Chris Elmendorf has written this commentary for Election Law@Moritz. It concludes: “If so, this is of considerable moment for lawyers and judges struggling to apply the Storer-Burdick framework for judicial review of electoral mechanics in new contexts (think voter ID). It will not do simply to call upon the courts to balance voter and state interests and draw hard lines–the tack pursued during oral argument by the petitioner’s lawyer in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, the pending case about Indiana’s photo ID requirement for voting. Rather, it is incumbent upon plaintiffs to present and defend reasonably mechanical rules that would serve, at least presumptively, to separate ‘severe’ from ‘lesser’ incursions on constitutionally protected interests. Plaintiffs who cannot articulate such a standard and anchor their claim to it now stand to lose on political-question-like grounds.”
Read Chris’s post. It seems to me that Chris’s analysis assumes the Court is consistent across cases. The Court could well decide the voter id case without even citing Lopez Torres, much less applying any new standard that may be lurking in the case.