In the second installment of the “Good Fight” series, Glenn Loury and Mark Kleiman address the voter ID question:
Pennsylvania’s new voter ID law was upheld today. Dave Weigel, who covered the trial, has more:
I saw the petitioners (against the law) give a strong case, focusing on the difficulty of getting hundreds of thousands of voters sorted out before a November election. The state based its argument on the 2008 Crawford case, arguing that you couldn’t possibly strike down a law just because some voters would be inconvenienced — voting is inconvenient! What does the state’s win mean, effectively? The ACLU will eventually take its case to the state Supreme Court, which (due to a scandal surrounding one member) is split 3-3, Democratic and Republican members. If the court splits on this law, the Simpson decision is reaffirmed.
Samuel Goldman recently noted that the “practical impact of these laws … is likely to be more limited than either advocates or critics believe.”
JB 
William Dalton 
Mr. Patrick 
ThoughtCrimes 
Josh 
Robert buttons 
Jonf 
let’s even say that this affects democrats and republicans (and even independents) in an entirely proportional way, one has to ask “why”? This is to address a well-characterised non-issue, and hinders/reduces access to the polls. This latter effect, in and of itself, is surely not the role of the government in a participative democracy.
This is, like so much of the GOP today, a nudge and a wink policy. We all know the true goal, whether it be appeals to racism, homophobia, generational warfare, but they continue to put lipstick and their policy pigs, and continue to get a free ride for it.