A federal court in Tennessee has dealt a serious setback to those attacking photo voter identification laws around the country – including Eric Holder’s Justice Department in North Carolina. United States District Court Judge Ronnie Greer has thrown out a lawsuit brought by the Green Party challenging the Volunteer State’s photo voter ID law.
While the decision was bad for the Green Party in Tennessee, the opinion may be even worse for voter ID opponents nationwide such as the NAACP, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund and Eric Holder .
Greer’s opinion undermines most all of the arguments being pushed by leftwing election-integrity opponents like Eric Holder and the NAACP.
One of the favorite talking points of the left is that voter ID is a “solution in search of a problem.” Any search of stories about voter ID reveals a coordinated push of this strategy by the left and their paid public relations firms.
But Greer, like the United States Supreme Court before him, ruled that states are entirely free to enact election-protection statutes even without proof of voter fraud. In other words, states have the power to get ahead of the criminals and vote-fraudsters.
Greer:
Plaintiff’s allegations of Tennessee’s lack of empirical evidence of in-person fraud or that requiring photo identification will reduce it are irrelevant.
Greer relied on the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Crawford vs. Marion County.
This is bad news for Eric Holder and the plaintiffs challenging North Carolina voter ID.
Not to be deterred, however, Holder’s leftist lawyers have cooked up a fall-back plan. In North Carolina they are arguing what they already argued and lost in Texas and South Carolina – that the lack of “widespread” voter fraud means that the voter ID law must be a racially motivated legislative plot to harm minorities.
If you didn’t catch that, it goes like this.
Since legislators in Texas, South Carolina, and North Carolina could not point to “widespread” voter impersonation, racism must be the real reason behind passing voter ID.
The argument openly made in court reveals the rancid paranoia about Southerners by Voting Section lawyers. No surprise there given the backgrounds of the lawyers involved.
But put aside for the moment the fact that mainstream media like the Houston Chronicle, the State, and the Charlotte Observer bury or ignore incidents of voter fraud. Ignore for a moment that the left never tells you what “widespread or pervasive” fraud means. Nor will they reveal how many units of fraud they find to be acceptable before a legislature may act.
Judge Greer echoes what sensible Americans already understand: it’s no big deal for a state to require you to prove you are who you say you are when you go to vote.
This isn’t a racist plot by southern white male legislators or the Ku Klux Klan version 2.0. It’s common sense.
Judge Greer’s opinion upholding Tennessee’s voter ID law was all about common sense.
No plaintiff has ever successfully challenged a voter ID law in federal court. All of the cases have been characterized by the same comic flaw: the person who can’t obtain a photo ID cannot be found. The elusive snow leopard is easier to find than someone who can’t get a photo ID.
The recurring void was no different in the Tennessee case. From Judge Greer’s opinion:
Defendants argue that plaintiff’s complaint does not identify a single injured person [or] allege that one injured person is a member of the Green Party.
The case is a warning to the plaintiffs challenging Texas and North Carolina voter ID. Bluster, sound bites and talking points only go so far. The country isn’t under the boot of structural racism perpetrated by conniving Republicans in North Carolina and Texas (and Democrats in Rhode Island).
It’s not 1963 anymore, and federal courts are increasingly coming to understand it, even if Eric Holder does not.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member