Opinion ID: 4529763
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Burden on Voters

Text: Based primarily on the district court’s finding that 31,089 applicants were prevented from registering to vote because of the DPOC requirement, we conclude that the burden imposed on the right to vote by the DPOC requirement was significant and requires heightened scrutiny. 6 In arriving at this conclusion, we reject the Secretary’s counterargument that the burden imposed here compares favorably to the burden that the Supreme Court found insubstantial in Crawford. The district court found that—before the preliminary injunction in Fish I was issued—14,770 individuals had applied to vote but had their applications suspended by the Secretary for failure to provide DPOC. In addition to these suspended applications, another 16,319 individuals had their applications canceled by the Secretary for failure to provide DPOC. The district court thus found that “31,089 total applicants . . . were denied registration for failure to 6 In labeling the burden “significant,” we—applying Justice Stevens’s “flexible” approach in Crawford—conclude that the burden is at least somewhere in between the two poles identified by Justice Scalia, i.e., “severe” and “nonsevere.” 44 provide DPOC.” Aplt.’s App., Vol. 47, at 11447. Expert testimony demonstrated that “[c]anceled or suspended applicants represented 12.4% of new voter registrations between January 1, 2013[,] and December 11, 2015,” or “approximately 12% of the total voter registration applications submitted since the law was implemented.” Id. at 11448S49. And an expert opined that the total number of applicants with suspended or canceled applications would have increased but for the injunction. And despite the eventual injunction, many of the would-be voters—including both Mr. Fish and Ms. Bucci—actually were disenfranchised and “were not registered in time to vote in the [intervening] 2014 election by operation of the DPOC law.” Id. at 11450S51. The Secretary challenges none of these findings on appeal. These factual findings create a fundamental distinction between this case and Crawford: based on an extensive record, the district court here concluded that the Kansas Secretary of State actually denied approximately thirty thousand would-be voters’ registration applications in his implementation of the DPOC requirement, while, in Crawford, the scant evidence before the Court left it with the unenviable task of attempting to estimate the magnitude of the burden on voting rights, largely from untested extra-record sources. The district court in Crawford had found that the challengers “had ‘not introduced evidence of a single, individual Indiana resident who w[ould] be unable to vote’” as a result of 45 the law. 553 U.S. at 187 (quoting Ind. Democratic Party, 458 F. Supp. 2d at 783). The Court concluded that “the evidence in the record d[id] not provide [it] with the number of registered voters without photo identification.” Id. at 200. This was because the district court had found the challengers’ experts “to be ‘utterly incredible and unreliable.’” Id. (quoting Ind. Democratic Party, 458 F. Supp. 2d at 803). Contrast that with the district court’s factual finding here that 31,089 total applicants were denied registration for failure to provide DPOC. While the record in Crawford led Justice Stevens to conclude that the burden there was slight, the record before us instead leads us to conclude that the burden on the right to vote here was significant. Moreover, in finding Indiana’s statute constitutional, Justice Stevens relied on the fact that—even for that unquantified number of voters who would lack a photo identification at the next election—Indiana’s statute provided that, “if eligible, voters without photo identification may cast provisional ballots that will ultimately be counted.” Id. at 199. In order to have such a provisional ballot counted, an eligible voter without photographic identification only needed to execute the required affidavit at the local circuit court clerk’s office. Id. Additionally, “[p]resumably most voters casting provisional ballots w[ould] be able to obtain photo identifications before the next election,” and thus would not bear this burden going forward. Id. at 199 n.19. Thus, the Court concluded that 46 the statute as a whole “impose[d] only a limited burden on voters’ rights.” Id. at 203 (quoting Burdick, 504 U.S. at 439). But as the district court here concluded, Kansas’s DPOC requirement offered no similar safety valve. See Aplt.’s App., Vol. 47, at 11520 (“[U]nlike the Indiana law in Crawford, an eligible Kansas applicant on the suspense or cancellation list does not have the option to fill out a provisional ballot, produce DPOC after the election, and have their ballot counted.”). The Kansas law allows voters who submit an application without DPOC to supplement that application at any point within the following ninety days. See Kan. Admin. Regs. § 7S23S15(b). Counties have been instructed to contact each voter that has submitted an application without DPOC three times within this ninety-day period. See Aplt.’s App., Vol. 47, at 11446. And, if they do not have DPOC, they may apply for a hearing where they are otherwise able to prove their citizenship. See Kan. Stat. Ann. § 25S2309(m). But these provisions are significantly less effective than the safety valve in Crawford because that safety valve allowed certain individuals to actually cast provisional votes while these provisions do not. Thus, voters who were not registered due to a lack of DPOC—including those who did not know that they were not registered, like Mr. Boynton and Mr. Stricker—could show up to vote but be turned away without a backup option for them to cast votes. 