Let me say this up front, so you don’t miss it this time: No, a Photo ID is not required to board an airplane. Period.
Last week, the ACLU filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in hopes of having the 7th Circuit Court of Appeal’s ruling — which overturned a lower court’s injunction on Wisconsin’s new Photo ID voting restriction — stayed in advance of next month’s election.
Today (Monday) a rather remarkable new opinion was issued by the 7th Circuit which seems designed to serve as a last-minute assist to the Republican defendants in Wisconsin in their response to the ACLU appeal, as Justice Elena Kagan has required the state’s response no later than 5pm on Tuesday. The ruling is littered with blatant falsehoods.
To recap very briefly, how we got to this point, and the astonishing claims in the 7th Circuit’s opinion today: the GOP law requiring very specific types of state-issued Photo IDs for voting in Wisconsin was struck down earlier this year after it was found, by U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman, to be both a violation of the U.S. Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act. His thorough, 70-page ruling [PDF] found that some 300,000 legally registered voters in Wisconsin (nearly 10% of them) lacked the specific type of Photo ID that would now be needed vote under the new restriction. Adelman also determined that the law amounts to a “unique burden [which] disproportionately impacts Black and Latino voters” (who just happen to lean towards Democratic candidates), and that the new restriction on voting would “prevent more legitimate votes from being cast than fraudulent votes.”
In mid-September, on appeal, a panel of three Republican-appointed judges on the 7th Circuit tossed out Adelman’s permanent injunction with little comment. Amidst ensuing “electoral chaos”, as election officials and voters in the state scrambled to make sense of the stunning last minute change to the law, just weeks before the mid-term election, the ACLU appealed for a rehearing before the full 7th Circuit. That hearing resulted in a deadlocked 5 to 5 vote by the judges (one seat on the court has been vacant since 2010), which meant that the partisan 3-judge panel’s ruling, restoring the Photo ID restriction after it had been struck down by the lower court, now remains in place.
That brings us to the ACLU’s emergency appeal to SCOTUS last week, and Monday’s remarkable new opinion issued by the 7th Circuit at the last minute, clearly made to justify the original opinion issued last week which seems to have otherwise landed with a thud. (The court had attempted to compare a “need” to restore new voting restrictions at the last minute to the U.S. Supreme Court’s stay placed on the overturning of same-sex marriage bans in several states last year. The dissenters called the court’s legal theories “brazen”, “shocking” and on its central thesis comparing the WI law to a 2008 landmark case in Indiana, “dead wrong.”)
University of California-Irvine’s election law professor Rick Hasen described the new opinion issued on Monday as “a nice assist from the 7th Circuit panel to the state of Wisconsin,” just in time for the SCOTUS deadline.
In a more detailed follow-up item, however, Hasen, who is usually quite conservative when it comes to concerns about Photo ID voting restrictions, went somewhat ballistic. He uncharacteristically upbraided the 7th Circuit’s newly issued ruling — apparently written by the very rightwing Federalist Society member Judge Frank Easterbrook — as “Horrendous”.
“I rarely just rant in my blog posts,” he tweeted, along with a link to his follow-up, “But Judge Easterbrook caused me to blow a gasket.”
I know the feeling. I felt the exact same way while reading the new opinion today, particularly the part in which the court offers blatant — and long-ago debunked — falsehoods about where and when they claim Photo ID to be “essential”, such as when boarding an airplane.
Trouble is, that is a blatant lie. A Photo ID is absolutely not required to board an airplane, no matter how many times proponents of these sorts of laws repeat the false claim. And it’s simply remarkable that such a lie (and others akin to it) would be included in a last-minute opinion meant to justify an Appellate Court ruling that is about to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court…
Setting aside how one feels about restricting the right to vote with partisan and discriminatory Photo ID laws (we’re against it around here), courts determining the legality and Constitutionality of such laws ought to be able to agree on certain demonstrable facts, at the very least.
The 7th Circuit puts forward some new justifications for allowing the WI law to be enforced at the very last minute, even though they are just out and out false in some cases, entirely misleading in others. (It must also be noted that thousands of absentee ballots were already been sent out prior to their ruling, without the instruction that photocopies of a valid, state-issued Photo ID is now required when returning them under the 7th Circuit’s ruling.)
