at
the polls. Only one other State, Georgia, currently restricts voters to the
narrow forms of government-issued photo identification. See Ga. Code
Ann. § 21–2–417 (Supp. 2007). But a birth certificate is not needed to get
a Georgia voter identification card. See § 21–2–417.1; Ga. Comp. Rules &
Regs., Rule 183–1–20.01 (2006).
Missouri’s Legislature passed a restrictive photo identification law com
parable to Indiana’s, but the Missouri Supreme Court struck it down as
violative of the State Constitution. Weinschenk v. State, 203 S. W. 3d 201
(2006) (per curiam). Florida requires photo identification, but permits
the use of several forms, including a debit or credit card; military identifi
cation; student identification; retirement center identification; neighbor
hood association identification; and public assistance identification. See
Fla. Stat. Ann. § 101.043(1) (West Supp. 2008). Moreover, a Florida voter
who lacks photo identification may cast a provisional ballot, and that ballot
will be counted so long as the signature on the ballot matches the one on
the voter’s registration. §§ 101.043(2), 101.048.
All other States that require identification at the polls either allow vot
ers to identify themselves using a variety of documents, see Ala. Code

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223 Cite as: 553 U. S. 181 (2008)
Souter, J., dissenting
State’s claims all the more in order. Cf. Randall v. Sorrell,
548 U. S. 230, 253 (2006) (plurality opinion) (citing as a “dan
ger sig[n]” that “contribution limits are substantially lower
than . . . comparable limits in other States,” and concluding
that “[w]e consequently must examine the record independ
ently and carefully to determine whether [the] limits are
‘closely drawn’ to match the State’s interests”); id., at 284,
288 (Souter, J., dissenting) (finding that deference was ap
propriate on the reasoning that limits were “consistent with
limits set by the legislatures of many other States, all of
them with populations larger than Vermont’s,” and that
“[t]he Legislature of Vermont evidently tried to account for
the realities of campaigning in Vermont”).
III
Because the lead opinion finds only “limited” burdens on
the right to vote, see ante, at 202–203, it avoids a hard look
at the State’s claimed interests. See ante, at 191–197. But
having found the Voter ID Law burdens far from trivial,
I have to make a rigorous assessment of “ ‘the precise inter
ests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden
imposed by its rule,’ [and] ‘the extent to which those inter
§ 17–9–30 (2007); Alaska Stat. § 15.15.225 (2006); Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 16–
579 (West 2006); Ark. Code Ann. § 7–5–305(a)(8) (2007); Colo. Rev. Stat.
§§ 1–1–104(19.5), 1–7–110 (2007); Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 117.227 (Lexis 2004);
Mont. Code Ann. § 13–13–114 (2007); N. M. Stat. Ann. §§ 1–1–24, 1–12–7.1,
as amended by 2008 N. M. Laws ch. 59; N. M. Stat. Ann. § 1–12–8 (Cum.
Supp. 2007); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §§ 3503.16(B)(1), 3505.18 (Lexis Supp.
2007); S. C. Code Ann. §§ 7–5–125, 7–13–710 (Cum. Supp. 2007); Tenn. Code
Ann. § 2–7–112 (2003); Tex. Elec. Code Ann. §§ 63.001–63.009 (West 2003
and Supp. 2007); § 63.0101 (West Supp. 2007); Wash. Rev. Code § 29A.44.205
(2006), or allow voters lacking identification to cast a regular ballot upon
signing an affidavit (or providing additional identifying information), see
Conn. Gen. Stat. § 9–261 (2007); Del. Code Ann., Tit. 15, § 4937 (2007); Haw.
Rev. Stat. § 11–136 (2006 Cum. Supp.); La. Stat. Ann. § 18:562 (West Supp.
2008); Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. § 168.523(1) (West Supp. 2007); N. D. Cent.
Code Ann. § 16.1–05–07 (Lexis Supp. 2007); S. D. Codified Laws §§ 12–18–
6.1, 12–18–6.2 (2004); Va. Code Ann. § 24.2–643 (Lexis 2006).

