Willful Ignorance, Complexity and Corruption in Wisconsin Voter ID Ruling

One wonders since the new DMV service center policy is cited in Ruthelle Frank v. Scott Walker (14-2058), as is the Milwaukee Branch of NAACP v. Walker ruling, does the record also include One Wisconsin Now's Amicus Curiae Brief detailing how "Obtaining a State-Issued ID Is Difficult, Inconvenient, Impracticable, and –For Some –Insurmountable," and the lack of "Wisconsin’s DMV Inaccessibility Creates A Voter Access Issue."
 
The brief is worth checking out and certainly should be included in an emergency appeal and should be a topic of federal court deliberation.
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Judge Richard Posner of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is the author of the Crawford v. Marion County Election Board  opinion (2007) [one year later came a U.S. Supreme Court confused landmark case with a plurality opinion authored by Justice Stevens (since retracted) from which the order from the Seventh Circuit's panel used to justify its extraordinary ruling changing the Wisconsin voting landscape some 50 days out from Election Day.]

It is appropriate that Judge Posner, a leading public intellectual and legal scholar, notes in his Reflections on Judging (Harvard University Press. 2013) that the educational background of fellow Justices and judges reflects the belief that law is a humanity rather than a science or at least a social science. (p. 81)

Posner, appointed to the bench in 1981, has turned into the conscience of the Seventh Circuit, and conscience and fidelity to the principles animating the dispassionate and fair deliberation of the law is missing from Frank v. Walker and its companion case.

"We are very disappointed in the damaging decision to lift the injunction against [Wisconsin] Voter ID, which will cause chaos and disruption for voters and elections workers for the November election.  The state has not demonstrated it is prepared to make this new ID scheme work.  The new procedures were presented at the last second and it is unclear whether or how they will work in time to ensure that eligible voters are actually able to vote. It has not demonstrated how it will train 1,852 municipal clerks and tens of thousands of poll workers, as well as notifying voters of the new rules. We will continue to review and closely monitor this decision," writes Chris Ahmuty, ACLU of Wisconsin Executive Director.

Wisconsin's Act 23 is one of the most restrictive Republican-authored voter obstruction state laws exceeded perhaps only by Texas and North Carolina, all three of which are intended to block as many disfavored citizens as possible from casting votes, with an emphasis on ethnic minorities, most of whom in Wisconsin reside in one county.

Clayton Kawski, an assistant Wisconsin attorney general, sounded more like a politician of the likes of Scott Walker and the odious Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-White People) than a jurist in oral arguments, using the GOP catch phrase "common sense" numerous times to justify the constitutionality of this clearly unconstitutional law, (Davey, NYT) even citing for the panel the perceived popularity of Act 23 as a polling data point.

"The district court [Judge Lynn Adelman] held the state law invalid, and enjoined its implementation, 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)," reads yesterday's appellate order.

Materially identical?

This is ironic language to use for the Wisconsin law vis a vis Indiana's.

Last year in U.S. district court Wisconsin featured a long trial at which was presented a mountain of testimony and social scientific evidence demonstrating that Wisconsin's photo voter ID law would disenfranchise potentially 100,000s, while also demonstrating that only one case of voter impersonation voter fraud occurred out of 10s of Millions of votes cast going back to 2004.

No such trial took place in Indiana in 2007-08, yet the appellate panel finds as fact that the two state laws are materially identical; based on what evidence, what examination, what trial?

Judge Posner commenting on the challenge of complexity in federal litigation notes that a careful examination of evidence is imperative if the rights of citizens under law are to be realized by a judiciary that often misses the mark.

"I plead guilty to having written the majority opinion (affirmed by the Supreme Court) upholding Indiana's requirement that prospective voters prove their identity with a photo id—a law now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than fraud prevention." (pp. 84–85)

Notes Posner, "Consider what judges do when they don't understand the activity from which a case before them has arisen. They duck, bluff, weave, change the subject." (pp 85-86)

This is precisely what the appellate panel has done, writing: "After the district court’s decision, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin revised the procedures to make it easier for persons who have difficulty affording any fees to obtain the birth certificates or other documentation needed under the law, or to have the need for documentation waived. Milwaukee Branch of NAACP v. Walker, 2014 WI 98 (July 31, 2014). This reduces the likelihood of irreparable injury, and it also changes the balance of equities and thus the propriety of federal injunctive relief. The panel has concluded that the state’s probability of success on the merits of this appeal is sufficiently great that the state should be allowed to implement its law, pending further order of this court."

Actually, the new policy is not in effect until Monday and the sophistication of DMV clerk, the dearth of DMV centers in Wisconsin and the ability to travel to DMV centers are of no apparent concern to Easterbrook, Sykes and Tinder.

Acting as an obtuse judiciary, Judges Easterbrook, Sykes and Tinder are at best willfully ignorant:

Notes Judge Adelman in his April 2014 opinion that is meticulously crafted:

"Although it is true that those individuals who already have IDs must have at one time experienced the burdens and inconveniences of obtaining them (and must continue to experience the burdens and inconveniences of keeping their IDs valid), the photo ID requirement creates a unique barrier for those who would not obtain a photo ID but for Act 23." (pp 22-23)

The three judges are redolent of George W. Bush during Hurricane Katrina:

'Why don't you just hop in the SUV and take your family and make sure everyone has their IDs in order and the DMV will help you now' echoes George W. Bush's inability to understand why families didn't evacuate when the approach of Katrina gave them days warning in 2005. [In a historical irony, Bush's perceived indifference to African Americans led Karl Rove to push Congress into a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act, which proving too beneficial to African Americans and Latinos' voting so it had to be gutted by the GOP judiciary on the U.S. Supreme Court.]

The socioeconomic reality and the new precondition to vote imposed by Act 23 escapes Easterbrook, Sykes and Tinder who can only see a similarity in the text of state laws, but remain oblivious to the reality of the lives—though presented in the record with a huge body of evidence whom the law serves.

I have to believe Easterbrook is willfully ignorant and Sykes and Tinder are corrupt.

In the Easterbrook-Sykes-Tinder order, the panel cites Milwaukee Branch of NAACP v. Walker, 2014 WI 98 (July 31, 2014).

It is worth noting that "... Wisconsin will still have only one DMV location that is open during the weekend, on Madison's west side. By comparison, Indiana has 124 DMV centers that are open during the weekend." (Roller, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)

One wonders since the new DMV service center policy is cited; as is the Milwaukee Branch of NAACP v. Walker ruling, does the record also include One Wisconsin Now's Amicus Curiae Brief detailing how "Obtaining a State-Issued ID Is Difficult, Inconvenient, Impracticable, and –For Some –Insurmountable." and the lack of "Wisconsin’s DMV Inaccessibility Creates A Voter Access Issue."

The brief is worth checking out and certainly should be included in an emergency appeal and should be a topic of federal court deliberation.