I’m not an attorney, so I’ll happily defer to those who are to hash out the specifics of the newly offered, exceedingly narrow circumstances under which Easterbrook appears to be defending the court’s decision. It strikes me that he was attempting to thread what seems an impossible needle in order to declare WI’s law neither in violation of the U.S. Constitution or the Voting Rights Act, as the U.S. District Court had found after a full trial on the merits of the law.
But for more on the actual legal justifications now being attempted by the court, please see the new 20-page ruling [PDF] itself, along with Hasen’s quick “blown gasket” response here. And for much more detail, see the in-depth pieces by The BRAD BLOG’s legal analyst Ernest A. Canning here, here, here, and here for example. The central portion of Easterbrook’s latest explanation for restoring the restriction on voting at the very last minute before the election, appears to be an attempt to justify how WI’s Photo ID voting law is not materially different from Indiana’s law that was approved in the Crawford v. Marion County case back in 2008. Canning has broken down the differences in his pieces between Crawford and the WI law in great detail, as this case, and others such as the one in TX, have moved forward in the courts.
What I want to focus on here is just one paragraph in Monday’s ruling, which is so full of demonstrable inaccuracies — most of which have been debunked long ago — that it’s simply maddening they appear in a legal document issued by such a high court on such a contentious and important issue, and at such a late date.
The 7th Circuit’s new ruling, in this part, attempts to justify some the notion that all good Americans should have and, yes, need Photo ID to survive at all in life. Easterbrook does this on behalf of the court by claiming, mostly falsely, the following:
Setting aside Easterbrook’s obnoxious sniff at one of the expert witnesses who testified during the trial — marginalizing their testimony as coming from a “marketing consultant” — the fact is that the state has not challenged the 300,000 number offered at trial, and has even conceded both it and the fact that it amounts to some 10% of registered voters who lack the now-requisite Photo ID need for voting in the election to be held less than a month from today.
The full paragraph is just astonishing. There is so much nonsense in it, it’s difficult to even know where to begin, so let’s take Easterbrook’s false and/or misleading assertions about photo ID one at a time…
• “Photo ID is essential to board an airplane”
No, it is not. That is a lie. And perhaps it’s the largest one and most well-worn in the paragraph, as its a claim that has been used over and again by Republicans for years in order to justify Photo ID voting restrictions. No matter how many times the claim is made, however, it still remains untrue, as a quick look at the federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA)’s web page on “Acceptable IDs” for boarding a plane quickly and easily confirms.
From the TSA’s short page:
In other words, the commercial airlines are not about to turn away some 30 million paying customers in the U.S. simply because they don’t own a certain type of Photo ID, or because they failed to bring it with them to the airport for some reason. In such cases, the TSA uses other databases to verify the identify of the traveler, some of which are also likely used to identify voters when they register, given that there are many allowable forms of ID (not only strict, state-issued Photo ID that many do not have) which are already required to register to vote in all 50 states under the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
Yes, it may make your life easier and quicker when traveling, if you have a current Photo ID, but you will not be barred from the privilege of “board[ing] an airplane” simply because you do not have one on you.
In 2012, for example, New York Times’ Ann Carrns detailed her experience upon arriving for a flight without her photo ID:
“The special T.S.A. agent had me sign a form, allowing the agency to verify my identity. He asked me if I had any other form of identification (I didn’t), or if my husband had anything in his wallet that had my name on it. (Again, no.),” she wrote. “Then, he called someone else on his phone, and asked me some questions — things like my previous addresses and my date of birth. … Apparently I answered satisfactorily, because the agent was finally given a number that he jotted on my boarding pass, before waving me on to be screened.”
She had a similar experience on her return flight, when she still did not have the Photo ID she had accidentally left at home.
NYU Brennan Center’s election law expert Justin Levitt calls the claim that a Photo ID is needed to board a plane “dead wrong”. He speaks from personal experience, having flown without a Photo ID and testified about it to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 2012.
More importantly, however, unlike voting, boarding an airplane is a privilege, as opposed to a right.
Levitt describes the claim as “irrelevant”, because “Voting is at the heart of our constitutional order, guaranteed to every eligible citizen. Boarding a plane is a nice perk. The republic doesn’t crumble if the people don’t fly on planes.” In short, he says, the claim is “both completely irrelevant and completely inaccurate.”
