Voter Photo ID trial underway

Mildred Gutierrez answers questions from attorneys representing their respective side in the case of Missouri's voter photo ID law being heard by Judge Richard Callahan, seen in background, Monday in a Cole County courtroom.
Mildred Gutierrez answers questions from attorneys representing their respective side in the case of Missouri's voter photo ID law being heard by Judge Richard Callahan, seen in background, Monday in a Cole County courtroom.

The trial is underway in a lawsuit seeking to block Missouri's continued use of a new law that requires voters to show an approved identification, including a photo, when they vote at their polling place.

The plaintiffs' lawyers told Cole County Senior Judge Richard Callahan late Monday that they expected to end their presentation of evidence today.

Mildred K. Gutierrez, 71, of Lee's Summit, was the trial's first witness.

The Holts Summit native testified that voting has always been important to her family.

Her great-grandfather, Lorenzo Dow Thompson, served as Missouri's treasurer from 1921-25, then as state auditor 1925-33.

Her grandfather, Brian Thompson, "ran for governor of the state of Missouri" - although she didn't know which year.

And her father, James McDonald Whitten-Thompson, "won as alderman for Holts Summit by one vote" about 45 years ago, she said.

"All my life, it's been very important for me to vote," she told the court, "and I know that one vote counts."

Gutierrez graduated from Jefferson City High School in 1965 and worked at the Capitol "for one of our great representatives, Harold Volkmer," before he was elected to Congress.

She later lived in Las Vegas; the state of California; and Cleveland, Ohio, before returning to the Kansas City area - where she worked as an election judge in the 1980s, she testified.

However, she's part of the Photo ID lawsuit because she was forced to sign a statement - required by the new law - when she went to vote in a special election last November, and didn't have the right kind of ID.

She said she discovered major vision problems when she went to renew her driver's license in 2017, and "The eye doctor told me I was legally blind" - a condition corrected after she had cataract surgery on both eyes.

However, she also has had "a major stroke that has limited me greatly in many things that I try to do," she testified, as well as several other medical issues.

When the election judge last November wouldn't accept her expired driver's license, birth certificate, Social Security card or a utility bill as a proper ID, Gutierrez testified, she signed the form "in order to vote because that's pretty much what they told me" she had to do. "I was angry."

She didn't want to cast a provisional ballot, she said, because election officials would have to decide if her signature on election day matched her signature in the registration files.

"My signature is never quite the same" from one time to another, she said. "One day it might be squiggly.

"One day it might be beautiful."

When she went to get a non-driver's license that, the state told her, was to be free so that she could use it to vote, she was charged the normal $11 rate, Gutierrez testified.

The money later was returned, after the lawsuit was filed last summer.

Uzoma Nkwonta, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer representing the plaintiffs, told Callahan during his opening statement that the lawsuit seeks to "vindicate the constitutional right to vote - a right that is at the core of our democracy and is the essence of representative government."

The new law took effect June 1, 2017, "after years of trouble-free elections," Nkwonta said, "and imposed new restrictions on the forms of identification that a voter may present to prove their identity. That law left voters with three constitutionally impermissible options - each of which impose costs and barriers on those (who are) least able to navigate them."

Those options include showing a government-issued photo ID, such as a driver's or non-driver's license; showing another form of identification, such as a utility bill, bank statement or student ID; or casting a provisional ballot, "which will only get counted if the voter returns to the polling place with a photo ID, on election day before the polls close - or if an election official is able to match a voter's signature with the signature on file with the election authorities," Nkwonta said.

If showing a non-photo ID, he said, the voter also must sign a sworn statement "under penalty of perjury, to swear that they are required to present a form of personal identification, as prescribed by law, in order to vote."

He called the statement "inaccurate or, at the very least, confusing."

However, Assistant Attorney General Ryan Bangert argued, in his separate opening statement: "We do agree that the right to vote is incredibly important (and) is so important that 63 percent of Missourians voted in 2016 to apply common-sense, sensible protections to that right.

"This lawsuit brings challenges under the Missouri Constitution to a voter ID law that is, explicitly authorized by that provision of the Constitution that 63 percent of Missouri voters approved in 2016."

Bangert reminded Callahan that he must, as a judge, "read the Constitution as a whole - all of its parts, in harmony together."

The 2016 amendment, as a part of the Constitution, "makes clear that the voter ID requirements (in the new law) are consistent with, and do not impermissibly burden, the right to vote."

Rachel Youn came to St. Louis from New Mexico to attend Washington University - and graduated from there in May 2017.

Now she's an admissions counselor at the school.

When she voted in November 2016, election judges accepted her New Mexico driver's license as a valid ID, but could not do so at last month's primary election because of the new law.

Youn said there was some confusion at her polling place in the City of St. Louis but, eventually, she was allowed to cast a provisional ballot - then had to wait two weeks to find out if it had been counted.

The election judges showed no willingness to help her do "a lot of paperwork" - including the sworn statement - that would have allowed her to cast a regular ballot, she said.

Among the other witnessed the plaintiffs presented on the first day were two video depositions, one from a Revenue Department official who talked about how the state processes driver's and non-driver's license applications - and one from Ri Jayden Patrick of St. Louis, another one of the named plaintiffs in the case, who talked about extra problems trans-gendered people face in getting their records changed to reflect their new identities.

The trial could end Wednesday.