Kevin Drum has a really good overview of why Wisconsin’s voter id law was struck down yesterday.
Judge Lynn Adelman, a federal district judge in Wisconsin, struck down that state’s voter ID law today. This was despite the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Crawford v. Marion County that Indiana’s voter ID law was justified. So what was different this time?
In a word, better arguments from one side. In Crawford, the state presented virtually no evidence that in-person voter fraud was a problem in Indiana—but neither did the plaintiffs provide much evidence that a voter ID law presented a serious obstacle to voting. Given this, the state’s interest in preventing voter fraud—even if that interest was more speculative than real—carried the day.
This time, the state once again produced virtually no evidence that in-person voter fraud was even a potential problem. But the judge was presented with loads of evidence that the burden of obtaining a photo ID was, in fact, quite high for low-income voters in particular. Since Crawford mandated the use of a balancing test to assess whether a photo ID law was justified, that made the difference and Wisconsin’s law was struck down.
Kevin’s excerpts from Adelman’s opinion are worth reading to see the complete vacuity of the case for voter impersonation, and the burden id laws place on the poor. The Roberts court will have to come up with a work of sophistry far beyond their usual stellar efforts to reverse this ruling.
Belafon
Or just ignore the evidence presented by the plaintiffs.
Shakezula
Poll tax? What’s that?
Fuzzy
SCOTUS doesn’t answer to any one so why should they admit a mistake about racism being a thing of the past. Too bad the case isn’t being heard now with all the Bundy and Sterling shit hitting the fan.
dr. bloor
As if there’s some doubt about their capacity to do precisely that.
GregB
It is reverse racism to try and counter the racist laws and policies of political hacks like Scott Walker.
That is now worse than the old racism which doesn’t even exist anymore and even if it did it isn’t that bad.
Just like, as Andrew Breitbart said, the worst thing in the world is to wrongfully accuse someone of racism when they aren’t racist which is why the remedy is to wrongfully accuse Shirley Sherrod of being a racist.
Simple.
C.V. Danes
That’s because the whole voter fraud argument is itself a fraud. There is no evidence of wide-scale voter fraud, unless you examine the lack of security regarding the use of electronic voting machines, which is a different issue altogether.
Omnes Omnibus
There also are cases overturning this law working their way through the state court system.
dp
@Belafon: They have a nasty habit of doing that — see Shelby County.
But of course, yesterday at oral argument Roberts and Scalia showed amazement at the very concept of a person having more than one cell phone, so you know they’re right in tune with American society.
Just Some Fuckhead
@dp: OMG, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a burn phone.
Just Some Fuckhead
If we don’t check a photo ID, how do we know it’s not a dead person trying to vote?
dmsilev
Well, just yesterday Scalia railed incessantly against one of his own previous opinions, so I’m not sure why you have any right to expect consistency, logic, or indeed anything except pure partisan hackery from those folks.
dmsilev
@Just Some Fuckhead: Why *shouldn’t* zombies be allowed to vote? You’re just prejudiced against the alternatively-animated.
jl
” The Roberts court will have to come up with a work of sophistry ”
Scalia is old school, new developments are leaving him behind, and resorts to sophistry: a quaint approach which appears increasingly naive as the new kids take over. Roberts has a braver way, and just writes whatever he needs, and asserts it is true. So, I am not as hopeful.
burnspbesq
The Seventh Circuit would like a word with you about your apparent ignorance of its existence, dumbfuck.
burnspbesq
@dmsilev:
Then explain yesterday’s opinion reinstating the EPA rules on interstate air pollution.
Judge Crater
This may be one small victory on our way back to the 19th century, but it seems like some historical trend is in place and the forces of corporatism and faux libertarianism are in place and gaining traction. Is there any progressive institution in our country that isn’t being paved over by the power of money? Public schools, higher education (student debt at a trillion dollars and climbing), financial regulation, health care, the media (internet neutrality) and even government itself.
The drumbeat of lower taxes and government as the enemy is taking its toll on every aspect of our society. “Legalize Freedom” is the new bumper sticker mentality of no-nothings like Cliven Bundy, his militia friends and the Tea Party. These fools don’t realize that the freedom to be serfs, and to sleep under bridges and beg for food in the streets is the sad future that awaits them.
Higgs Boson's Mate
A court that can rule that corporations are people, my friend, and that can rule that money is speech will easily be able to fabricate a justification for voter ID laws. Conservatives make shit up and then act on it.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: Do you really think that this will stop at the 7th Cir.?
