Prominent Judge Admits Voter ID Laws Discriminate

In a rare walk-back of profound jurisprudential dull-headedness, Richard Posner, member of the United States Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, has admitted that his seminal vote on a crucial voter I.D. case was dead wrong.

In a new barn-burner of a book — Reflections on Judging — Posner cops to green-lighting “a type of law now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than of fraud prevention” in his decision on Crawford v. Marion County Election Board.

Posner’s excuse for wildly misreading the I.D. law’s transparent purpose — to suppress voting in populations of color and economic disadvantage — is that “we weren’t really given strong indications that requiring additional voter identification would actually disenfranchise people entitled to vote.”

Well, of course not. That sort of information would have been blatantly visible only for a sentient being who cared to look for it.

Who cared to read 28 seconds of state legislature debate on the thrust of the law.

Who knew the first thing about the history of voter suppression in the United States.

Who recognized that the conceit of the law — that it was designed to combat voter fraud — was itself comprehensively fraudulent.

Who was anything other than rampantly incurious.

But not Richard Posner. He continues to vote, rather effortlessly, and admits his folly only under the duress of a book advance and publicity junket.

Will this admission of knuckle-scraping ignorance compel the media, an oddly placid entity on this issue, to re-examine its demonstrated stance on voter I.D. discrimination? Or will Rachel Maddow continue to be the only consistent BS-caller with a national platform?

We’d bet on the latter outcome.

By: rhb

Rob is a NYC-based Internet entrepreneur. He's also a businessman and job creator (wait: doesn't demand create jobs?) who understands the sense, and the eventual predominance, of the progressive agenda.