The Seventh Circuit insists that the district court in the Wisconsin ID litigation was too lenient with the option of an affidavit for voters who could not with reasonable effort obtain a qualifying photo ID. So the Court directs that this relief be limited to the class of voters in genuine need, and it is seeking from the court below “objective standards” election officials could use in determining what constitutes “genuine difficulties” in obtaining ID.  To support its position, the Seventh Circuit cites a portion of Crawford, offering this selection:

Yet the Supreme Court held in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181, 198 (2008), that “the inconvenience of making a trip to the [department of motor vehicles], gathering the required documents, and posing for a photograph surely does not qualify as a substantial burden on the right to vote, or even represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting.” A given voter’s disagreement with this approach does not show that requiring one trip to a governmental office is unreasonable.

The Seventh Circuit chooses to omit the opening three words of this sentence in Crawford: “For most voters…” In other words, the Supreme Court in Crawford does not say that the inconveniences are minor for all voters, but more generally for most voters. It does not even suggest that the number of voters for whom these inconveniences would be significant are small or trivial in number, only that it is a “limited number” and that “most voters” don’t confront the problem. Crawford suggested that the limited number may include elderly persons born out of state and those economic and unspecified “personal” limitations. 553 U.S. 199.

The voting rights and campaign finance wars have been fought on terrain largely shaped by two major and controversial decisions: the Crawford case on voter ID requirements, and Citizens United on independent spending. Critics have lamented Crawford’s naiveté about the stated value and inevitable partisan misuses of ID requirements, but it seemed that supporters had going for them the “common sense” judgment that voters required to have an ID to board a plane can be reasonably asked to produce one to vote. So one might have thought that Crawford was here to stay, even as the Justice who wrote for the Court, John Paul Stevens, has expressed regret.

Citizens United got more bad press in many quarters for opening up direct corporate political spending and for giving a boost to Super PACs. Its author, Anthony Kennedy, continues to defend it. He points to the silver lining: the court’s brief, arguably cursory, salute to disclosure, even as Kennedy concedes it is not yet working in practice as he had hoped it would. The critics who think the court flipped open the Pandora’s Box of campaign finance have put whatever hopes on the antidote of disclosure, and more speculatively on a constitutional amendment to overturn the case’s core permissiveness.

In light of developments of recent weeks, it is interesting to consider where the law set in motion by these cases is heading.

As the courts work their way through claims against ID and other voting restrictions, they continue on a course of “softening" voting impediments but not eliminating them altogether. They remain reluctant to deny states the authority to enact rules, on virtually non-existent evidence, to protect against in-person voter fraud. Remedies are then fashioned that provide relief to voters facing a “reasonable impediment” to voting but the question has been legitimately raised: how much of an impact can these sorts of measures be expected to have?

Like the right to a provisional ballot provided for under HAVA, these other remedies-- like accommodating indigent voters with access to cost-free identification--help voters, but only a limited number. The reach and effectiveness of these measures depend upon the states’ performance of their obligations: the information they provide to voters, and the good faith and competence with which they administer the remedies. The same may be true of more robust remedies, like the option recently ordered for Wisconsin, affording access to an affidavit alternative to documentary identification.

Still “softening” is useful. Political actors—notably, parties and presidential campaigns--and nonprofit voting organizations have dramatically improved upon their capabilities in effectively advising voters about remedial options and assisting them in exercising them. Voters are not, then, entirely dependent upon state officials for help. In successive election cycles, the effectiveness of these partisan and nonprofit voter protection programs has improved, each rebuilt successfully on the experience of the last.

Justice Ginsburg’s recent press comments have been noted mostly for her openly expressed disdain for the Trump candidacy. Less surprising in the remarks was the Justice’s “impossible dream” that Citizens United be overturned. She has said this before, and since she dissented in that case, there is not much news here, unless anyone still had doubts that for this Justice, the killing off of that decision is a priority.

The comment was reported at the same time as the Complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission by Representative Ted Lieu and others who intend to set into motion the reconsideration the Justice is hoping for. And so it invites an appraisal of its prospects for accomplishing the Justice Ginsburg’s “impossible dream.”

As my colleague Marc Elias has pointed out, the FEC cannot succeed; this is a lost cause. When the Complaint fails, it may do little more than unnecessarily promote the belief that CU is here to stay. It is not clear why this is the best legal maneuver, or the most effective exercise in public communications, in the attack on Speechnow and Citizens United.

Aside from the question of strategy, the Complaint itself  is a surprisingly subdued performance. It has a bit the feel of going-through-the-motions: doing the least possible to set up the agency dismissal and the move to the courts. True, the Complainants knew that the outcome at the agency was inevitable and there is time later to build their argument. But the case they preview in the Complaint seems flat and this certainly can’t help the Complainants in their subsequent appeal.

A theme appearing in a number of post-McDonnell commentaries and editorials is that the Court has made more difficult the prosecution of bribery-based public corruption. It is certainly true that the Court has pared down the reading that could be given to bribery, and especially of the pay to play sort: paying for access alone, in the “typical form, such as arranging a meeting or phone call for someone to make a case for government action. As a practical matter, however, there remains considerable peril in access-buying. How much of a problem prosecutors will now face in bringing these cases is an open question.

In many corruption cases, some person’s (P’s) wish to have official A contact official B, to open up the channels of communication and advocacy, does not arise because B is somehow unavailable. B is or has been available, just not on the terms that the private party finds advantageous. B might rarely takes private meetings, requiring more formal submissions, or delegates much of the responsibility for face-to face encounters to staff. Or B has had the meeting with others present, and P would like a more private discussion. Or B has had the meeting, and P wants another, not confident that the first did the trick.

So P is looking for something he could not otherwise get, or so he believes, by having A ask B to provide the opportunity. Because B might not otherwise grant the audience, B is getting a message from A in many such cases—that A has a special interest in P, if not in P’s cause.

Depending on the facts, these circumstances, usually together with other facts, can constitute a trial question of exerted “pressure” from A on B, which the Court in McDonnell retained within its narrowed definition of “official act.” Neither P nor A are in the clear if P provided benefits to A in return for help with B.