Gordon, the Big Express Engine
None of this matters because Benghazi smoking gun!
http://www.sharylattkisson.com/new-benghazi-docs-april-29–2014.html
Belafon
@burnspbesq: Yes, please explain Scalia’s dissent when he wrote the very opinion he got wrong.
As for how that applies to this case: It doesn’t. Robert’s pet projects are the VRA and CRA.
SiubhanDuinne
Apologies for the O/T, but I do wish Esquire would stop censoring Charlie Pierce so we could know what he truly thinks:
Charlie’s entire comment is worth reading, and fits in well with the conversation in Soonergrunt’s thread last night.
Belafon
@SiubhanDuinne: I got into a twitter argument last night with Erick son of Erick over this. He tried to deflect my argument that we were responsible for the execution by saying it was decided by a jury and judge that made the call. After I stated that we could end executions if we wanted he tried to tie it into abortion.
JoyfulA
@Omnes Omnibus: State courts have ruled against it from the standpoint of the state constitution.
jl
@SiubhanDuinne: In this case the unfortunate convict helped the OK officials out by dying from a heart attack in the middle of the gruesome mess. If certain states keep up trying to execute people with untested and poorly understood mystery death juice, worse will happen. A botched execution will occur where the convict does not die, but ends up comatose, or in vegetative state, or brain dead. Or maybe conscious but severely messed up (though that is maybe unlikely, since the state does not have to explain to anyone what it is doing anymore, I guess it could just pump more of its mystery death juice into the body and see what happens. You could kill a person with water that way, sooner or later).
Then what? Unholy mess will result. There will be lunatics protesting, who demand the person be wheeled out on a gurney in public and beaten to death with sticks or hanged. Why the hell not, won’t be able to feel anything anyway. Maybe Scalia will use that argument in his opinion that whatever is done after such a botched execution is A-OK.
A commenter here once predicted that certain parts of the U.S. will descend into frank barbarism, and prisoners will be set on fire with bets on how long it takes them to die. Hey, could turn it into a lottery and make some money to save the poor taxpayers a few bucks. Why not? I thought that comment was a little extreme, but I am not so sure anymore.
Omnes Omnibus
@JoyfulA: Yes, I know.
burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus:
Why wouldn’t it stop at the Seventh Circuit? The District Court conducted exactly the inquiry that is required under Crawford, and its findings of fact appear to be supported by enough evidence to be appeal-proof. There’s no circuit split that I’m aware of. It’s a good candidate for denial of cert.
But the larger point is the FPer’s ignorant failure to recognize that the case is going to the Seventh Circuit (God, I hope Posner is on the panel; his opinion affirming the District Court could be a thing of beauty). The other important point is that both Drum and Mix missed the real news here, which is that the District Court held that Act 23 violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which holding gives DOJ the opportunity to put Wisconsin into pre-clearance.
Link to opinion.
http://media.jrn.com/documents/adelmanorder.pdf
Just Some Fuckhead
@dmsilev: Please don’t derail this into a discussion of zombie rights. I’ve never been a antizombiecist and I don’t plan on starting today. I’m talking about dead people, not undead people. Dead people are not allowed to vote.
If we can’t at least verify whether a voter is dead or alive, then I weep for our failed democratic experiment.
burnspbesq
@Belafon:
You’re going to win Non Sequitur of the Month with that mess. You’ve also managed to focus with laser-like intensity on absolutely the least important thing about yesterday’s opinion.
Villago Delenda Est
Reasons. Because.
Mike in NC
@jl:
Many of us used to believe that movies like “The Running Man” and “Soylent Green” were just silly pieces of science-fiction. Today they look more and more like how 21st Century America will turn out. U-S-A !
jl
@burnspbesq:
” dumbfuck. ”
Why be so rude? Do you think only lawyers should ever write about legal issues on this blog? Or maybe you think that the blog needs a lawyer as front poster.
Or maybe you could give some helpful advice to nonlawyer front posters and commenters on points to remember or where to find info to get everything allcorrek on technical legal points?
Or send in your own post and see how well you fare?
Or you can just call people names, I guess. Why not?
Belafon
@burnspbesq: You brought up the EPA ruling yesterday. We’re talking about logic and consistency, and Scalia exhibited none of that, even going so far as to get the opinion he wrote in an earlier EPA ruling totally wrong. So, please explain how logic and consistency works with this court.