So the court’s claim here — repeated for years by wingnut proponents of Photo ID restrictions — is simply false, inappropriate to the case, and has no place in court documents.
Hasen describes Easterbrook’s claim about Photo IDs being needed “for boarding an airplane’ as a “false claim[s]” that make his “blood boil”. He, too, confirms, yet again, that “one does not need a photo id to fly”.
• “Photo ID is essential to…enter Canada or any other foreign nation”
Perhaps. It’s also “essential” to prove you have been vaccinated for malaria for the privilege of going to certain foreign nations. Would Easterbrook be okay with a vaccination requirement before exercising the right to vote on that basis as well? It’s a silly argument.
• “Photo ID is essential to…drive a car (even people who do not own cars need licenses to drive friends’ or relatives’ cars)”
Aside from seemingly escaping Easterbrook, and the portion of the 7th Circuit Court on whose behalf he is writing, that driving a car is a privilege, not a right, there are millions of legally registered American voters who have never had a drivers license because they never wanted or needed one. Many of them, as it turns out, happen to live in large cities with excellent public transportation systems. Many of those perfectly eligible and legally registered citizens just happen to be minority voters. That fact would seem to elude the privileged Judge Easterbrook entirely.
And then there are the blind voters who never drove, and the elderly voters who no longer drive, just to name a few more million potentially-disenfranchised voters. But, again, Easterbrook — and other proponents who have been using these same canards for years — can’t seem to imagine how they could possibly get by in life without the same conveniences that they themselves enjoy and haven’t had to think about for years, much less scramble to obtain at the very last minute in order to exercise their right to vote in this year’s election.
• “Photo ID is essential to…buy a beer”
Really? While I’m not a huge drinker, I enjoy a cold one every now and again. I’ll soon be pushing 50 years old, yet I can’t recall the last time I was required to show a Photo ID in order to “buy a beer”. Claiming that one is “essential” in order to enjoy that privilege is, once again, a blatant lie and does not belong in an official ruling by an Appellate Court — or any court, for that matter.
But, to underscore the point — since this is also an oft-used phony talking point by the Right — election law expert Levitt notes that, after being allowed through security at the L.A. Airport without a Photo ID, as described above, he then “enjoyed a beer in the airport Chili’s — without using photo ID.” He says that after arriving in D.C., he “then made my way to the Dirksen Senate office building, and to the Committee’s hearing room [to testify before the Judiciary Committee] — without using photo ID.”
• “Photo ID is essential to…purchase pseudoephedrine for a stuffy nose or pick up a prescription at a pharmacy”
As Hasen notes, “getting sudafed is not a constitutional right, and in any case, WI pharmacists likely accept all kinds of ids that are not ok for voting (like a veterans id) to buy Sudafed.”
True. Moreover, my girlfriend has picked up prescriptions for me from the pharmacy on many occasions. She was never required to present my photo ID in order to do so, and says she didn’t even need to present her own, other than when using a credit card to pay for the prescription.
Yet, this “Photo ID is needed to buy Sudafed!” bullshit continues, as it has for years, to be a favorite of the voter suppression crowd, no matter how false and/or misleading it is.
• “Photo ID is essential to…open a bank account or cash a check at a currency exchange”
As it turns out, I recently opened a new bank account. I was asked for my drivers license, and since I happen to have one, it was not a problem to present it. That said, I can’t imagine that banks, like airlines, don’t allow for other forms of ID when opening new accounts. It seems unimaginable that they would tell some 30 million Americans (customers!) — not to mention children — that they are not welcome to bank with them.
I haven’t attempted to cash a check at a currency exchange lately, so can’t speak to that. But, again, cashing a check in that way is a privilege, not a right, just like the other items, other than voting, mentioned here.
• “Photo ID is essential to…buy a gun”
I’m not familiar with the gun laws in every state, but given that guns may be purchased freely on the Internet, it seems hard to believe that a Photo ID is required. [Update: In 39 states Photo ID is not required when the purchase is between individuals.] If it is, a facsimile of a Photo ID might be required, which is fairly easy to produce at home for faxing or attaching via email. Moreover, a family member could use their Photo ID to help me purchase a gun from a dealer online or in person, but a family member’s Photo ID would do no good for a legally registered voter who wanted to vote in Wisconsin in less than a month and didn’t, by that time, already have their own.