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224 CRAWFORD v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BD.
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ests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff ’s rights.’ ”
Burdick, 504 U. S., at 434 (quoting Anderson, 460 U. S., at
789).
As this quotation from Burdick indicates, the interests
claimed to justify the regulatory scheme are subject to dis
count in two distinct ways. First, the generalities raised by
the State have to be shaved down to the precise “aspect[s of
claimed interests] addressed by the law at issue.” Califor
nia Democratic Party v. Jones, 530 U. S. 567, 584 (2000) (em
phasis deleted); see ibid. (scrutiny of state interests “is not
to be made in the abstract, by asking whether [the interests]
are highly significant values; but rather by asking whether
the aspect of [those interests] addressed by the law at issue
is highly significant” (emphasis in original)). And even if
the State can show particularized interests addressed by the
law, those interests are subject to further discount depend
ing on “the extent to which [they] make it necessary to bur
den the plaintiff ’s rights.” Burdick, supra, at 434 (internal
quotation marks omitted).
As the lead opinion sees it, the State has offered four
related concerns that suffice to justify the Voter ID Law:
modernizing election procedures, combating voter fraud,
addressing the consequences of the State’s bloated voter
rolls, and protecting public confidence in the integrity of the
electoral process. See ante, at 191–197. On closer look,
however, it appears that the first two (which are really just
one) can claim modest weight at best, and the latter two if
anything weaken the State’s case.
A
The lead opinion’s discussion of the State’s reasons begins
with the State’s asserted interests in “election moderniza
tion,” ante, at 192–197, and in combating voter fraud, see
ante, at 194–197. Although these are given separate head
ings, any line drawn between them is unconvincing; as I un

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Souter, J., dissenting
derstand it, the “effort to modernize elections,” Brief for
State Respondents 12, is not for modernity’s sake, but to
reach certain practical (or political) objectives.27 In any
event, if a proposed modernization were in fact aimless, if it
were put forward as change for change’s sake, a State could
not justify any appreciable burden on the right to vote that
might ensue; useless technology has no constitutional value.
And in fact that is not the case here. The State says that it
adopted the ID law principally to combat voter fraud, and it
is this claim, not the slogan of “election modernization,” that
warrants attention.
1
There is no denying the abstract importance, the compel
ling nature, of combating voter fraud. See Purcell, 549
U. S., at 4 (acknowledging “the State’s compelling interest in
preventing voter fraud”); cf. Eu v. San Francisco County
Democratic Central Comm., 489 U. S. 214, 231 (1989)
(“A State indisputably has a compelling interest in preserv
ing the integrity of its election process”). But it takes sev
eral steps to get beyond the level of abstraction here.
To begin with, requiring a voter to show photo identifica
tion before casting a regular ballot addresses only one form
of voter fraud: in-person voter impersonation. The photo
identification requirement leaves untouched the problems of
absentee-ballot fraud, which (unlike in-person voter imper
sonation) is a documented problem in Indiana, see 458
F. Supp. 2d, at 793; of registered voters voting more than
once (but maintaining their own identities) in different coun
ties or in different States; of felons and other disqualified
individuals voting in their own names; of vote buying; or, for
that matter, of ballot stuffing, ballot miscounting, voter
27 See generally R. Saltman, The History and Politics of Voting Technol
ogy: In Quest of Integrity and Public Confidence (2006) (tracing the his
tory of changes in methods of voting in the United States, and the social
and political considerations behind them).

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226 CRAWFORD v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BD.
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intimidation, or any other type of corruption on the part of
officials administering elections. See Brief for Brennan
Center for Justice et al. as Amici Curiae 7.
And even the State’s interest in deterring a voter from
showing up at the polls and claiming to be someone he is not
must, in turn, be discounted for the fact that the State has
not come across a single instance of in-person voter imper
sonation fraud in all of Indiana’s history. See 458 F. Supp.
2d, at 792–793; see also ante, at 194–197 (lead opinion). Nei
ther the District Court nor the Indiana General Assembly
that passed the Voter ID Law was given any evidence what
soever of in-person voter impersonation fraud in the State.
See 458 F. Supp. 2d, at 793. This absence of support is con
sistent with the experience of several veteran poll watchers
in Indiana, each of whom submitted testimony in the District
Court that he had never witnessed an instance of attempted
voter impersonation fraud at the polls. Ibid. It is also con
sistent with the dearth of evidence of in-person voter imper
sonation in any other part of the country. See ante, at 195,
n. 12 (lead opinion) (conceding that there are at most “scat
tered instances of in-person voter fraud”); see also Brief for
Brennan Center for Justice, supra, at 11–25 (demonstrating
that “the national evidence—including the very evidence
relied on by the courts below—suggests that the type of vot
ing fraud that may be remedied by a photo identification
requirement is virtually nonexistent: the ‘problem’ of voter
impersonation is not a real problem at all”).28
The State responds to the want of evidence with the asser
tion that in-person voter impersonation fraud is hard to de
28 The lack of evidence of in-person voter impersonation fraud is not for
failure to search. See, e. g., Lipton & Urbina, In 5-Year Effort, Scant
Evidence of Voter Fraud, N. Y. Times, Apr. 12, 2007, p. A1 (“Five years
after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the
Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any orga
nized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and
interviews”).

