Musings from around the state: poetry and a solution in search of a problem

By Liam Day
April 30th, 2008

Poetry: I like to consider myself something of a poet. So, whenever I detect signs of life in the sadly moribund genre, I’m happy. Case in point: Rockland High’s Gabrielle Guarracino, who reached the finals of this year’s Poetry Out Loud contest, reciting Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and Anne Sexton’s “Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward”. Thank you, Gabrielle, for keeping the lyrical flame lit.

A solution in search of a problem: The U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld Indiana’s new voter ID law. Now, I’m not opposed to the idea of requiring voters to present valid identification at the polls. I’m familiar with the legends – how many dead people vote in Boston’s elections every two years, the voters Mayor White’s campaign supposedly bussed from polling station to polling station during the ‘75 election.

My problem is with the majority opinion Justice Stephens wrote. As Marty Lederman correctly points out on Slate (which I seem to be reading quite a lot of recently), Justice Stephens rhetorically bends over backwards to prove a need for the law, which doesn’t appear to exist. According to Lederman, anyway, there hasn’t been a single case of voter ID fraud perpetuated in the manner addressed by the law documented in Indiana.

But I’ll let you decide for yourselves (though, I suppose it’s presumptuous of me to assume I have more than one reader). To consider both sides of the issue, take a look at today’s Worcester Telegram & Gazette and Berkshire Eagle, which ran editorials on it – the former in support, the latter opposed.