• “Photo ID is essential to…enter a courthouse to serve as a juror”
As it turns out, I very recently served on jury duty. I do not recall being asked for a Photo ID upon entering the courthouse in Burbank (though I did go through a metal detector and my belongings were examined with an x-ray machine). If I misremember that, my apologies. On the other hand, if knowing that lacking a photo ID meant that I would not have been able to serve on jury duty, simply because I would not have been allowed into the courthouse, I suspect I, and many others, would have considered not bringing one to the courthouse when called to serve.
Examining my “Summons for Jury Service” here, I see no requirement to bring a Photo ID with me at the time. And a quick look at the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s web page on Frequently Asked Questions for jurors suggests that “a government issued ID, such as a driver’s license, passport that shows your photo and your correct name and adress” is only required in the event that a juror has recently changed their name and needs to change their corresponding jury record name.
• “Photo ID is essential to…watch the argument of this appeal.”
I do not know what is required to attend Judge Easterbrook’s 7th Circuit courtroom, or to attend a hearing at the U.S. Supreme Court, for that matter. I’ll take his word for it that the tiny portion of Americans who attend his court’s hearings in person or those at the Supreme Court need to present a Photo ID (even if it seems unlikely that a veteran of the armed forces would be turned away for presenting a veteran’s ID, as is the case under some Republican Photo ID voting restrictions.)
• “Could 9% of Wisconsin’s voting population really do none of these things?”
In fact, Wisconsin’s voting population can do almost all of those things that Easterbrook and the 7th Circuit are now pretending cannot be done without a valid, state-issued Photo ID in the latest ruling meant to convince the rightwingers on the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold their unjustifiable ruling.
SCOTUS may ultimately allow the 7th Circuit’s “horrendous” ruling to stand, despite the High Court’s long insistence that voting rules not be altered at the last minute before an election. Or, they may stay the 7th Circuit’s ruling to allow the matter to be heard after the heat of this election, in which WI’s Republican Gov. Scott Walker, an ardent Photo ID restriction proponent, currently faces a “toss up” re-election bid against Democrat Mary Burke.
But even the right-leaning Will Baude, of the University of Chicago Law School observed at the Washington Post that the 7th Circuit’s limp original opinion — which Monday’s new opinion seems to serve as a mulligan to — didn’t include the words “irreparable” or “injury”. Interestingly, Monday’s new opinion doesn’t contain either of those words either.
In other words, there is no good reason for, and nobody (other than, perhaps, Republicans hoping for a partisan advantage) who will be irreparably harmed by waiting until after the mid-term elections to hear full arguments for and against this law, and other similar GOP laws recently enacted elsewhere, at the Supreme Court. So, it seems, Easterbrook and his ideological companions on the 7th Circuit are attempting to simply make some up — even if it means that many legal voters will be irreparably injured when they lose their right to vote in November.
Shameful.
“I’m not familiar with the gun laws in every state, but given that guns may be purchased freely on the Internet, ”
That’s what is known as a “self-confirming statement”. Your given is flat out false, (As everyone who has ever bought a gun well knows; A matter of federal, not state, law.) and that’s quite relevant, in as much as buying a gun IS a civil right, unlike flying, or buying cold medicine.
Unless you happen to be a licensed gun dealer, if you want to “buy a gun over the internet”, you will have to have it delivered to a licensed gun dealer, where you can pick it up *after showing ID*.
You were on a roll until you spouted that one, though. But it was the most important one, because it is the most on point.
That’s my personal indicator for whether somebody really cares about burdening civil rights, by the way. If you object to voter ID, but are fine with FBI background checks for a different civil liberty, I doubt your position is really as principled as you claim.
“[U]nder federal law, you can buy a gun through a private seller without even showing an ID. And assault weapons have been fair game since the ban on them expired in 2004.”
The DOJ refers to private sellers as “secondary market” sales that are “exempt from the requirements of federal law to show identification.”
If you are well known at a given bank, most tellers would not ask for your ID. No Photo ID is required to use an automated teller machine.
Brett Bellmore @1, referencing such modest gun safety regulations as criminal background checks, states:
Setting aside the dubious proposition that the Second Amendment affords individuals with a “constitutional right” to own a gun, your comment ignores the fact that the exercise of the fundamental right to vote has never given rise to the unbridled carnage that has been unleashed when nut cases exercise their “right” to a wide array of firearms by carrying out mass murders.