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tect. But this is like saying the “man who wasn’t there”
is hard to spot,29 and to know whether difficulty in detec
tion accounts for the lack of evidence one at least has to
ask whether in-person voter impersonation is (or would be)
relatively harder to ferret out than other kinds of fraud (e. g.,
by absentee ballot) which the State has had no trouble
documenting. The answer seems to be no; there is rea
son to think that “impersonation of voters is . . . the most
likely type of fraud to be discovered.” U. S. Election Assist
ance Commission, Election Crimes: An Initial Review and
Recommendations for Future Study 9 (Dec. 2006) (herein
after EAC Report), http://www.eac.gov/clearinghouse/docs/
reports-and-surveys-2006electioncrimes.pdf/attachment_
download/file. This is in part because an individual who im
personates another at the polls commits his fraud in the
open, under the scrutiny of local pollworkers who may well
recognize a fraudulent voter when they hear who he claims
to be. See Brief for Respondent Marion County Election
Board 6 (“[P]recinct workers may recognize an imposter, and
precinct election workers have the authority to challenge
persons appearing to vote if the election board member ‘is
not satisfied that a person who offers to vote is the person
who the person represents the person to be’ ” (quoting Ind.
Code Ann. § 3–11–8–27 (West 2006))).
The relative ease of discovering in-person voter imperson
ation is also owing to the odds that any such fraud will
be committed by “organized groups such as campaigns or
political parties” rather than by individuals acting alone.
L. Minnite & D. Callahan, Securing the Vote: An Analysis
of Election Fraud 14 (2003), http://www.demos.org/pubs/
EDR_–_Securing_the_Vote.pdf. It simply is not worth it
for individuals acting alone to commit in-person voter imper
sonation, which is relatively ineffectual for the foolish few
29 “As I was going up the stair / I met a man who wasn’t there.” H.
Mearns, Antigonish, reprinted in Best Remembered Poems 107 (M. Gard
ner ed. 1992).

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228 CRAWFORD v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BD.
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who may commit it. If an imposter gets caught, he is sub
ject to severe criminal penalties. See, e. g., Ind. Code Ann.
§ 3–14–2–9 (West 2006) (making it a felony “knowingly [to]
vot[e] or offe[r] to vote at an election when the person is not
registered or authorized to vote”); § 3–14–2–11 (with certain
exceptions, “a person who knowingly votes or offers to vote
in a precinct except the one in which the person is registered
and resides” commits a felony); § 3–14–2–12(1) (making it a
felony “knowingly [to] vot[e] or mak[e] application to vote in
an election in a name other than the person’s own”); § 3–14–
2–12(2) (a person who, “having voted once at an election,
knowingly applies to vote at the same election in the person’s
own name or any other name” commits a felony); see also 42
U. S. C. § 1973i(e)(1) (any individual who “votes more than
once” in certain federal elections “shall be fined not more
than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or
both”). And even if he succeeds, the imposter gains nothing
more than one additional vote for his candidate. See EAC
Report 9 (in-person voter impersonation “is an inefficient
method of influencing an election”); J. Levitt, The Truth
About Voter Fraud 7 (2007), online at http://truthaboutfraud.
org/pdf/TruthAboutVoterFraud.pdf (“[F]raud by individual
voters is a singularly foolish and ineffective way to attempt
to win an election. Each act of voter fraud in connection
with a federal election risks five years in prison and a $10,000
fine, in addition to any state penalties. In return, it yields
at most one incremental vote. That single extra vote is sim
ply not worth the price” (footnote omitted)); cf. 472 F. 3d, at
951 (“[A] vote in a political election rarely has any instru
mental value, since elections for political office at the state
or federal level are never decided by just one vote” (emphasis
in original)).
In sum, fraud by individuals acting alone, however difficult
to detect, is unlikely. And while there may be greater in
centives for organized groups to engage in broad-gauged in

