“Why are some people so aghast at the idea that when we vote we should have to show a photo ID?”

 
This is the question that Diane Dimond poses in her recent column supporting mandatory photo ID for voting. If Ms. Dimond is sincere in her desire to understand why people would oppose this wrong-headed scheme, she should direct her question to Albuquerque voter Katy Sheridan. Katy is a retired grandmother of two and has been a voter for the past 49 years. It is a responsibility she takes seriously.
 
“It’s my voice, it’s one of the ways I can make an impact on the direction my country goes,” Katy told the ACLU of New Mexico in a recent video interview.
 
On October 4, 2011, Katy set out to make her voice heard in the Albuquerque municipal elections. The day was stormy, but Katy—who does not own a car—braved the weather and walked through the wind and the rain to her polling place to cast her vote. There poll workers turned her away because she did not have a government issued photo ID with her.
 
The truth is that unnecessary and expensive photo ID laws, like the one in Albuquerque, have nothing to do with improving elections. These laws are specifically designed to make it harder for qualified American citizens like Katy Sheridan to vote. We are living through a troubling new era in our nation’s history characterized by renewed efforts to strip American citizens of their right to vote.
 
Why are we aghast? Because these mandatory photo ID laws are nothing more than a 21^st century poll tax. Poll taxes and “literacy tests” were used in the Jim Crow south to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote. We now find these tactics abhorrent and shameful, but let us not forget that many people thought them perfectly reasonable at the time: Why shouldn’t a person have to be literate to vote? Do we really want anyone voting who can’t afford a measly one-dollar fee?  You have to show an photo ID for all sorts of things today, why not voting?
 
Voting is not a privilege, it is a constitutional right, and no eligible citizen should have to pay to vote. Government issued photo IDs cost money and obtaining copies of birth certificates, passports or other required supporting documents can be expensive as well--sometimes running upwards of hundreds of dollars. This modern day poll tax burdens the citizens who are least able to afford it: people like the elderly who live on a fixed income and rural voters who live many miles from the nearest MVD.
 
Mandatory photo ID laws are the centerpiece in this new generation of vote suppression efforts, but such laws are only one tactic among many designed to make it harder for Americans to vote. In recent years, we’ve also seen efforts to suppress early voting and block civic groups like the League of Women Voters from registering new voters.
 
Voter participation and turnout is a key measure of the health of our democracy. American voter turnout is substantially lower than most other established democracies, rarely rising above 50 percent. Shouldn’t we work to reduce unnecessary barriers to voting, not make it harder? Shouldn’t we strive to ensure every eligible citizen has his or her voice heard?

At a time when unemployment is high and families are struggling, Representative Steve Pearce (NM-2) picks a callous moment to create unnecessary hurdles for Americans to obtain needed public benefits.
Recently, Rep. Pearce filed H.R. 3615 and H.R. 3722, bills that would require people to submit to arbitrary drug testing as a condition of receiving unemployment benefits and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Soon after, county commissioners here in Lincoln County, where I reside, went so far as to adopt a resolution in support of these wrong-headed bills. Aside from being mean-spirited and unduly suspicious of people who have fallen on hard times, these bills are almost certainly unconstitutional.
 
Just last fall, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of U.S. Navy veteran Luis Lebron, who rightly refuses to accept warrantless and suspicionless government seizure of his bodily fluids under the state law that requires drug testing of welfare applicants. Lebron, 35, is a single father to his four-year-old son, takes care of his mentally disabled mother, and is trying to finish his college degree. He does not take illegal substances, but the Florida “pee in this cup” law treats him like a criminal just because he needs government assistance while he works to build a better life for his family.
 

In October, a federal judge temporary blocked the Florida law, stating that “The constitutional rights of a class of citizens are at stake.” Another ACLU lawsuit overturned a similar law in Michigan in 2006.
We know from a 1996 study by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism that welfare recipients are no more likely to use illegal drugs than other Americans. According to drug testing data that was collected in Florida prior to the court’s ruling, only 2 percent of all applicants tested positive for illegal substances—far below the estimated national average of 8 percent. It is hard to imagine that, in light of these facts, any fair-minded American would support laws designed to humiliate and demonize the thousands of people like Lebron who need temporary assistance in these difficult times.
 
Making drug testing mandatory for seekers of unemployment and welfare benefits  accomplishes nothing but punishing people for being poor. As a public policy it has no basis in science or medicine, and serves only to further stigmatize and demean low-income families.
In fact, science and medical experts overwhelmingly oppose drug testing people who receive public assistance. Over twenty major medical and scientific organizations, including the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, the American Public Health Association and the National Association of Social Workers, Inc., officially opposed the implementation of Michigan’s scheme to drug test welfare recipients. It seems common sense that laws that address social and public health problems should be based on sound social and medical science—not prejudicial assumptions.
 