Moreover, as noted in comment #2, there is nothing in the way of criminal background checks or even the need to furnish any form of ID when purchasing a weapon (including assault weapons) on the “secondary market.”
My prediction is that the Supreme Court will pass on hearing this, on the legal principle that doing so helps the Republican Party electorially — the legal precedent established in Bush v Gore and Citizens United. They’ve left out the words “irreparable” or “injury” just to UNDERLINE that there is no other principle involved. RULE OF LAW is a concept fascists* (e.g., John Roberts) don’t believe in. * I use the term in its political science definition.
“”[U]nder federal law, you can buy a gun through a private seller without even showing an ID. ”
This requires the transaction to be face to face, and intra-state. I generally don’t regard two people an arm’s length apart in the same room as being “over the internet”.
So, Brett Bellmore @6, are you suggesting that the inability to purchase a firearm over the net amounts to a denial of your civil liberties?
Are you really suggesting that the ability to buy a gun is even close to being on the same level as the right to vote?
Really?
A big problem we have in this country is that talk radio continues to rule the conservative world and there’s nothing we can do about it. Forget about Rush Limbaugh, a good chunk of local talk radio makes Limbaugh look like Walter Cronkite by comparison. And that’s how talk radio fans see him, as a moderate conservative who explains the news, while their favorite talk radio host is their big brother or uncle who tells them what’s really going on.
And these guys are professional talkers who have no expertise besides their ability to sound knowledgeable and convince their listeners that they’re laying out the common sense that they all know in their hearts is true because it confirms their worldview as victims. I know people who listen to talk radio and it’s difficult to even get them to consider the possibility that what they’re hearing on the radio isn’t gospel truth. Because hey, these guys dog on Republicans just as much as Democrats, so that can only mean that they’re unbiased and only want to tell you the truth. And no matter how much you try, you can’t convince them that all of this “independent” thinking is from a far-rightwing position designed to make you hate politics in general and Democrats in particular.
It’s somewhat fortunate that the main thing these guys want to do is to convince people who should vote Democrat to not vote at all. But then we have politicians and judges repeating what they hear on the radio (while never citing their source), spilling it out like it’s gospel truth and refusing to consider the possibility of any other position. And that’s because talk radio has a direct line into their brains and repeatedly assures them that they’re giving both sides of the story; and only one of the sides makes sense.
And while the internet has been a blessing for liberals, since it gives us a way of communicating and fighting untruths, talk radio remains out of our reach entirely. And as much as people can form bubbles online to only read what they want to read, on talk radio, the bubbles are forcefields that can’t be penetrated. So conservatives go unchallenged and we end up with judges like this dude and Scalia repeating the same absurdities that are fed to them by talk radio, and they refuse to even consider the possibility that they might be wrong since it made so much sense when the guy on the radio says it.
And I honestly have no clue how to fight it. But the next time you hear a conservative spouting out terrible absurdities that sound like they’re discussing a different planet, just ask yourself if it sounds like the sort of thing a local radio guy would make up. You’ll find it probably is and that the guy you’re talking to is just a puppet for the guy on the radio who told him what to think. And it’s pointless to debate puppets.
Oh, and for anyone who thinks you can’t buy guns online, here’s a Cracked article you’ll hate. And most likely, you’ll insist it’s wrong or not a big deal, just like all the conservatives in the comments section there did. And of the comments I saw, not one actually admitted that they think it’s great that you can buy guns online without a background check, since they don’t support that policy. They just want to pretend it’s not true.
But sorry, like it or not, people can currently buy guns online, including free shipping and you support those policies. And that’s why it’s so absurd that you guys talk about how criminals can buy guns through the black market, since that’d be a huge improvement over how things are now. Conservatives like to pretend the black market is like Walmart and we’re just leveling the playing field by making it easy to buy guns. But in reality, black market guns are more expensive and harder to get, and it’d be great if we could limit criminals to going that route.
Brett Bellmore @ 6:
Just so I’m clear here. You are saying you concur that a gun can be legally purchased without a Photo ID, but you disagree with the general example I offered for doing so in the article above?