SatanicPanic
@dmsilev: Great, then we’ll have politicians pandering to them with laws demanding labeling on GMO brains
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq:
That is a good point.
Cacti
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Conservatives make shit up and then act on it.
In the recent ruling that the EPA can regulate coal emissions across state lines, Scalia’s dissent misquotes a unanimous ruling that he authored in 2001, FFS.
Tony and Thomas aren’t constrained by anything remotely resembling intellectual consistency. Alito isn’t as brazen as the other two, but is firmly in the right wing political hack camp also.
scav
@Belafon: Thall shalt not question the single two inerrant hierarchies and authorities (guess which) is a bit of an MO.
Cacti
Scalia’s completely obvious error in the EPA case is actually making me wonder if he isn’t entering the early stages of dementia.
SiubhanDuinne
@Belafon:
The only thing that surprises me is that you would bother to engage on Twitter or anywhere else with ESoE.
@jl:
I have no doubt that a certain percentage* of our fellow citizens would gladly and enthusiastically watch and wager. And now I’m going to see if I can find my copy of Shirley Jackson’s classic The Lottery and re-read it because I haven’t thought of it it in years and it seems all too apt.
*(I know I don’t have to specify the number.)
scav
@Cacti: Thing is, that’s becomming the go-to instant diagnosis any more. There are other likely possibilities incluging increasing shoddy workflows and reduced error checking staff, even in those “hallowed” halls. Especially if the general environment has turned even slightly more politically motivated. Fine-tuning the PR etc eats up staff otherwise devoted to.
srv
@Mike in NC: And we used to think what a cool future that would still be. I mean, it was a present-time where you couldn’t distinguish between “Being There” and watching a Reagan press conference.
Cacti
@scav:
Thing is, that’s becomming the go-to instant diagnosis any more. There are other likely possibilities incluging increasing shoddy workflows and reduced error checking staff, even in those “hallowed” halls. Especially if the general environment has turned even slightly more politically motivated. Fine-tuning the PR etc eats up staff otherwise devoted to
The reason I wonder is simply because, while Scalia has always been a political partisan, he’s also a very intellectually vain man.
Such an amateurish mistake is very out of character for him.
And, he’s also knocking on the door of 80 years old.
Chyron HR
@Belafon:
Once you start from the premise that no member of the legal profession can act in a disreputable fashion, then any politically-motivated (or simply incoherent) rulings never happened.
SatanicPanic
@SiubhanDuinne: There used to be lynching parties in the South. Children were taken to see them, so it’s quite plausible to say that this was in living memory.
Mandalay
@burnspbesq: O/T, but how is it determined which judges will hear the appeal? Are the selections truly random, or can the dirty-tricks-department be used to pick and choose the panel?
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti: Perhaps his slavish devotion to his fucked-up ideology has overcome his intellectual vanity?
scav
@Cacti: I’m not ruling it out, mind. But having it seen trotted out for Bundy, Sterling and Scalia in quick succession is . . . . well, it got me thinking, especially as this particular error is a team error, he has staff for exactly these things, however much he may be final editor. Misprints happen (don’t ask about a highway name in NJ — actually, those maps were turned back on their way to the stores). It’s not just some out of control mouth in front of a microphone. To me it seems there had to be mutiple failures.
Mandalay
@SiubhanDuinne:
The greatest short story ever written IMO. Here’s a link.
RSR
Sounds similar to ruling here in PA, which ruling judge recently upheld after being asked by Corbett to reconsider.
Omnes Omnibus
@scav: Clerks are involved in the the drafting process but most judges are very much in control of what they sign.
Cacti
@SatanicPanic:
There used to be lynching parties in the South. Children were taken to see them, so it’s quite plausible to say that this was in living memory.
The last State-sanctioned public execution was in Kentucky in 1936. Well within living memory.
I believe the last public lynching took place in 1946 or 1947.
WaterGirl
@burnspbesq: Maybe I’m a dumbfuck, too, but I have no idea whom you are addressing that to and what, exactly, your comment is referencing.
Edit: I see that Omnes knows what you are talking about, perhaps you were only addressing the attorneys here and not the rest of us?
Hungry Joe
@SiubhanDuinne: Shirley Jackson, upon learning that “The Lottery” had been banned in South Africa: “At least they understood it.”