47 Thus, we conclude that this case presents fundamental differences with Crawford—differences that make the burden on the right to vote more substantial here than in Crawford. In sum, the burden imposed on the right to vote by the DPOC requirement was significant and requires heightened scrutiny. 7 The Secretary offers several arguments to the contrary, but we do not find any of them persuasive. First, the Secretary argues that—as a matter of law—the DPOC requirement here only imposes a limited burden on voters. He bases his 7 We acknowledge that the record also reflects certain instances where the disenfranchisement of voters arguably was not directly related to the burdens associated with the legal requirement that voters produce DPOC. That is because, in some instances, the voters in fact produced DPOC to Kansas state employees and their disenfranchisement apparently stemmed from bureaucratic snafus in Kansas’s implementation of the DPOC regime. Notably, in some instances, disenfranchisement was the result of the apparently inadvertent failures of state employees to record and to give effect to the DPOC that prospective voters provided. For example, Mr. Stricker and Mr. Boynton both brought DPOC when they went to register and either provided it to the clerk or were told that they did not need to. The Secretary does not argue that disenfranchisement stemming from such bureaucratic or administrative failures in the implementation of the DPOC regime should not be considered by us to be part and parcel of that regime, nor, relatedly, that such disenfranchisement should be excluded from our analysis of the alleged burden caused by the DPOC regime under Anderson-Burdick. Cf. Democratic Exec. Comm. of Fla., 915 F.3d at 1319S21 (considering “the way in which Florida implements the scheme” when determining the severity of the burden imposed under Anderson-Burdick); Ne. Ohio Coal. for the Homeless, 696 F.3d at 591S95 (considering burden imposed on the right to vote by “poll-worker error” under Anderson-Burdick). In particular, the Secretary does not argue that prospective voters disenfranchised through such bureaucratic snafus should not be counted, for purposes of the burden analysis, among the approximately 30,000 would-be voters that the district court found to be disenfranchised. Therefore, we have no occasion to consider any such argument further. 48 argument on Justice Stevens’s statement in Crawford that “the inconvenience of making a trip to the [Bureau of Motor Vehicles], gathering the required documents, and posing for a photograph surely does not qualify as a substantial burden on the right to vote, or even represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting.” 553 U.S. at 198. But Justice Stevens made that statement in light of the record then before the Court. Id. at 189 (concluding “the evidence in the record is not sufficient to support a facial attack on the validity of the entire statute” (emphasis added)); id. at 200 (“[O]n the basis of the evidence in the record it is not possible to quantify either the magnitude of the burden on this narrow class of voters or the portion of the burden imposed on them that is fully justified.” (emphasis added)). But while there was no evidence in Crawford that the inconvenience of going to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles constituted a significant burden, the approximately 30,000 would-be voters disenfranchised in this case provide a concrete evidentiary basis to find that a significant burden was imposed by the DPOC requirement. Thus, the fundamental differences between the record in this case and in Crawford lead us to a different conclusion. Furthermore, we also reject the Secretary’s argument that features of the DPOC requirement made it—as a matter of law—less burdensome than the law in Crawford. While the Secretary notes that Kansas allows those without DPOC to register by meeting with him and other officials, this procedure has only been 49 used five times, and we agree with the district court’s finding that its byzantine nature “adds, not subtracts, from the burdensomeness of the law.” Aplt.’s App., Vol. 47, at 11526; cf. Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U.S. 528, 541–42 (1965) (finding unconstitutional what was “plainly a cumbersome procedure” to avoid a poll tax). The Secretary also argues that Kansas accepts DPOC through e-mail, fax, or mail, while the law at issue in Crawford required voters without photo identification to travel to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. But the provisions the Secretary cites do not mention e-mail or fax. See Kan. Stat. Ann. § 25S2309(l), (t). Moreover, it is far from clear that requiring all registrants to provide DPOC—even though they need only submit it once—is less burdensome than Crawford’s requirement that voters bring identification to the polls. After all, many Indiana voters in Crawford no doubt would have driven to the polls and therefore already would have had their driver’s licenses with them; consequently, they would not have been obliged to take any further steps to vote. The Secretary also argues that there is no way to determine how many of