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229 Cite as: 553 U. S. 181 (2008)
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person voter impersonation fraud, see Minnite & Callahan,
supra, at 20, it is also far more difficult to conceal larger
enterprises of this sort. The State’s argument about the
difficulty of detecting the fraud lacks real force.
2
Nothing else the State has to say does much to bolster
its case. The State argues, for example, that even without
evidence of in-person voter impersonation in Indiana, it is
enough for the State to show that “opportunities [for such
fraud] are transparently obvious in elections without identi
fication checks,” Brief for State Respondents 54. Of course
they are, but Indiana elections before the Voter ID Law
were not run “without identification checks”; on the contrary,
as the Marion County Election Board informs us, “[t]ime
tested systems were in place to detect in-person voter imper
sonation fraud before the challenged statute was enacted,”
Brief for Respondent Marion County Election Board 6.
These included hiring pollworkers who were precinct resi
dents familiar with the neighborhood and making signature
comparisons, each effort being supported by the criminal
provisions mentioned before. Id., at 6–8.
For that matter, the deterrence argument can do only so
much work, since photo identification is itself hardly a fail
safe against impersonation. Indiana knows this, and that is
why in 2007 the State began to issue redesigned driver’s
licenses with digital watermarking.30 The State has made
this shift precisely because, in the words of its BMV, “visual
inspection is not adequate to determine the authenticity” of
driver’s licenses. See Indiana BMV, supra n. 30. Indeed,
the BMV explains that the digital watermark (which can be
scanned using equipment that, so far, Indiana does not use
30 See Indiana BMV, Digital Drivers License: Frequently Asked Ques
tions, “What is a digital watermark and why is Indiana incorporating it
into their driver license?”, http://www.in.gov/ bmv/3382.htm.

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230 CRAWFORD v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BD.
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at polling places) is needed to “tak[e] the guesswork out of
inspection.” Ibid.31 So, at least until polling places have
the machines and special software to scan the new driver’s
licenses, and until all the licenses with the older designs ex
pire (the licenses issued after 2006 but before the 2007 rede
signing are good until 2012, see 458 F. Supp. 2d, at 791), Indi
ana’s law does no more than ensure that any in-person voter
fraud will take place with fake IDs, not attempted signa
ture forgery.
Despite all this, I will readily stipulate that a State has an
interest in responding to the risk (however small) of in
person voter impersonation. See ante, at 196 (lead opinion).
I reach this conclusion, like others accepted by the Court,
because “ ‘[w]here a legislature has significantly greater in
stitutional expertise, as, for example, in the field of election
regulation, the Court in practice defers to empirical legisla
tive judgments.’ ” Randall, 548 U. S., at 285 (Souter, J.,
dissenting) (quoting Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government
PAC, 528 U. S. 377, 402 (2000) (Breyer, J., concurring)).
Weight is owed to the legislative judgment as such. But the
ultimate valuation of the particular interest a State asserts
has to take account of evidence against it as well as legisla
tive judgments for it (certainly when the law is one of the
most restrictive of its kind, see n. 26, supra), and on this
record it would be unreasonable to accord this assumed state
interest more than very modest significance.32
31 In the words of Indiana’s Governor, Mitch Daniels: “ ‘Not very long
ago, Indiana driver’s licenses were a late-night talk show joke [because of]
the ease of their fraudulent issuance and also their duplication . . . . [The
new design] will make particularly their duplication dramatically more
difficult.’ ” Udell, Digital Driver’s Licenses Designed To Stem ID Theft,
Evansville Courier & Press, June 7, 2007, p. B6.
32 On such flimsy evidence of fraud, it would also ignore the lessons of
history to grant the State’s interest more than modest weight, as the inter
est in combating voter fraud has too often served as a cover for unneces
sarily restrictive electoral rules. See F. Ogden, The Poll Tax in the South
9 (1958) (“In Arkansas and Texas, the argument was frequently presented

