Court of Appeals restores Wisconsin's voter ID law

The justice system in MJ's home state of Wisconsin is awfully twisted. Not only do county prosecutors conduct baseless investigations against Gov. Scott Walker and his supporters just because he is a Republican and they don't like him, but now we have a Clinton-appointed federal judge from the state taking the liberty of striking down the state's voter ID law simply because that is what Democrats are expected to do.

Fortunately, the federal court system builds in the possibility of appeals, and last week the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals smacked down that judge, hard, for a ruling so blatant it came with virtually no legal rationale whatsoever. The Supreme Court had already upheld a virtually identical law in Indiana, and that's supposed to guide the rulings of judges at lower levels. Of course, the actual law is of no concern to Wisconsin Democrats, with this one in particular declaring that the Supreme Court ruling was "not binding precedent." Yeah, he really said that. Fortunately, the Appeals Court had something to say about that:

As I explained in an NRO article in May, the district court judge, Lynn Adelman, a Clinton appointee and former Democratic state senator, had issued an injunction claiming the Wisconsin ID law violated the Voting Rights Act as well as the Fourteenth Amendment. Adelman made the startling claim in his opinion that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in 2008 upholding Indiana's voter-ID law as constitutional was "not binding precedent," so Adelman could essentially ignore it. However, that was too much for the Seventh Circuit. It pointed out, in what most lawyers would consider a rebuke, that Adelman had held Wisconsin's law invalid "even though it is materially identical to Indiana's photo ID statute, which the Supreme Court held valid in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008)."

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It was also obviously significant to the Seventh Circuit that the Wisconsin state supreme court had upheld the state's voter-ID law in July, since the three-judge panel cited that decision, Milwaukee Branch of NAACP v. Walker, too. In fact, the appeals court said the state court decision had changed the "balance of equities and thus the propriety of federal injunctive relief." In other words, there was no justification for striking down a state voter-ID law that was identical to one that had been previously upheld by both the Supreme Court of the United States and that state's highest court.

The left has been riding hard on the narrative that voter fraud is non-existent, a myth perpetrated by racist right-wingers as a pretext for erecting barriers that prevent black people from voting. Even if that were true, which it's not, it's still no reason anyone should consider it a crushing burden to have to show picture ID when you vote, considering all the other far less important things that require the same. The best argument voter ID opponents have is that, because voting is a fundamental right, a requirement that makes it harder for you to get into the movies is fine because that's not a contintually guaranteed right, whereas when it comes to voting the burden should be on the state to make it easier, not on you to prove you're eligible. I actually agree with that in principle, but I disagree with the argument that the picture ID requirement is any sort of crushing burden. Anyone can get one and anyone can remember to bring one to the polls. People have to bear some sort of responsibility. If I go to the Y without remembering to grab my ID card, and I need to run back home and get it, that's on my, not on them. Our system of democracy has enough of an interest in fraud prevention that you can't seriously argue this is too much to expect of people. But the Obama Administration is fighting these requirements hard, and obviously getting help from Democrat politicians who get appointed federal judges for the express purpose of issuing rulings that support the Democrats' political interests, regardless of their legal merits. That's why it's a good thing we have appeals courts with Republican judges, as well the occasional Democrat judge who actually respects the law. It's also why we can't afford to elect another president who will pull the same crap with judicial appointments. If we ever get to the point where the federal courts are as corrupt and politicized as the Obama White House and Harry Reid's Senate, then we are really are screwed as a nation.