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: Ah. thanks. I would have expected better, albeit with firm control.
Kay
@RSR:
But Milwaukee is like Patient Zero of the fake voter impersonation fraud epidemic. It’s where they started. They began claiming voter impersonation fraud in Milwaukee around 2001, and it wasn’t fringe people in the GOP claiming this, either. It was people like John Fund in the WSJ. It spread from there.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
You’re once again falling into the trap you always fall into…a narrow technical view of the law, versus the wider political context that shapes it. Scalia’s error is very much part of the broader context, in which he essentially contradicts himself openly because that was then and this is now, shut up atheist socialist!
SiubhanDuinne
@Mandalay:
I agree, and thank you so much for the link!
@Hungry Joe:
Never heard that! What a great line, and how true!
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: This is not the first time The American Spectator simply made shit up about “voter fraud”.
raven
(CNN) — Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked a top legislative and political priority of Democrats, a bill to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.
GregB
The only thing standing between us and legions of terrorists, rapists, gang bangers, street hoods and n’er do wells is a good guy with a syringe full of poison cooked up in the kitchen of your local penitentiary.
*P.S. Does anyone know if John Fund has stopped beating his girlfriend?
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Are you kidding? Forget The American Spectator. How about a Governor?
Or election officials in North Carolina?
It’s just crazy. It went from the WSJ to Fox News to state actors with actual authority and duties. We’re not talking about a couple of zany poll workers here. These are the people who run elections.
Long Tooth
@Cacti: Indeed.
It won’t happen because today’s democrats aren’t up to the fight, but Scalia should be loudly called out to answer for that egregious blunder. With an ego likes his, he could be soooo easily provoked. And provoked he should be, but again (and unfortunately) that’s not how the leadership of the democratic party leadership rolls.
Paul in KY
@Mike in NC: Maybe 22nd Century America…or Panem.
Mandalay
@raven:
Speaking of the great works performed by the greatest deliberative body on earth, they also just did this….
It’s seems that the function of the Senate has become to make the USA a worse country.
Paul in KY
@Cacti: Wouldn’t he have clerks to clean up the mess, etc.?
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
And part of the reason that happened, part of the reason they gained credibility on their ludicrous claim, is because the US Supreme Court validated the whole idea when they decided to give the State of Indiana a free pass. They could have halted it right there. Instead they accelerated it, and discredited voting rights people so it took years to recover.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: Well, here in Oregon, the only case of voter fraud I know of that has been prosecuted was by a Republican elections clerk in Clackamas County.
Roger Moore
@Cacti:
I think he’s past the early stages. People in the early stages of dementia can usually hide the occasional slip. This looks as if he’s moving into the “can’t hide it anymore” stage.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: My point (which I thought would be inferred, my bad!) is that this totally bogus shit meme has been pushed by the right since at least 1996. It is wholly invented crap, but the Rethugs are so desperate to suppress “wrong” voters that they don’t mind simply inventing the concept of “voter fraud” when every time something about it is prosecuted, it always is some Rethuglican trying to game the system in the GOPs favor.
In short, they’re projecting.
AGAIN.
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well, it would be, right? It would be elections clerks! I don’t know why they’re harassing voters. They flipped the whole ordinary script, and said that state actors were well-intentioned and above suspicion and voters were hatching all kinds of schemes.
Mandalay
@GregB:
FWIW, Eric Alterman, a pretty trustworthy source (IMO) and hardly a friend of Fund, thinks it was a load of BS based on accusations from a crazy person. And he went even further:
Patricia Kayden
@GregB: The sad thing is that Walker is leading in the polls and probably will still be Governor after November. So I’m sure he’ll keep trying to pass voter suppression laws once he has won his governorship again.
Villago Delenda Est
OT, but cause for glee, from Noisemax:
Dick Morris: Rick Perry Can Make Comeback
I’m like the dog in that Far Side cartoon, where the dog has placed a sign that says “Cat Fud” with an arrow pointing into a washing machine and thinking “please please please…”
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay:
Well, they’re voting the WRONG WAY! Of course it’s fraud!