As counsel for the Indiana Democratic Party in Crawford, I share your outrage, as well as that of Prof. Hasen, over the 3-judge panel’s cavalier decision in Frank v. Walker to reverse the district court’s careful and completely correct decision, a ruling supported by copious expert and lay testimony, declaring the Wisconsin ID law invalid both under the 14th amendment and Sec. 2 of the Voting Rights Act. I too am aghast at Easterbrook’s unconscionable references to myths and lies as “facts,” and his dismissive attitude of the scholarly studies of renowned experts. We confronted similar hostility in Crawford, when the district court judge, also a Reagan appointee, trashed our expert’s testimony about the number of voters lacking the required ID. What also caught my attention was Easterbrook’s reference in yesterday’s ruling to what he now characterizes as the “extensive record” in Crawford. I find this comment incredibly ironic, since we were roundly criticized by the original panel in Crawford (and implicitly by the 7 judges, including Easterbrook, who voted against en banc review) for presenting insufficient evidence to establish the law’s discriminatory effects. To the extent I had any lingering doubts, Easterbrook’s statements convince me that we lost in Crawford, not because of any real or perceived deficiencies in the record, but rather because of certain judges’ (all of whom happen to have been appointed by Republican presidents) predisposition to approve any voter ID law regardless of the quantity or quality of the evidence of the severe burdens these unnecessary laws impose. Other than Judge Posner, who to his great credit now clearly understands the blatant political purposes of these laws, the judges who have upheld Wisconsin’s law seem utterly impervious to any arguments against them. These judges parrot the bromide that since ID laws promote confidence in the system of some voters, they mustn’t be disturbed. Of course, stationing armed guards at the polls might give some voters greater “confidence,” as would requiring voters to give DNA samples to prove their identity. But I suspect that implementing these types of draconian measures would shock the consciences of even more voters. I, too, will be watching with keen interest SCOTUS’s response to the Wisconsin plaintiffs’ request to restore the stay. Our democracy and system of free elections hang by the thinnest of threads these days. For SCOTUS to allow the Wisconsin law to take effect prior to this year’s elections could well signal the final triumph of the oligarchs.
Doctor Biobrain @ 8 said:
That issue is one that we have been attempting to deal with, write about, discuss on radio and TV for years here, even as Dems and liberals and progressives (as you suggested in your comment) continue to believe that their presence on the Internet somehow outweighs the tens of millions who are brainwashed by Rightwing radio on the way to and from work every single day.
It’s the most difficult battle with the most damaging consequences to our nation, in my opinion. So, yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly. We have covered just some of the fight to restore our public airwaves to the public, but it has been a very difficult battle, particularly with progressive public interest groups seemingly more worried about Net Neutrality than about the public airwaves which they’ve seemingly already ceded to commercial interests.
To see just some of the coverage and/or attempted legal battles to restore the public airwaves (and to hold the FCC accountable for failing to do their job) that we’ve covered over the years, peruse the “Public Airwaves” items in this BRAD BLOG search.
Doctor Biobrain @ 9:
Thanks for the link to the Cracked article. I’ve added a link to it in the story above, as well as another one there to help pre-bunk arguments akin to the one Brett Bellmore is attempting to offer above.
Oh, and welcome to The BRAD BLOG! Your input is excellent and much appreciated!
Bill Groth @ 11:
Your thoughts and insight above here are greatly appreciated. I know Ernie Canning (our legal analyst) certainly shares the bulk of your observations, concerns, and in particularly, the idea expressed in your last line: “Our democracy and system of free elections hang by the thinnest of threads these days. For SCOTUS to allow the Wisconsin law to take effect prior to this year’s elections could well signal the final triumph of the oligarchs.”
Bill Groth @11 wrote:
Actually, Bill, there were only five (5) judges on the 7th Circuit who voted against en banc review. Those five included Easterbrook and the rest of the all-Republican three judge panel.
The other five (5) 7th Circuit judges voted to grant en banc review. Judge Posner, who rejected your appeal in Crawford, was one of the five (5) 7th Circuit judges who voted to grant review.
Thus, five (5) of the seven (7) 7th Circuit Judges who did not take part in the original panel decision would have granted review.
Brett @6
You seem to be grasping at straws (or strawmen) here; the point of the article is that Judge Easterbrook made gross errors of fact in both saying photo ID was required for numerous activities it is not required for, and in conflating activities which are privileges (such as air travel, or buying booze) with one that is not just a right, but the central right of a representative democracy – the right to vote.