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3
The antifraud rationale is open to skepticism on one fur
ther ground, what Burdick spoke of as an assessment of the
degree of necessity for the State’s particular course of action.
Two points deserve attention, the first being that the State
has not even tried to justify its decision to implement the
photo identification requirement immediately on passage of
the new law. A phase-in period would have given the State
time to distribute its newly designed licenses, and to make a
genuine effort to get them to individuals in need, and a pe
riod for transition is exactly what the Commission on Fed
eral Election Reform, headed by former President Carter
and former Secretary of State Baker, recommended in its
report. See Building Confidence in U. S. Elections § 2.5
(Sept. 2005), App. 136, 140 (hereinafter Carter-Baker Re
port) (“For the next two federal elections, until January 1,
2010, in states that require voters to present identification
at the polls, voters who fail to do so should nonetheless be
allowed to cast a provisional ballot, and their ballot would
count if their signature is verified”). During this phase-in
period, the report said, States would need to make “efforts
to ensure that all voters are provided convenient opportuni
ties to obtain” the required identification. Id., at 141. The
former President and former Secretary of State explained
this recommendation in an op-ed essay:
“Yes, we are concerned about the approximately 12
percent of citizens who lack a driver’s license. So we
proposed that states finally assume the responsibility
to seek out citizens to both register voters and pro
that a poll tax payment prerequisite would purify elections by preventing
repeaters and floaters from voting”); see also Brief for Historians et al.
as Amici Curiae 4–15 (detailing abuses); R. Hayduk, Gatekeepers to the
Franchise: Shaping Election Administration in New York 36 (2005) (“In
both historical and contemporary contexts, certain groups have had an
interest in alleging fraud and thereby shaping electoral rules and practices
in a restrictive direction, and other groups have had an opposite interest”).

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232 CRAWFORD v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BD.
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vide them with free ID’s that meet federal standards.
States should open new offices, use social service agen
cies and deploy mobile offices to register voters. By
connecting ID’s to registration, voting participation will
be expanded.” Carter & Baker, Voting Reform Is in
the Cards, N. Y. Times, Sept. 23, 2005, p. A19.
Although Indiana claims to have adopted its ID requirement
relying partly on the Carter-Baker Report, see Brief for
State Respondents 5, 13, 49; see also ante, at 194 (lead opin
ion), the State conspicuously rejected the Carter-Baker Re
port’s phase-in recommendation aimed at reducing the bur
dens on the right to vote, and just as conspicuously fails even
to try to explain why.
What is left of the State’s claim must be downgraded fur
ther for one final reason: regardless of the interest the State
may have in adopting a photo identification requirement as
a general matter, that interest in no way necessitates the
particular burdens the Voter ID Law imposes on poor people
and religious objectors. Individuals unable to get photo
identification are forced to travel to the county seat every
time they wish to exercise the franchise, and they have to
get there within 10 days of the election. See supra, at 216–
218. Nothing about the State’s interest in fighting voter
fraud justifies this requirement of a postelection trip to the
county seat instead of some verification process at the poll
ing places.
In briefing this Court, the State responds by pointing to
an interest in keeping lines at polling places short. See
Brief for State Respondents 58. It warns that “[i]f election
workers—a scarce resource in any election—must attend to
the details of validating provisional ballots, voters may have
to wait longer to vote,” and it assures us that “[n]othing de
ters voting so much as long lines at the polls.” Ibid. But
this argument fails on its own terms, for whatever might be
the number of individuals casting a provisional ballot, the

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State could simply allow voters to sign the indigency affida
vit at the polls subject to review there after the election.33
After all, the Voter ID Law already requires voters lacking
photo identification to sign, at the polling site, an affidavit
attesting to proper registration. See 458 F. Supp. 2d, at 786.
Indeed, the State’s argument more than fails; it backfires,
in implicitly conceding that a not-insignificant number of in
dividuals will need to rely on the burdensome provisional
ballot mechanism. What is more, as the District Court
found, the Voter ID Law itself actually increases the likeli
hood of delay at the polls. Since any minor discrepancy be
tween a voter’s photo identification card and the registration
information may lead to a challenge, “the opportunities for
presenting challenges ha[ve] increased as a result of the
photo identification requirements.” Id., at 789; cf. 472 F. 3d,
at 955 (Evans, J., dissenting) (“The potential for mischief
with this law is obvious. Does the name on the ID ‘conform’
to the name on the voter registration list? If the last name
of a newly married woman is on the ID but her maiden name
is on the registration list, does it conform? If a name is
misspelled on one—Schmit versus Schmitt—does it conform?
If a ‘Terence’ appears on one and a shortened ‘Terry’ on the
other, does it conform?”).
B
The State’s asserted interests in modernizing elections and
combating fraud are decidedly modest; at best, they fail to
offset the clear inference that thousands of Indiana citizens
will be discouraged from voting. The two remaining justi
fications, meanwhile, actually weaken the State’s case.
33 Florida has accommodated voters in this manner. In Florida a voter
who casts a provisional ballot may have that vote counted if the voter’s
signature on the provisional-ballot certification matches the signature on
the voter’s registration. See Fla. Stat. Ann. §§ 101.043, 101.048. The
voter is not required to make a second trip to have her provisional ballot
counted.