Roger Moore
@scav:
The difference between the talk about Scalia vs. Bundy and Sterling is that we have a lot more evidence to go on with Scalia. He used to be widely regarded as the bright light of right-wing jurisprudence, the guy who could put forward the clever legal arguments that would justify them getting their way. Over time, he’s been slipping, moving more and more from intellectual argument to bombast. The screw-up with his opinion in this case is just the latest example of his standards slipping. Maybe that’s just a sign that his staff isn’t up to snuff anymore, but I haven’t seen the same kind of decline with the rest of the court. Add in his generally increasing belligerence, and he looks like somebody who’s trying to make up for declining intellect with bullying. Maybe that’s just an example of general age-related cognitive decline rather than actual dementia, but he sure doesn’t look as sharp as he did a decade ago.
Botsplainer
What a nasty, infected tropical spider bite looks like at 2 days. Leg was more swollen yesterday, and I’ve been barred for diving till tomorrow, due to risks of embolism at depths of 60-80 feet. Doc said “would it be nice for the people on your dive to have to deal with you having a stroke 60 to 80 feet underwater?”
Basically, he said that he’d be OK with it if I promised to stay above 40, but he said “none of you divers can seem to do that, and swelling at 60 feet causes bad things. This I cannot allow. Maybe Thursday.”
http://m.imgur.com/DubWDnl
Villago Delenda Est
@Botsplainer: Ewww. What a terrible thing to happen to you when you’re on a dream vacation.
Perhaps some cracked crab and lobster served on the beach will help?
Hungry Joe
The befuddling thing about “voter fraud/impersonation” is that if you stop to think about it for eight, maybe nine seconds, it makes no sense: thousands, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people have been going to scattered polling places to risk serious punishment in order to cast a single vote? And none of them ever gets caught, even though the precinct workers know a lot of the people in whose name they are supposedly voting? And legitimate voters never come in to vote only to find their names have been crossed off the list because they “already voted,” and raise holy hell?
My mistake — it took me a good twenty seconds to come up with all those reasons why voter fraud/impersonation is a crock. And maybe it’s a mistake to hope that most people will stop to think for twenty seconds … about anything.
beth
@raven:
Can the Democrats bring this up for a vote every week? The House voted to repeal Obamacare how many times – 40? Why can’t Reid bring this bill up every single week and let the Republicans keep blocking it over and over?
Cacti
@Paul in KY:
Wouldn’t he have clerks to clean up the mess, etc.?
Like Omnes said up above, clerks do most of the grunt work, but the Judge has editorial control over what goes into the final draft, and they’re usually very much aware of what their name is going to be attached to.
beth
@Villago Delenda Est: I wouldn’t be so gleeful over that. Perry can be charming, folksy and seem compassionate – he’s W all over again. And this time he won’t be on drugs. I don’t give the American people that much credit not to be fooled by that act again.
Poopyman
@Botsplainer: Infected, eh? Did the doc put you on antibiotics? Might be the end of umbrella drinks for you, big guy. That would suck.
Botsplainer
@Villago Delenda Est:
I knew I was in trouble between dives yesterday, when I realized that the red had expanded so much, I was feeling pressure from the swelling, the center of the wound was dark and the thing was weeping.
Second dive was a dream dive, wonderful in terms of fish and coral,and I finally got the hang of new equipment and physiology so as to maximize duration. Had them buzz the doctor immediately when I got back, and he yelled at me for not recognizing it all sooner.
Botsplainer
@Poopyman:
He put me on Spectracef and a polysporin ointment – told me that the Cipro we brought wouldn’t touch this one.
Said I could drink, but in some tight limits, goddammit.
Omnes Omnibus
@Long Tooth: So you want politicians to spend time taunting a supreme court justice for a fuck-up in a dissent in a case where our side won? To what end?
Berial
I always make the mistake of reading Drum’s comments section. I always come away with less hope for humanity than I had before.
Paul in KY
@Botsplainer: Lucky it wasn’t a banana spider. Hope you are well soon.
Paul in KY
@Cacti: So, I guess a clerk might have brought it to his attention that he was trashing one his previous rulings & he just said ‘fuck it’.
Certainly something I can imagine him doing. He is such a douchecanoe.
Tone in DC
@dmsilev:
LULz. I guess “undead” isn’t politically correct.
Bill Arnold
@Berial:
I recall that cleek has a pie filter plugin for that blog. Haven’t tried it and agree, the wingnut trolls derail the comments pretty quickly there. The threaded comments make the problem worse. (My sport there is trying to get the trolls to “clarify their points”, which can often elicit crazy-out-of-mainstream talk, which is then mocked by others.)
