I Pit the ID-demanding GOP vote-suppressors (Part 1)

[Buck_Godot]

Moved this discussion from a GD thread to avoid it becoming another Bricker nitpick fest.

@Bricker

@Buck_Godot

True,

So Bricker, if following the model of the OP we wait until two Republican legistators “happen to get food poisoning” making them unable to vote, and then we pass a law in Virginia that says that all residents need to show ID in order to vote and the only ID we will accept is union cards student ID’s, and a state provided ID that is available at the Colonial Williamburg courthouse between the hours of 12:00 and 12:15. You see the legality of what we have done and go on your merry way?

Or would you look to some activist judges to maybe take a look at it to see if its Kosher.

Of course with the understanding that if we managed to pack the court with two additional judges who agreed our way then you’d admit you must have been wrong.

Judges are not activist when they consider whether a law runs afoul of constitutional guarantees.

Judges ARE activist if they create novel theories of what constitutional guarantees exist.

In the example you offer, I believe that applying existing constitutional caselaw to the scheme you describe would result in striking down the law.

I don’t agree that’s activist: a judge who did that would be applying existing case law, not creating new law, or new constitutional guarantees.

Why? It was a democratically passed law which solved an important problem of preventing voter fraud. Now I suppose one might be able to argue that it may have unforeseen effects which would inconvenience certain voters, in a way that happens to provide electoral advantage to our side, but that shouldn’t matter as long as it has a rational basis. No one is being prevented from voting. I suppose you also could argue that there would be better ways of dealing with the issue of voter fraud that wouldn’t disenfranchise so many people, or be so one sided, but that wasn’t that law that was passed.

Basically just the same as the Ohio law.

So all we need are a couple of justices on the Supreme court who don’t have their judgment muddled by activist thinking and then you will have to admit that you were wrong and it wasn’t unconstitutional at all.