Judge Richard Posner, the Reagan-appointed 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge, was the one who approved the first such Photo ID law in the country (Indiana’s) back in 2008, in the landmark Crawford v. Marion County case which went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Posner’s ruling was upheld.
His dissent includes a devastating response to virtually every false and/or disingenuous right wing argument/talking point ever put forth in support of Photo ID voting restrictions, describing them as “a mere fig leaf for efforts to disenfranchise voters likely to vote for the political party that does not control the state government.”
This opinion, written on behalf of five judges on the 7th Circuit, thoroughly disabuses such notions such as:
- these laws are meant to deal
with a phantom voter fraud concern (“Out of 146 million registered
voters, this is a ratio of one case of voter fraud for every 14.6
million eligible voters”);
- that evidence shows them to be little more
than baldly partisan attempts to keep Democratic voters from voting
(“conservative states try to make it difficult for people who are
outside the mainstream…to vote”);
- that rightwing partisan outfits like True the Vote,
which support such laws, present “evidence” of impersonation fraud that
is “downright goofy, if not paranoid”;
- and the notion that even though
there is virtually zero fraud that could even possibly be deterred by Photo ID restrictions, the fact that the public thinks there
is, is a lousy reason to disenfranchise voters since there is no
evidence that such laws actually increase public confidence in elections
and, as new studies now reveal, such laws have indeed served to suppress turnout in states where they have been enacted.