While it may not be legal to purchase a gun via the Internet or across state lines, it is naive in the extreme to think in absence of actual regulation that such does not happen – routinely. You want to vacate Brad’s entire argument, based on your perception of error or hypocracy in one statement – one that Brad himself admitted was a point he wasn’t clear on. Which really reveals that you are happy to throw away millions of citizen’s rights to vote based on the false premise that getting a gun, which you equate as a comparable right to voting (I wouldn’t, but hey, at least there is an argument there based on the 2nd Amendment) isn’t easier than getting the required ID in states like WI. So who’s the phony who doesn’t believe all rights are worth defending?
Hasen now describes Easterbrook’s argument as “chutzpah-filled.”
Amongst attorneys, the classic definition of “chutzpah” is the little boy who murdered his parents and then asked the court for mercy because he was an orphan.
Ernie Canning wrote @ 15 to Bill Groth @ 11:
Actually, Ernie, I think Bill was referring to the original Crawford case when it made its way through the 7th Circuit back in 2008.
Greg J wrote @ 16:
As it turns out, it’s perfectly legal. 🙁
“Just so I’m clear here. You are saying you concur that a gun can be legally purchased without a Photo ID, but you disagree with the general example I offered for doing so in the article above?”
Precisely. Guns can not be purchased “over the internet” unless you are a dealer, who had to provide considerably more than just photo ID to achieve that status. They CAN be purchased without ID, but only in face to face transactions by residents of the same state.
And your clarification scarcely retracts the false component of your original claim.
Greg, I think it not incidental that the one point he was actually wrong about, was the only one of them which was also a civil liberty.
For the record, I think the case for photo ID for voting is better than the case for purchasing a gun. Because as a voter, I have the right to cast only one vote per election, in one place, and this clearly requires that I be identified when I vote.
But as a citizen I am neither limited in the number of guns I may purchase, nor where I may purchase them, so my identity is considerably less relevant to the transaction.
Brett Bellmore @21 wrote:
1. The number of mass murders in this country amply demonstrates the need for not only a photo ID but complete background checks prior to anyone acquiring a firearm. (Unfortunate, that whackos can purchase guns at gun shows sans any ID)/
2. For citizens who have nothing to hide, a background check merely creates a short wait until they clear the background check. It doesn’t stop the eventual “lawful” purchase from taking place. You may find that inconvenient, but that’s a far cry from a deprivation of your questionable “right” to buy a firearm.
3. No one has ever made out a valid case for conditioning the right to vote on a state-issued photo ID. The only type of voter fraud that can be prevented by polling place photo IDs is in person voter impersonation — a phantom menace.
Here, Wisconsin could not point to a single case of in person voter fraud having occurred at any time in that state’s history. Yet, Wisconsin Republicans are asking the courts to permit them to disenfranchise 10% of the electorate?
So what exactly is this “case” for polling place photo IDs of which you speak?
3. Where a criminal background check only results in a temporary delay in the acquisition of a firearm, the prospect of 1/10 of Wisconsin’s voters losing their right to vote in the Nov. 2014 election will have permanent consequences. Unlike the delay in gun ownership, the loss of one’s ability to vote is a permanent loss.
But thanks for playing the mindless, right wing talking points game. Always amusing to watch a wingnut flame out because of their inability to apply simple logic, reason and accountability for what they heard on right wing radio and chose to repeat.
BTW Brett, if people have a right to purchase guns, do they also have the right to buy a grenade launcher? a bomb? If not, why not?
Brett Bellmore @ 20 & 21:
Sorry, Brett. You appear to simply be wrong about buying guns via the Internet. The links I added make that clear, as well as a 5 minute Google search revealing all sorts of guns being made available for purchase via the Internet. While it may be illegal for a licensed seller to sell w/o ID (in a few states) over the net, there are all kinds of folks selling guns, apparently legally, online. They will also ship to me, though I don’t know if that’s legal or not.
