Another Winner From Late-Period Posner

Judge Posner’s Voter ID opinion — which, alas, came in the form of a dissent from the denial of an en banc hearing — is indeed a beauty. My favorite graf:

Voter-impersonation fraud may be a subset of “Misinformation.” If so, it is by all accounts a tiny subset, a tiny problem, and a mere fig leaf for efforts to disenfranchise voters likely to vote for the political party that does not control the state government. Those of us who live in Illinois are familiar with a variety of voting frauds, and no one would deny the propriety of the law’s trying to stamp out such frauds. The one form of voter fraud known to be too rare to justify limiting voters’ ability to vote by requiring them to present a photo ID at the polling place is in-person voter impersonation.

Or maybe it’s this one:

As there is no evidence that voter impersonation fraud is a problem, how can the fact that a legislature says it’s a problem turn it into one? If the Wisconsin legislature says witches are a problem, shall Wisconsin courts be permitted to conduct witch trials? If the Supreme Court once thought that requiring photo identification increases public confidence in elections, and experience and academic study since shows that the Court was mistaken, do we do a favor to the Court-do we increase public confidence in elections-by making the mistake a premise of our decision? Pressed to its logical extreme the panel’s interpretation of and deference to legislative facts would require upholding a photo ID voter law even if it were uncontested that the law eliminated no fraud but did depress turnout significantly.

You also have to love the appendix titled “Scrounging For Your Birth Certificate in Wisconsin” (a direct shot at Easterbrook’s embarrassing opinion.) The dissent also does a good job distinguishing the case from Crawford, although Posner and the Supreme Court were wrong then too.

I really hope that Ponsner ends up hearing a case brought by the ACA troofers; that could possibly result in the most entertaining opinion in judicial history.