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234 CRAWFORD v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BD.
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The lead opinion agrees with the State that “the inflation
of its voter rolls provides further support for its enactment
of ” the Voter ID Law. Ante, at 196. This is a puzzling con
clusion, given the fact, which the lead opinion notes, that
the National Government filed a complaint against Indiana,
containing this allegation:
“Indiana has failed to conduct a general program that
makes a reasonable effort to identify and remove ineligi
ble voters from the State’s registration list; has failed to
remove such ineligible voters; and has failed to engage
in oversight actions sufficient to ensure that local elec
tion jurisdictions identify and remove such ineligible
voters.” App. 309, 312.
The Federal Government and the State agreed to settle the
case, and a consent decree and order have been entered, see
ante, at 196, requiring Indiana to fulfill its list-maintenance
obligations under § 8 of the National Voter Registration Act
of 1993, 107 Stat. 82, 42 U. S. C. § 1973gg–6.
How any of this can justify restrictions on the right to
vote is difficult to say. The State is simply trying to take
advantage of its own wrong: if it is true that the State’s fear
of in-person voter impersonation fraud arises from its
bloated voter checklist, the answer to the problem is in the
State’s own hands. The claim that the State has an interest
in addressing a symptom of the problem (alleged imperson
ation) rather than the problem itself (the negligently main
tained bloated rolls) is thus self-defeating; it shows that the
State has no justifiable need to burden the right to vote as
it does, and it suggests that the State is not as serious about
combating fraud as it claims to be.34
34 The voting-rolls argument also suggests that it would not be so diffi
cult to detect in-person voter fraud after all. If it is true that prac
titioners of fraud are most likely to vote in the name of registered voters
whom they know to have died or left the jurisdiction, then Indiana could
simply audit its voting records to examine whether, and how often, in
person votes were cast using these invalid registrations.

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The State’s final justification, its interest in safeguarding
voter confidence, similarly collapses. The problem with
claiming this interest lies in its connection to the bloated
voter rolls; the State has come up with nothing to suggest
that its citizens doubt the integrity of the State’s electoral
process, except its own failure to maintain its rolls. The an
swer to this problem is not to burden the right to vote, but
to end the official negligence.
It should go without saying that none of this is to deny
States’ legitimate interest in safeguarding public confidence.
The Court has, for example, recognized that fighting percep
tions of political corruption stemming from large political
contributions is a legitimate and substantial state interest,
underlying not only campaign finance laws, but bribery and
antigratuity statutes as well. See Nixon, 528 U. S., at 390.
But the force of the interest depends on the facts (or plausi
bility of the assumptions) said to justify invoking it. See
id., at 391 (“The quantum of empirical evidence needed to
satisfy heightened judicial scrutiny of legislative judgments
will vary up or down with the novelty and plausibility of the
justification raised”). While we found in Nixon that “there
is little reason to doubt that sometimes large contributions
will work actual corruption of our political system, and no
reason to question the existence of a corresponding suspicion
among voters,” id., at 395, there is plenty of reason to be
doubtful here, both about the reality and the perception. It
is simply not plausible to assume here, with no evidence of
in-person voter impersonation fraud in a State, and very lit
tle of it nationwide, that a public perception of such fraud is
nevertheless “inherent” in an election system providing se
vere criminal penalties for fraud and mandating signature
checks at the polls. Cf. id., at 390 (“[T]he perception of cor
ruption [is] ‘inherent in a regime of large individual financial
contributions’ to candidates for public office” (quoting Buck
ley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 27 (1976) (per curiam))).

