Berman wrote about Kavanaugh and voting rights in Mother Jones a couple of days before the Times piece (perhaps inspiring the Times to commission the later piece), and in that one he provided this piquant detail:

Kavanaugh downplayed the racially charged origins of South Carolina’s voter ID law and its impact on voters of color. Members of the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus walked out of the Legislature when the bill was first considered. After the law passed, Ed Koziol, a Republican supporter of the law, wrote an email to the bill’s author, Rep. Alan Clemmons of Myrtle Beach, saying that if African Americans were offered a $100 award for obtaining voter ID, “you would see how fast they

Ari Berman in the Times July 13 on Brett Kavanaugh as a threat to voting rights:

In late 2011, the Obama administration blocked a South Carolina law that required voters to show a photo ID before casting their ballots, finding that it could disenfranchise tens of thousands of minority voters, who were more likely than whites to lack such IDs.

But when South Carolina asked a federal court in Washington to approve the law, Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion upholding it. He ruled that the measure was not discriminatory, even though the Obama administration claimed that it violated the Voting Rights Act.

Kavanaugh pointed to a 2008 Supreme Court decision upholding Indiana’s voter ID law.

“Many states, particularly

Rachelle Hampton at The New Republic last year:

A new Mother Jones report on voter suppression in 2016 found that as many as 45,000 people in Wisconsin were deterred from voting due to the state’s voter ID law, possibly costing Hillary Clinton the election. In the majority-black city of Milwaukee alone, voter turnout decreased by 41,000 for the 2016 election. “I would estimate that 25 to 35 percent of the 41,000 decrease in voters, or somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 voters, likely did not vote due to the photo ID requirement,” said Neil Albrecht, Milwaukee’s election director.

An MIT study found that 12 percent of all voters—an estimated 16 million people—encountered at least one problem voting in 2016. There

Good news (or, actually, just bad news reversed, but we take what we can get).

President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday evening to disband a White House commission investigating claims of voter fraud, ending an inquiry started after he falsely claimed that unauthorized votes had cost him the popular vote in the presidential election.

Mr. Trump cast blame for the commission’s demise on the refusal by several states to turn over voter information to the group. He said he made the decision despite “substantial evidence of voter fraud,” but experts generally agree such fraud is rare.

Ari Berman:

Huge news. This commission was predicated on Trump's gigantic lie that millions voted illegally https://t.co/3SNDpjJDNd

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) January

Jessica Huseman at Pro Publica tells us what they’re doing about that voting rights case in Texas.

Hours after President Donald Trump was inaugurated, the Department of Justice filed to postpone a hearing on the Texas Voter ID law. The request was granted. The DOJ had previously argued that the law intentionally discriminated against minority voters, but told the court it needed additional time for the new administration to “brief the new leadership of the Department on this case and the issues to be addressed at that hearing before making any representations to the Court.”

Chad Dunn, attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, expects Trump’s Department of Justice to reverse course. “I figure the government will spend the