Merrick Garland's foolish decision

Jonathan Turley's op-ed highlights the foolishness of Merrick Garland's decision to file a lawsuit against Georgia's new election law. Prof. Turley didn't mince words questioning Garland's decision:

The 6-3 decision upheld Arizona’s new voting rules in Arizona over claims of racial discrimination. While the court said it would be imprudent to create a sweeping rule for all future such cases, it was equally imprudent for the Biden administration to ignore the forthcoming decision in filing a new challenge to Georgia’s new voting rights. The lawsuit against Georgia’s new voting rules was clearly timed to beat the court to the punch, but Brnovich delivers a haymaker for those seeking to block such state laws. Indeed, the decision magnifies the concern that the Georgia challenge is more of a political than a legal statement from the Biden administration.

Here are Prof. Turley's harshest words against the Biden administration:

In the new decision, the court declared that all voting rules create some sort of burden but "mere inconvenience cannot be enough to demonstrate a violation of Sec. 2."

Justice John Paul Stevens' majority opinion in Crawford v. Marion County Board of Elections stated this:

The State has identified several state interests that arguably justify the burdens that SEA 483 imposes on voters and potential voters. While petitioners argue that the statute was actually motivated by partisan concerns and dispute both the significance of the State’s interests and the magnitude of any real threat to those interests, they do not question the legitimacy of the interests the State has identified. Each is unquestionably relevant to the State’s interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process. 

The first is the interest in deterring and detecting voter fraud. The State has a valid interest in participating in a nationwide effort to improve and modernize election procedures that have been criticized as antiquated and inefficient.9 The State also argues that it has a particular interest in preventing voter fraud in response to a problem that is in part the product of its own maladministration—namely, that Indiana’s voter registration rolls include a large number of names of persons who are either deceased or no longer live in Indiana. Finally, the State relies on its interest in safeguarding voter confidence. Each of these interests merits separate comment.

Essentially, what Stevens wrote is that restrictions can be made as long as they aren't made for partisan advantage. Deterring and detecting voter fraud isn't a partisan issue. It's a good governance issue. Finally, it's worth watching Brit Hume obliterate the Democrats' shifting positions on restricting voting: