Correction about Texas' voter ID law

In my October 16 post on SCOTUS and the Texas voter ID law, I said that it was absurd that the 5th Circuit Court based it's decision to uphold the law on the basis of "maintaining the status quo."

I found this absurd, saying that the status quo was that the voter ID law had not been implemented so how could it be the status quo, even though it had been passed as a law.

I was wrong about the facts there.    The law was passed in 2011 and it had been used in some local races.   It had not yet been used in a congressional election of in any high profile race where who got to vote was so important.

So, technically wrong and politically right in how important this now is.   But I apologize for the inaccuracy.

By upholding the 5th Court's decision to let the law go into effect for the Nov. 4th election, SCOTUS's majority is using the technicality to claim consistency with its delaying a similar, albeit less terrible, voter ID law in Wisconsin. 

So the majority went for the technical;  Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonya Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan went for the larger question of disenfranchisement and dissented in a "stinging" rebuke.   \

I'm with the women on this one.   So would have been Ralph Waldo Emerson, who famously proclaimed that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

Ralph

Trivia:  Ralph Waldo Emerson was the inspiration for my grandparents' naming my father Ralph Emerson Roughton -- a name that was then passed on to me as "Junior."