It's on - It's off - It's halfway on - It's a quarter of the way on. It's off again. Now it's back.
Honestly, who can keep up with this mess? (and yes, I really wanted to work in that Plan 9 poster because it's a film I love for its pure enthusiasm and ineptitude - it could be a symbol of the Walker administration). Just when we thought we might know the status of Voter ID for the big November election, we get yet another court decision that puts the voter ID law back into place again - well, almost. I'm really glad I don't have to edit the bringit.wi.gov web site with Voter ID information.
So - let's try to keep track. Way back last month, Judge Lynn Adelman ruled that if a voter could not reasonably obtain a voter ID, said voter would be able to sign an affidavit to that effect and vote anyway. This was to allow voters to have a safety valve which would allow them to vote if the strict provisions of the law made it impossible to obtain ID. I won't go back through all the legal maneuvering that got us to that point because really you don't want to see all that sausage being made.
Today, we got yet another ruling - this time from a panel of the 7th District Court of Appeals in Chicago, which ruled that Adelman's ruling had gone too far -
"Our most recent decision in this case concluded that anyone who is eligible to vote in Wisconsin, but cannot obtain a qualifying photo ID with reasonable effort, is entitled to an accommodation that will permit him or her to cast a ballot," the unanimous panel wrote. "But instead of attempting to identify these voters, or to identify the kinds of situations in which the state’s procedures fall short, the district court issued an injunction that permits any registered voter to declare by affidavit that reasonable effort would not produce a photo ID — even if the voter has never tried to secure one.
"Because the district court has not attempted to distinguish genuine difficulties of the kind our opinion mentioned, or any other variety of substantial obstacle to voting, from any given voter’s unwillingness to make the effort that the Supreme Court has held that a state can require, there is a substantial likelihood that the injunction will be reversed on appeal."
We seem here to have dueling courts - not that this is any huge surprise, but clearly some judges seem to hold for an absolute right to vote while others are holding to a more strict ruling of "protecting us from voter fraud". Interestingly a lot of this seems to depend on which of the two major parties you support.
I'm not at all sure we are done here, and I would not be surprised if this (or the other load of litigation about this law) eventually ended up in the Supreme Court. Which reminds me that there are upcoming big elections both for a President who will nominate Supreme Court members, and the Senate, which approves them. The November election is critically important to who ends up on the Supreme and other courts in the country. The Republican Party looks increasingly vulnerable due to their support of Donald Trump, and it's entirely possible we may see a Democratic president AND Senate. Perhaps then we can see a slowdown of this spate of laws intended only to suppress the vote and punish the poor.