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C
Without a shred of evidence that in-person voter imper
sonation is a problem in the State, much less a crisis, Indiana
has adopted one of the most restrictive photo identification
requirements in the country. The State recognizes that tens
of thousands of qualified voters lack the necessary federally
issued or state-issued identification, but it insists on imple
menting the requirement immediately, without allowing a
transition period for targeted efforts to distribute the re
quired identification to individuals who need it. The State
hardly even tries to explain its decision to force indigents or
religious objectors to travel all the way to their county seats
every time they wish to vote, and if there is any waning of
confidence in the administration of elections it probably owes
more to the State’s violation of federal election law than to
any imposters at the polling places. It is impossible to say,
on this record, that the State’s interest in adopting its sig
nally inhibiting photo identification requirement has been
shown to outweigh the serious burdens it imposes on the
right to vote.
If more were needed to condemn this law, our own prece
dent would provide it, for the calculation revealed in the In
diana statute crosses a line when it targets the poor and
the weak. Cf. Anderson, 460 U. S., at 793 (“[I]t is especially
difficult for the State to justify a restriction that limits politi
cal participation by an identifiable political group whose
members share a particular viewpoint, associational prefer
ence, or economic status”). If the Court’s decision in Harper
v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U. S. 663 (1966), stands for
anything, it is that being poor has nothing to do with being
qualified to vote. Harper made clear that “[t]o introduce
wealth or payment of a fee as a measure of a voter’s qualifi
cations is to introduce a capricious or irrelevant factor.” Id.,
at 668. The State’s requirements here, that people without
cars travel to a motor vehicle registry and that the poor who
fail to do that get to their county seats within 10 days of

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every election, likewise translate into unjustified economic
burdens uncomfortably close to the outright $1.50 fee we
struck down 42 years ago. Like that fee, the onus of the
Indiana law is illegitimate just because it correlates with no
state interest so well as it does with the object of deterring
poorer residents from exercising the franchise.
* * *
The Indiana Voter ID Law is thus unconstitutional: the
state interests fail to justify the practical limitations placed
on the right to vote, and the law imposes an unreasonable
and irrelevant burden on voters who are poor and old.
I would vacate the judgment of the Seventh Circuit, and re
mand for further proceedings.
Justice Breyer, dissenting.
Indiana’s statute requires registered voters to present
photo identification at the polls. It imposes a burden upon
some voters, but it does so in order to prevent fraud, to build
confidence in the voting system, and thereby to maintain the
integrity of the voting process. In determining whether
this statute violates the Federal Constitution, I would bal
ance the voting-related interests that the statute affects,
asking “whether the statute burdens any one such interest
in a manner out of proportion to the statute’s salutary effects
upon the others (perhaps, but not necessarily, because of the
existence of a clearly superior, less restrictive alternative).”
Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U. S. 377,
402 (2000) (Breyer, J., concurring); ante, at 190–191 (lead
opinion) (similar standard); ante, at 210–211 (Souter, J., dis
senting) (same). Applying this standard, I believe the stat
ute is unconstitutional because it imposes a disproportionate
burden upon those eligible voters who lack a driver’s license
or other statutorily valid form of photo ID.
Like Justice Stevens, I give weight to the fact that a
national commission, chaired by former President Jimmy

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Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, studied
the issue and recommended that States should require voter
photo IDs. See Report of the Commission on Federal Elec
tion Reform, Building Confidence in U. S. Elections § 2.5
(Sept. 2005) (Carter-Baker Report), App. 136–144. Because
the record does not discredit the Carter-Baker Report or
suggest that Indiana is exceptional, I see nothing to prevent
Indiana’s Legislature (or a federal court considering the con
stitutionality of the statute) from taking account of the legis
latively relevant facts the report sets forth and paying atten
tion to its expert conclusions. Thus, I share the general
view of the lead opinion insofar as it holds that the Constitu
tion does not automatically prohibit Indiana from enacting
a photo ID requirement. Were I also to believe, as Justice
Stevens believes, that the burden imposed by the Indiana
statute on eligible voters who lack photo IDs is indetermi
nate “on the basis of the record that has been made in this
litigation,” ante, at 202, or were I to believe, as Justice
Scalia believes, that the burden the statute imposes is “min
imal” or “justified,” ante, at 204 (opinion concurring in judg
ment), then I too would reject the petitioners’ facial attack,
primarily for the reasons set forth in Part II of the lead
opinion, see ante, at 191–197.
I cannot agree, however, with Justice Stevens’ or Jus
tice Scalia’s assessment of the burdens imposed by the
statute. The Carter-Baker Commission conditioned its rec
ommendation upon the States’ willingness to ensure that the
requisite photo IDs “be easily available and issued free of
charge” and that the requirement be “phased in” over two
federal election cycles, to ease the transition. Carter-Baker
Report, App. 139, 140. And as described in Part II of Jus
tice Souter’s dissenting opinion, see ante, at 211–223, Indi
ana’s law fails to satisfy these aspects of the Commission’s
recommendation.
For one thing, an Indiana nondriver, most likely to be poor,
elderly, or disabled, will find it difficult and expensive to

