Hans von Spakovsky, the controversial former Federal elections commissioner, was in town over the summer at the invitation of the St. Louis chapter of the Federalist Society.

He participated in a panel discussion about anticipated problems with the upcoming national elections.

I covered the conversation, which was held the day before a closed door national gathering of Republican lawyers mapping out election litigation strategies.

Since then Mr. von Spakovsky and I have had some cordial email exchanges, the most recent installment of which began by my asking him:

“Were your concerns and fears about the general election borne out?”

To which he replied:

I am glad that Obama won by a significant amount so that the problems inherent in some of our state registration systems did not affect the election, otherwise we would probably still not know who won the election today because there would be ongoing litigation all over the country.  But the problems with same day registration were shown in Ohio by the fact that campaign staffers from out of state were able to illegally register and vote in the election without being caught by election officials.  They were only discovered because of work by some student reporters.

On the other hand, the election results certainly lay to rest any claims that voter ID laws have any effect on depressing the turnout of minority (and Democratic) voters.  Georgia and Indiana, the two states with the strictest ID laws in the country, had record turnouts.  Democratic turnout in Indiana was up 8.32 percentage points from the 2004 election, the biggest increase in the nation.  Overall turnout in Indiana was up 4.81 percentage points - 5th highest in the nation.  Democratic turnout in Georgia was up 6.1 percentage points from the prior election; overall turnout in the state was up 6.7 percentage points, the second highest increase in the nation.