Baudewatch department:
Will
responds to a judge responding to Dalia at
Slate.
I responded, in the comments at the Washington Post. At least 3 typos; I should have proofread better before hitting send.
The constitution contained multiple explicit texts that are infringed on my voter ID as enacted and practiced.
Some of these texts are far more specific than the freedom of speech or press.
Voting ~is~ speech, core speech, and is as protected as other forms of speech, but see Takushi, Crawford etc. Voter ID is, perhaps, an unreasonable search of one's papers and effects. Voting in a federal election is one of the few privileges and immunities of federal citizenship. Harper applied equal protection to a paperwork obstacle to voting. The most specific applicable provision is the 24th Amendment, which Ginsberg's dawn dissent references. The constitution textually prohibits charging money to vote. Courts in Georgia, Wisconsin,and now Texas have found that because certain voter ID programs charge money to vote, they are unconstitutional. This is a distinct argument from Missouri, which found that voter ID interfered with the state right to free and equal elections. GA used a legislative fix. The WI court judicially amended the statute so that payment would not be required. Texas is about to go ahead with enforcing a voter ID scheme it knows to be unconstitutional, which would seem to put its employees in a difficult spot a far as ethics and things like malfeasance are concerned.
Voter ID violates the 19th where women who have changed their names are charged extra, and voter ID in Indiana at least violates the textual right of 18-21 year olds to vote, since the statute allows senior citizens to use absentee ballots more easily, to avoid voter ID.
I think Will is correct in saying the Roberts Court cares about the text. I just don't think voter ID is the right example to point to. Freedom of speech is nebulous,and always requires some balancing. Not charging money to vote is a far more specific thing, that need never be balanced away, and the court should upheld that text in Taxes and elsewhere.