Face
@Villago Delenda Est: To me, it’s all a part of Scalia saying whatever he wants (contradictory or not), because Fox and the RWNM will repeat it endlessly without correction, and the only groups calling out for a correction are elitist lamestream media folks. Biased libs, natch, who are partisan and hate old Italian Catholics, etc.
They make their own shit bath of reality, then wallow in that echo chamber. Ad infinitum. Scalia knows how this works.
Bill Arnold
@Hungry Joe:
The other half of this is that it is requiring official id is statistically certain to disenfancise many orders of magnitude more voters than could possibly be involved in in-person voting fraud of the sort that would be caught by requiring an official id. The argument then becomes “well, prove that just even one voter would be disenfrancised”. Which is a nonsense argument, but is usually pretty easily satisfied both by finding such people and by sampling the population and daring them to question statistical methods.
Long Tooth
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m old enough to remember the GOP campaign to impeach William Douglas. It was a forlorn rallying cry to a minority party at the time. Suffice to say Warren would definitely be impeached by the House of 2014.
When a justice writes bad law, yeah, I believe it proper to challenge that judge LOUDLY. When a judge blatantly contradicts himself in the service of the republican party, yeah, I think he should likewise be pressed to explain his rank incompetence.
What would the democratic party stand to lose by doing so? The answer being: absolutely nothing.
Berial
@Hungry Joe: If you really want to prevent in-person voter fraud you’d need to take a picture, retinal scan and fingerprints of every voter and compare that to a database of ‘people that have already voted’ while adding the new picture, retinal scan and fingerprints to that database. Almost any other method is just a way to disenfranchise voters. Since I don’t hear ANYONE supporting such a thing I can only assume the real goal is to disenfranchise.
Hell, almost every story I’ve read about in-person voter fraud ends up being such a minuscule portion of the vote as to be effectively nil in it’s affects. Why should we ever pass a law that disenfranchised more people than the number of fraudulent votes it would prevent?
I’m still of the firm opinion that most voter fraud is just box stuffing by officials that can get away with it. Some of the computer systems being used in voting I’ve seen, leads me to think THAT kind of voter fraud could be going on EASILY.
Villago Delenda Est
@Berial:
If you’re the Rethuglican party, and the only thing you’re willing to offer voters is a warmed over shit sandwich, it’s the way to go. Reduce the number of voters unwilling to accept the warmed over shit sandwich.
Long Tooth
@Long Tooth: Come to think of it, isn’t it the Senate alone that can impeach a Supreme? Still, I trust you get my point re. the perverted evolution of the GOP from the days it called for the head of William Douglas, and today’s GOP.
FDRLincoln
You guys realize we live in the Mirror Universe right? Any doubt that our version of Zefram Cochrane is going to plug that Vulcan ambassador?
pseudonymous in nc
@Bill Arnold:
Which they did here and then some. The footnotes are pretty good at showing how vital records are presumed to be infallible and inviolable by Voter ID proponents, but it turns out they’re pretty much a mess. Mis-transcribed birth certificates, names given in forms that reflected the parents’ origins and got Americanised because the kids assimilated, missing birth certificates because black folks didn’t get birth certificates in the South, and so on.
You also had a few examples where people complained to their state legislators about being brushed off at the DMV, got told to go back next week and ask specifically for Supervisor So and So, and got their IDs, so it turns out that the rules can be waived if you’re willing to make a fuss and not give up.
I was looking at this well-viewed piece — Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names — and it applies here. Identity is actually tricky, names are slippery; assuming that what’s on the pieces of paper or the computer record is more truthful than the person handing them over is fucked up.
balconesfault
I think that anywhere voter ID legislation is proposed, the Dems should force amendments to add a “Receipt Requirement” for each and every electronic voting system in the country.
You cast a vote, it prints a receipt with your choices in hard copy, you drop that off in a ballot box the way we used to in the old days. After the voting any candidate has a right to demand an audit of X% of precinct results.
Every time some wahoo argues “you can’t cash a check without an ID”, we should reply “you also can’t deposit a check without getting a hard copy receipt that verifies how much money you deposited”.
If legislatures are fixating on voter fraud, they might as well include fraud that has a high probability of taking place.
Barry
@Belafon: “Or just ignore the evidence presented by the plaintiffs. ”
Seconded. Ref: Shelby v. DoJ.
That was on the order of Bush v. Gore.