Once again, a court has found that a strict voter identification law is unconstitutional. Now, joining Georgia, a Missouri circuit court judge has found that requiring voters to present a government issued photo identification in order to vote will disenfranchise many voters and with virtually no justification.

First, the judge accurately notes that there have been no complaints of voter fraud since 2002, when the state enacted identification requirements that allowed voters to use a wide range of documents to prove identity.  Governor Matt Blunt—formerly Secretary of State Matt Blunt—declared in 2004 that Missouri’s elections were “free of fraud.”  Even before then, most allegations of fraud were of the type that would not be addressed by a photo identification requirement—such as absentee balloting, which, tellingly, is exempted from the new law.  Many allegations of fraud from the past several years also later have been proven to be utterly baseless.

Nationally some ten percent of voters do not have government issued photo identification. The Department of Revenue in Missouri, an agency overseen by Republican Matt Blunt, a long time champion of such voting restrictions, conducted research showing 138,000 Missourians do not have such identification.  Secretary of State Robin Carnahan estimated it was more like 240,000.

Regardless of the exact number (which indisputably is unacceptable, whatever it is), the judge in this case understood that people who do not have the requisite identification—a group that disproportionately includes minorities, the poor, the elderly, the young, and the disabled—would have to provide costly documentation in order to obtain it. The types of documentation needed to get the required photo identification include passports, which can cost up to $236, or birth certificates, which can cost $15–$30. The expense in terms of time and effort to get such documents is immeasurable.

In an interesting and somewhat different take, the judge also astutely points out that all of these documents must provide the current full name of the voter. This means that anyone who got married since they were born and changed their name to match that of their spouse will have to get new versions of these documents in order to vote.  Thus, the law not only discriminates against minorities, but it also discriminates against married people, mostly women.

Finally, in perhaps the most important lines of the decision, the judge refutes one of the most commonly refrained arguments of those who support voter identification: everyone has an identification in order to drive and fly on an airplane, so what’s the big deal?

The fact that the state does not charge for the nondriver license itself . . . does not avoid the constitutional issue or economic reality that voters will have to “buy” numerous government documents to get the “free” photo ID to qualify for the privilege of voting.  While a license to drive may be just that: a license and not a right. The right to vote is also just that: a right and not a license.

As Congress and state legislatures continue to push identification requirements that would skew the composition of the electorate to the better liking of some politicians by disenfranchising whole sectors of society, they would do well to heed the warnings of a circuit court judge in Cole County, Missouri.

Tova Andrea Wang is Democracy Fellow at The Century Foundation.