We can do better than this. It is true that some people in our nation struggle with substance abuse, but there are ways to approach this public health problem that are more effective, respectful and consistent with our values.
Just because a person is low-income, unlucky or unemployed does not make them somehow less deserving of the constitutional protections and basic human dignity. As Americans, we must stand up and  reject the impulse to treat our neighbors like criminal suspects when they fall on hard times. We must repudiate the idea that the government can violate the privacy of our bodies, simply to satisfy the mean-spirited political agenda of a cynical few.
 
Instead, we should treat our fellow citizens and our shared rights as if they matter.
 
Rep. Pearce would do well to remember that he represents all people in his district, not just the affluent, the fortunate and the powerful. Rather than spending his time picking on the poor, Rep. Pearce should busy himself supporting legislation that will help stabilize the economy and put the unemployed back to work.
 
Gary Mitchell
President of the Board of Directors for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico

New Mexico Doctors, Compassion & Choices, ACLU of New Mexico

Seek Ruling That Physicians Can Provide Aid In Dying

 

ALBUQUERQUE, NM – Two prominent Albuquerque physicians, Dr. Katherine Morris and Dr. Aroop Mangalik, the national nonprofit Compassion & Choices and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico filed a lawsuit today to clarify the ability of mentally competent, terminally ill patients to obtain aid in dying from their physician if they find their dying process unbearable. The doctors are asking the court to declare that physicians who provide a prescription for medication to a mentally competent terminally ill patient, which the patient could consume to bring about a peaceful death, would not be subject to criminal prosecution under existing New Mexico law, which makes a crime of assisting another to ‘commit suicide.’ The choice of a dying patient for a peaceful death is no kind of ‘suicide,’ the physicians’ lawsuit asserts, and the physician does not assist such a patient in ‘committing suicide.’ Laura Schauer Ives, managing attorney for the ACLU of New Mexico, and Compassion & Choices Director of Legal Services Kathryn Tucker represent the physicians.
 
Dr. Morris, a surgical oncologist, a cancer researcher and an assistant professor of medicine, told a news conference outside the Second Judicial District Court in Albuquerque, “A couple of years ago a patient of mine asked me for aid in dying, and because she lived in a state where it was already affirmatively legal I had no fear of supporting her request. But it was a hard decision. I had voted for the law twice. I was raised to respect people’s autonomy and decisions. But it was hard when a lovely woman to whom I was very attached asked for it. I wrote her a prescription, she got medication and she held onto it for a long time. After many months of good times and hard times, she decided – she decided – not to endure any further suffering. I hope the court will rule that patients in New Mexico have the same autonomy over their end-of-life choices.”
 
Dr. Aroop Mangalik is a practicing oncologist, as well as a clinical researcher in internal medicine and hematology-oncology and a professor of medicine. He provides primary care to adults, some of whom are terminally ill. Dr. Mangalik stated at the press conference, “Without honesty and compassion, too many patients suffer needlessly in the last few weeks of their life. No one should force a dying person to suffer. Doctors already provide treatments for terminally ill patients that are intended to ease suffering, but which we know may advance the time of death. When doctors write prescriptions for aid in dying in response to patients’ requests, their intention is primarily to provide patients with comfort and control.”
 
Ms. Tucker told the news conference, “This case is a statutory construction case: the court is asked to determine the scope of a statute. We expect that this case can move quickly, as it raises a question of law that the court should be able to resolve in a relatively short time. If the court rules in the plaintiffs’ favor, and holds that aid in dying is not prohibited by New Mexico law, physicians in New Mexico will be able to provide this intervention without fear of sanction.”

Ms. Ives explained the constitutional claims that arise, if the court should find that the state’s statute against “assisting suicide” does reach the medical practice of aid in dying. “In its vagueness, and by violating the private physician-patient relationship, the statute applied to aid in dying would deny the due process of law the constitution guarantees. It would deny doctors equal protection of the laws. It would deprive doctors of the right to free speech. And by denying the decision-making power of New Mexico citizens in one of the most intimate and fundamental areas of their lives – the way they confront the end of their lives – it would deprive them of their inherent and inalienable rights.”

“I’m here today, first and foremost,” said Dr. Morris, “because this is an issue that doesn’t get talked about at all or only in sound bites. As a society our persistent refusal to face death is hurting us. But I also am here for selfish reasons. New Mexico is my home and this is an option I would want. I don’t know if I would take it, but I want the right.”
 
The lawsuit was filed in the Second Judicial District Court. The legal complaint may be viewed here: Morris v. New Mexico (Amended).

UPDATE: Santa Fe resident and cancer patient Aja Riggs joins lawsuit as plaintiff.

 

 

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