Until today, folks thought that Crawford either would control the outcome of voter ID in a Section 5 context, or thought that it had nothing to do with it.  I took the position that Crawford does not provide a blanket safe harbor in a Section 5 context, and provides some help in frustrating efforts to establish discriminatory intent by a lack of in-person voter fraud.   Some mischaracterize Crawford entirely, claiming it upholds voter ID per se.  That’s flat wrong.

The court’s opinion today was largely consistent with mine.  First, it rejected the DOJ’s attempt to establish discriminatory intent by the lack on in-person voter fraud.  This is significant because DOJ is doing the same thing to South Carolina.  No more.  The DCDC isn’t going to look at the lack of in-person voter fraud to establish a racist conspiracy to enact voter ID.  Kiss that argument goodbye.

Second, the court made clear that the posture of the Indiana case (a 14th Amendment attack) bears no resemblance to a Section 5 case.  The burdens are reversed, etc.  So Crawford does not provide a safe harbor to voter ID laws in a Section 5 context, a position I’ve advocated against sometime mighty headwinds.

Third – and here is the new part pointed out to me by a contributor to this blog – the court also rejected evidence like that presented by Victoria Rose Rodriguez.  Rodriguez was a student who couldn’t get a ride to get voter ID, or so she said.  A preposterous part of the Texas trial featured Rodriguez griping that she didn’t have time to get ID, but managed to fly to Washington D.C. to testify.  The court squarely rejected such nonsense using Crawford. 

Point #3 makes it clear the folly of submitting plans to DOJ for preclearance.  It took a federal court to reject the nonsense being served up by Holder’s lawyers.  In an administrative submission – the saga of Victoria Rodriguez would have played a weighty role.

But these are small victories.  Point #2 above remains the most significant one.  Crawford does not entitle voter ID to preclearance, but only limits some of the more outlandish evidentiary fables by creative DOJ lawyers.