Yet the fight isn’t over, said Representative Trey Martinez Fischer, chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus of the Texas House of Representatives, noting the erosion of voting protections over the past three years.
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That ambiguity is what led the judges to send the decision back to a lower court, to decide whether or not to actually halt the law.
Civil rights groups and the Obama administration then challenged the Texas law under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which forbids changes that discriminate against minorities. It’s a justified outcome.
Still, enough of the act survives that if Texas is found to have intentionally discriminated when it drafted its voter ID law, the state could again be forced to get federal “preclearance” on electoral laws.
“Voter fraud is real, and it undermines the integrity of the election process”.
According to Think Progress, a Wisconsin state study found just seven cases of fraud out of 3 million votes cast during the 2004 election, and none of these seven cases were the kind of in-person voter fraud that is supposedly prevented by a voter ID law.
“The vast majority of eligible voters possess” approved photo IDs and “must show it to vote”, the court said in Wednesday’s ruling. Per the Secretary of State’s website, voters here may show a driver’s license, a non-driver state ID card, a tribal ID card, or a certificate from a long-term care facility. In his small town of 1,160, the poll workers knew Carrier, but had to deny him a ballot. Carrier’s son, Calvin, testified in court that he has tried to obtain a birth certificate for his father, picking up the cost, but the old records have clerical errors that render the document unusable.
The court also declined to articulate a remedy to the Section 2 violation, saying only it “must be tailored to rectify only the discriminatory effect on those voters who do not have SB 14 ID or are unable to reasonably obtain such identification”.
“The 5th Circuit rightly reversed the lower court’s finding of discriminatory goal, but wrongly concluded the law had a discriminatory effect”. Seventeen states have more-restrictive voting laws than they did during the presidential election four years ago, and several are under court scrutiny.
“We affirm the district court’s finding that S.B”. It’s a serious question. However, a lower court has been instructed to find out way for Texas to accommodate those can not display an identification proof. But the ruling did not strike down the law entirely, ruling instead that new procedures must be found to assist potential voters lacking the required identification. If a court ultimately finds that was the case, Texas could be punished and ordered to seek federal approval before changing future voting laws, Dunn said.
Then-Governor Rick Perry (R) signed the law in 2011, and it had been in effect for the previous three elections. “This is an enormous victory for voters in Texas”, said Myrna Pérez, deputy director of the New York University School of Law Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, which describes itself as a nonpartisan law and policy institute.
“The court sent a message that discriminatory photo ID laws are an affront to our democracy and can not stand”, Myrna Pérez, deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, said in a statement.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in a close decision among a special 15-judge panel, also sent the case back to a district court to examine claims by the plaintiffs that the law had a discriminatory objective.
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The Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, threw out Congress’s designation of which states required pre-clearance of their laws. The state and other supporters say the Texas law prevents fraud. It also vacates the trial court’s finding that the law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments, since it didn’t reach those issues. The bill was also allowed to bypass the ordinary committee process.
