A recent posting here suggested that the constitutional analysis of ID statutes is foundering on the issue of partisan motivation—the politics of ID. The centrality of this motivation is inescapable. it is impressing itself on a prominent jurist like Richard Posner, once dismissive of claims against ID statutes, and it is supported by the evidence considered by political scientists (see here and here). Yet the jurisprudence developed around ID has fared poorly in showing how political motivation can be incorporated into a constitutional test.

What to think or do about partisanship in the design of election rules continues to befuddle judges, scholars and commentators.  Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in an interview published in The New Republic, reflects on Holder v. Shelby County and offers the conclusion that “legislators know much more about elections than the Court does.” But then, considering the “voting wars” that now populate the court system, commentators worry that at bottom the problem is precisely that: that legislators do know a lot of about elections and are anxious to have their elections and those of their allies turn out the right way.

Make what you will of Judge Melgren’s analysis of preemption, or the hints of his constitutional stance on the federal-state balance of authority under the Elections Clause—his decision in Kobach v. The United States Election Assistance Commission is a mechanical exercise that leaves the reader without any sense of what this case is about. Kansas and Arizona have not merely made a “determination” of what they need to verify the citizenship of state residents seeking to become voters. The history behind this litigation is more complex, with more history to it, and the court knew it.  It chose, however, to follow example of the Supreme Court and to do as the High Court has done in other cases, like Purcell v. Gonzalez and Crawford v. Marion County, and leave the real world out.

There is little left to be said about Judge Posner's second thoughts, and his further thoughts about those second thoughts, about his voter ID opinion in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board. No one seems satisfied with his various statements—neither critics or supporters of the "ID" movement, and certainly not the lawyers whom he seemed to fault for failing to fully inform the Court about the consequences of ID statutes like Indiana's. But the frustration directed at him should be tempered, just a little, by this fact: in suggesting that much legal argument before and by the courts is ill-informed about the political process—and thus about the consequences of regulation or deregulation—the Judge has a fair point. And it is a point that applies to legal decision-makers of all kinds—legislators and regulators, as well as judges.

Ed Whelan in the National Review is frustrated with Judge’s Posner’s renunciation of his Crawford opinion on voter ID. He contends that Posner’s admission of error—and his new, more critical judgment about voter photo ID requirements—is a demonstration of the flaws in the “pragmatic” adjudication that the Judge has long championed. Posner is now convinced that photo ID requirements have led to voter suppression, and Whelan counters that Posner is just expressing a personal judgment, “sloppy and ill-considered,” that follows from an open-ended mode of judging that invites subjective judgments.