The
ruling came less than a month before Nov. 6 elections when
control of Congress is at stake.
"No compelling state interest is served by misleading local
election authorities and voters into believing a photo ID card
is a requirement for voting," Cole County Senior Circuit Judge
Richard Callahan wrote in his ruling.
According to the ruling, state officials can no longer spread
materials that say a photo identification card is required to
vote or that voters will be asked to show a photo ID card,
without specifying other forms of identification that voters may
also show.
In addition, the ruling says state authorities can no longer
require people otherwise qualified to vote to sign a sworn
statement.
The decision followed a lawsuit filed in June by Priorities USA,
which argued the law was unconstitutional.
Priorities USA Chairman Guy Cecil called the ruling a victory
for voting rights.
"With this injunction in place, hundreds of thousands of
eligible voters in Missouri who do not possess photo ID—and who
could have otherwise been disenfranchised due to the law’s
highly confusing and burdensome requirements—will once again be
able to cast their ballots free from unnecessary obstacles,"
Cecil said in an emailed statement.
A representative from the office of John Ashcroft, Missouri
secretary of state, which administers elections in the state,
did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the
ruling.
Ashcroft has promoted the law as a way of preventing vote fraud.
But he has only been able to confirm one instance of voter
impersonation in Missouri, according to the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch.
In June 2017, civil rights groups including the American Civil
Liberties Union and League of Women Voters of Missouri sued
Missouri to prevent its new voter identification law from
interfering with a special election for an alderman in St.
Louis, saying the measure could disenfranchise voters.
(Reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago; Editing by Peter
Cooney)
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