I might have bothered to figure out the specifics on that, but given your silly comment @ 21, I realize now you’re not actually a serious person. Suggesting that you’d rather see a voter who has identified themselves when they registered to vote (the law in all 50 states) and identified themselves again in person when voting (also must be done before voting, and via ID, without a problem, in the majority of states) somehow jump through still another hoop that risks disenfranchising millions in order to prevent virtually ZERO cases of in-person fraud — versus showing an ID when buying a gun, suggests you’re not serious in the least. That you are more concerned with the imaginary idea that there are all sorts of people casting multiple votes in person, thus diluting your vote, but clearly couldn’t give a damn about the tens or hundreds of thousands of legal voters not being able to vote at all under GOP state-issued Photo ID restrictions (and thus “diluting” MY vote) underscores your unAmerican, unConstitutional game here. Not interested in playing, chief. Good luck.
I am curious what readers of this site think about this statement: “What action you can take is more consequential to you, your family, your friends, your children and your grandchildren than voting? Since it is such a powerful function, with long-term consequences, why shouldn’t you be required to prove you are the one and only person on the planet allowed to vote as you at that location for whatever/whoever is on the ballot in the manner you personally believe best benefits you, your family, your children and your grandchildren and even your friends? What better way to prove this than with a state/federal-issued photo ID, especially if obtaining one is often free if necessary?”
Darold Mergens,
I’m curious about people who can’t be bothered to find the answers to their questions right in the very post they’re commenting under before dropping their fly-by shit.
This is actually a correct fact, though quite unrelated to the discussion at hand.
The reason why it is required though is because after 9/11, the United States government, as part of PATRIOT USA, required that anyone and everyone would require a passport or some other form of authorized biometric ID in order to enter the United States. This is equally applicable to US citizens as it is to NON US citizens.
In response to that, foreign countries, because they are generally required to ensure that people can get back to the United States if they leave, now require that one has a valid passport or other suitable ID, all of which have photo identification.
In most of these situations where you claim you don’t need “a photo ID”, you do need to confirm your identity. Tell us how you can confirm your identity positively at a polling place without showing ID?
And when you’re done with that, show me where it says voting is a right. Don’t bother with the Bill of Rights; it just says voting can’t be denied because of sex or race, but it doesn’t say voting is a right.
jwoop66 @ 27 asked:
A majority of states already require ID when voting, and it’s no problem, because they allow for many different documents, such as Drivers License and other forms of Photo ID, but also bank statement, utility bills, pay stubs, social security cards, Veterans IDs, student IDs etc.
Also, federal law already requires ID when registering to vote in all 50 states. You already knew that, right?
Beyond that, addresses, signatures, names, etc already help to identify voters and it has proven to be no problem. I say “no problem” because every single state that has had to defend their Republican Photo ID voter disenfranchisement scheme has so far failed to show voter fraud that might have been deterred by the type of strict Photo ID restrictions they are attempting to institute.
As Judge Lynn Adelman said about WI’s version of the law, which threatened to keep 300,000 legally registered voters (10% of the electorate) from voting this year, the new restriction on voting there would “prevent more legitimate votes from being cast than fraudulent votes.”
I’m sure you can’t justify that, can you? Because, so far, nobody else has been able to.
Hope that helps you understand what you didn’t previously.
Well, you might want to read any state or U.S. District Court ruling that found Photo ID restrictions to be both unconstitutional (14th “Equal Justice” and 24th “Poll Tax” Amendments) and a violation of the Voting Rights Act, which enforces the 15th Amendment.
You may also wish to read the several state court rulings on Photo ID (in WI, MO, PA, AR, etc.) which found such laws in violation of state Constitutions that guarantee the right to vote to all, unlike the U.S. Constitution, which only allows that it can’t be abridged due to race, etc., and a few other specific situations.
The fact that you also don’t seem to know about the rulings that have found these laws to disproportionately affect minorities (thus, violating the U.S. Constitutional right against discrimination in voting), means you really have a lot of work to do in order to understand voting rights in this country. So I hope all of this helped. You’re welcome!
Why are you under the impression that voting is a right? Where in the constitution does the “right” to vote exist?
Andy S. @ 29 asked the same tired question:
Looks like you are unfamiliar with the U.S. Constitution, as well as many state Constitutions, such as in WI, PA, MO, etc.
But, so that I don’t repeat myself, please read my response on this issue @ 28, directly above your comment on the exact same issue, in response to the earlier commenter who suggested same @ 27.
Thanks! Feel free to let me know if you have any more questions!