The Christian Century, in its “Century Marks” column, ran this piece from the Associated Press:
Suspect nuns: About 12 nuns were turned away from the election polls in South Bend, Indiana, on May 6 because they don’t have state or federal identification bearing a photograph. The nuns, in their 80s and 90s, had been told earlier that they would not be able to vote without such an ID, but they came anyway. Indiana’s photo ID law is the strictest in the country. It was challenged by the state’s division of the American Civil Liberties Union, but the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law in a decision issued shortly before Indiana’s presidential primary.
This was no doubt expected to provoke a response against the law: “how dare Indiana treat elderly nuns as potential voter frauds!” My response, however is a bit different: why didn’t these nuns get the necessary IDs when they knew they would be required? The IDs that Indiana makes available for people who don’t have a driver’s license cost a little bit of nothing (the argument that they were some kind of conspiracy against the poor is nonsensical when one considers how often a photo ID is necessary in this society–providing them as cheaply as Indiana does is actually a service to the poor). I can’t help but think that these nuns, elderly or not, were making some kind of political statement. They could have made a better one, about responsible citizenship by Christians in a democracy, by getting the ID and voting.
Posted by David Fischler 
