Thursday, January 10, 2008 As Indiana's voter ID law faced a challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court this week, news broke that one of the two people cited as evidence that the law hurt elderly voters is actually registered to vote in two states. The Indiana Evening Star reports that Faye Buis-Ewing, 72, who has been telling the media she is a 50-year resident of Indiana, holds a Florida driver's license and is registered to vote in Florida.

Ewing and her husband split their time between homes in Indiana and Florida. When she tried to vote in Indiana in 2006 using her Florida drivers' license as ID, she was turned away until she could produce an ID accepted under the Indiana law. Ewing became a "poster child" for the Indiana League of Women Voters, which has challenged the voter ID law in court, calling it a burden on the poor and elderly.

Even before Indiana's law was in place, opponents – including Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama – were lining up against it, apparently in fear that, if it stood, other states would follow. In 2005 Obama introduced a Senate resolution urging the Department of Justice to challenge any state law mandating photo IDs for voting.

In Indiana, the Democratic Party, the League of Women Voters and numerous other groups or agencies representing elderly, minority and disadvantaged voters have been challenging the law in court with the help of the Brennan Center for Justice, which states on its Web site that it is a non-partisan public policy and law institute that focuses on the fundamental issues of democracy and justice.

So far, the law has been upheld by a federal judge and a panel in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the law today and, according to the Brennan Center, “(It) is the most important voting rights case since Bush v. Gore.”

http://www.kpcnews.com/articles/2008/01/09/news/today/evening_star/doc478441f2313a5420740819.txt