Judge recants his approval of the Republican implementation of polling place Photo ID restriction laws, saying he "wasn't alert to this kind of trickery."

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This is too long to repeat here but worth your while to read at the site....
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Judge Posner Surprised Disavowal of His Own Photo ID Ruling Caused Stir; Tells NYTimes He Wasn't 'Alert' to Election 'Trickery' Previously
UPDATED with response to election law professor Rick Hasen's critique...

By Brad Friedman, October 16, 2013

This story just keeps getting more insane.

We recently told you --- at The BRAD BLOG and at Salon --- about Judge Richard Posner's remarkable disavowal of his own majority opinion in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals case that became the basis for the U.S. Supreme Court's 2008 approval of the Republican implementation of polling place Photo ID restriction laws.

Though it's the only court case of note that Republicans are able to cite in claiming the "constitutionality" of such laws, last week, during an interview with HuffPo Live, Posner recanted the opinion he wrote in the case. He claimed that he "did not have enough information...about the abuse of voter identification laws," to make a better decision in 2007's Crawford v. Marion County Election Board. If he had, he said, the Indiana case "would have been decided differently."

Of course, at the same time, he noted that the dissenting judge in the case seems to have had no trouble ruling correctly at all. Judge Terence T. Evans blasted at the beginning of his dissent in the case [PDF]: "Let’s not beat around the bush: The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic."

Evans "was right", Posner now admits, and his own decision was wrong. Apparently, Evans somehow did have the information needed to decide the same case correctly, even if Posner now claims that he, personally, did not for some reason.

Today, the New York Times finally decided to cover Posner's admission, and they add at least one more head-spinning element to all of this...

Posner, according to the Times' John Schwartz, "seemed surprised that his comments had caused a stir, and said much had changed since Crawford."

"There's always been strong competition between the parties, but it hadn’t reached the peak of ferocity that it's since achieved," the otherwise-esteemed, Reagan-appointed federal judge told Schwartz during a phone interview. "One wasn't alert to this kind of trickery."

Really? One wasn't alert to it? The Crawford case was heard and decided by Posner in 2007. His ruling was then affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008.

[SNIPPED]
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