the 31,089 would-be voters whose applications were suspended or denied “were actually unable (as opposed to just unwilling) to obtain a birth certificate or other evidence of citizenship.” Aplt.’s Opening Br. at 32; cf. Frank v. Walker, 768 F.3d 744, 749 (7th Cir. 2014) (“If people who already have copies of their birth certificates do not choose to get free photo IDs, it is not possible to describe the 50 need for a birth certificate as a legal obstacle that disfranchises them.”). In support, he notes that the district court acknowledged that “[t]here was little admissible evidence presented at trial about the rate of DPOC possession by suspended and canceled applicants.” Aplt.’s App., Vol. 47, at 11457; see also id. (“There is no evidence about how many canceled and suspended applicants in fact lack DPOC . . . .”). And, as his argument goes, if voters simply did not want to be inconvenienced by providing DPOC, this inconvenience does not necessarily constitute a cost that is beyond the “usual burdens of voting.” Crawford, 553 U.S. at 198 (plurality opinion of Stevens, J.). But the concrete record evidence of the disenfranchisement of the 31,089 would-be voters again provides reason to believe that the DPOC requirement does impose a significant burden on Kansas voters, even if some of those voters could have registered with DPOC. While the district court was unable to determine what percentage of the disenfranchised voters lacked DPOC, it did recount extensive testimony about individual voters like Mr. Fish and Ms. Bucci who lacked DPOC or faced significant costs to obtain it. When this testimonial evidence was combined with the statistical evidence of disenfranchised voters, the district court could properly conclude here that the DPOC requirement imposed a significant burden on the right to vote. 8 8 We note that a sister circuit has concluded—in the NVRA context—that this very DPOC requirement burdens the right to vote by imposing (continued...) 51 The Secretary further argues that Crawford is analogous to this case because the district court in Crawford had “estimated” that, “when the statute was enacted, around 43,000 Indiana residents lacked a state-issued driver’s license or identification card.” Id. at 187S88 (plurality opinion of Stevens, J.) (citing Ind. Democratic Party, 458 F. Supp. 2d at 807). The Secretary thus argues that, like here, there was widespread and quantified evidence of disenfranchisement in Crawford, and so we should reach the same result as the Court did there. But this argument ignores that the Supreme Court in Crawford found that this 43,000 number was meaningless because it told the Court “nothing about the number of free photo identification cards [that had been] issued since” the statute’s enactment and thus nothing about how many voters actually would be turned away from the polls. Id. at 202 n.20. We thus do not view the Court in Crawford as implying that the disenfranchisement of 43,000 voters would not be significant. Furthermore, the Court in Crawford concluded that “the evidence in the record d[id] not provide [it] with the number of registered voters without photo identification” and thus the number of voters who might be unable to vote. Id. at 8 (...continued) “onerous” processes that can lead would-be voters to give up. See League of Women Voters of the U.S. v. Newby, 838 F.3d 1, 13 (D.C. Cir. 2016) (“It does not matter whether [would-be voters were being held on a suspension list] because they lack access to the requisite documentary proof or simply because the process of obtaining that proof is so onerous that they give up. The outcome is the same—the abridgment of the right to vote.” (citations omitted)). 52 200 (emphasis added). In contrast, we know here that approximately 30,000 Kansans took affirmative and concrete steps to register to vote and were disenfranchised by application of the DPOC requirement. Therefore, we are not persuaded by the Secretary’s attempt here to analogize Crawford to this case. The Secretary relatedly argues that the district court overstated the burden by considering all 31,089 would-be voters with canceled or suspended applications because some of them might have later submitted DPOC to cure their applications if the district court had not enjoined the DPOC requirement. It is true that in Crawford Justice Stevens suggested that certain estimates of the number of voters without photographic identification were likely overstated because some voters may have obtained identification in the intervening months. Id. at 188 n.6, 202 n.20. However, the Secretary’s argument disregards the expert’s opinion here that the total number of applicants with suspended or canceled applications would have increased but for the injunction. The Secretary’s argument, in contrast, is based on sheer speculation: he makes no attempt to estimate how many of the would-be Kansas voters with canceled or suspended applications would have taken the step to submit DPOC. And, as Justice Stevens rightly pointed out in Crawford, “[s]upposition . . . is not an adequate substitute for admissible evidence subject to cross-examination in constitutional adjudication.” Id. at 202 n.20. And the concrete, admissible 53 evidence here indicates that—because of Kansas’s DPOC requirement—31,089 would-be voters were not permitted to vote; without doubt, that is a significant burden. In sum, we conclude that the DPOC requirement imposed a significant burden on the right to vote. 9