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travel to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, particularly if he or
she resides in one of the many Indiana counties lacking a
public transportation system. See ante, at 213–215 (Sou
ter, J., dissenting) (noting that out of Indiana’s 92 counties,
21 have no public transportation system at all and 32 others
restrict public transportation to regional county service).
For another, many of these individuals may be uncertain
about how to obtain the underlying documentation, usually a
passport or a birth certificate, upon which the statute insists.
And some may find the costs associated with these docu
ments unduly burdensome (up to $12 for a copy of a birth
certificate; up to $100 for a passport). By way of compari
son, this Court previously found unconstitutionally burden
some a poll tax of $1.50 (less than $10 today, inflation ad
justed). See Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U. S.
663, 664, n. 1, 666 (1966); ante, at 236–237 (Souter, J., dis
senting). Further, Indiana’s exception for voters who can
not afford this cost imposes its own burden: a postelection
trip to the county clerk or county election board to sign an
indigency affidavit after each election. See ante, at 216–
218 (same).
By way of contrast, two other States—Florida and Geor
gia—have put into practice photo ID requirements signifi
cantly less restrictive than Indiana’s. Under the Florida
law, the range of permissible forms of photo ID is sub
stantially greater than in Indiana. See Fla. Stat. Ann.
§ 101.043(1) (West Supp. 2008) (including a debit or credit
card, a student ID, a retirement center ID, a neighborhood
association ID, and a public assistance ID). Moreover, a
Florida voter who lacks photo ID may cast a provisional
ballot at the polling place that will be counted if the State
determines that his signature matches the one on his voter
registration form. §§ 101.043(2); 101.048(2)(b).
Georgia restricts voters to a more limited list of acceptable
photo IDs than does Florida, but accepts in addition to proof
of voter registration a broader range of underlying documen

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tation than does Indiana. See Ga. Code Ann. § 21–2–417
(Supp. 2007); Ga. Comp. Rules & Regs., Rule 183–1–20.01
(2006) (permissible underlying documents include a paycheck
stub, Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid statement,
school transcript, or federal affidavit of birth, as long as the
document includes the voter’s full name and date of birth).
Moreover, a Federal District Court found that Georgia “has
undertaken a serious, concerted effort to notify voters who
may lack Photo ID cards of the Photo ID requirement, to
inform those voters of the availability of free [state-issued]
Photo ID cards or free Voter ID cards, to instruct the voters
concerning how to obtain the cards, and to advise the voters
that they can vote absentee by mail without a Photo ID.”
Common Cause/Georgia v. Billups, 504 F. Supp. 2d 1333,
1380 (ND Ga. 2007). While Indiana allows only certain
groups such as the elderly and disabled to vote by absentee
ballot, in Georgia any voter may vote absentee without pro
viding any excuse, and (except where required by federal
law) need not present a photo ID in order to do so. Com
pare Ind. Code Ann. § 3–11–4–1 (West 2006) with Ga. Code
Ann. § 21–2–381 (Supp. 2007). Finally, neither Georgia nor
Florida insists, as Indiana does, that indigent voters travel
each election cycle to potentially distant places for the pur
poses of signing an indigency affidavit.
The record nowhere provides a convincing reason why In
diana’s photo ID requirement must impose greater burdens
than those of other States, or than the Carter-Baker Com
mission recommended nationwide. Nor is there any reason
to think that there are proportionately fewer such voters in
Indiana than elsewhere in the country (the District Court’s
rough estimate was 43,000). See 458 F. Supp. 2d 775, 807
(SD Ind. 2006). And I need not determine the constitu
tionality of Florida’s or Georgia’s requirements (matters not
before us), in order to conclude that Indiana’s requirement
imposes a significantly harsher, unjustified burden.

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Of course, the Carter-Baker Report is not the Constitution
of the United States. But its findings are highly relevant to
both legislative and judicial determinations of the reason
ableness of a photo ID requirement; to the related necessity
of ensuring that all those eligible to vote possess the requi
site IDs; and to the presence of alternative methods of ensur
ing that possession, methods that are superior to those that
Indiana’s statute sets forth. The Commission’s findings,
taken together with the considerations set forth in Part II of
Justice Stevens’ opinion, and Part II of Justice Souter’s
dissenting opinion, lead me to the conclusion that while the
Constitution does not in general prohibit Indiana from enact
ing a photo ID requirement, this statute imposes a dispro
portionate burden upon those without valid photo IDs. For
these reasons, I dissent.