But the President Barack Obama’s administration in recent years joined the fight on a new breed of voter ID laws passed in Republican-controlled statehouses, sending the U.S. Justice Department to join lawsuits in Texas and North Carolina.
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So while North Carolina is expected to be the site of enormous purchases of TV ads by the presidential campaigns, as perhaps the swingiest state there is, Texas voters – happily or not – will have far fewer presidential TV ads laid before them.
Texas voters will be able to cast ballots without a required photo identification if they sign an affidavit about why they couldn’t get one, under an agreement reached between state officials and voter rights advocates. While less strict than Texas in its photo-ID requirement, the law eliminated same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting and cut back on early voting – provisions that the court said “target African Americans with nearly surgical precision” and “impose cures for problems that did not exist”.
Opponents of the law say the ruling should increase participation by black and Hispanic voters on Election Day in the state that also has closely contested races for U.S. Senate and governor. That already uphill task, however, seems slightly less Herculean when these voter ID bills are systematically thrown out by courts and seen for what they are: One party standing in front of the polls and trying to block minorities from exercising their most basic and essential American right to vote. Their project amounts to a legislative strategy of playing to the whistle – testing the boundaries of constitutional tolerance before federal judges gag and call foul.
Even with the latest rulings, 15 states will have new voting restrictions for the first time in a presidential election this year, according to New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice, which opposes numerous changes. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, and ordered the lower court – in this case, the Southern District of Texas in Corpus Christi – to work with Texas to rework the law.
In the past, voters could cast provisional ballots, but if they didn’t come up with a specific form of ID, their votes would not count. But research by Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, found 31 documented allegations – not to be confused with actual prosecutions – of voter fraud in USA elections between 2000 and 2014.
More than 30 states have some form of voter ID rules.
This week, a federal judge froze North Dakota’s voter ID law, saying it made it harder for some Native Americans in that state to vote.
The appeals court also dismissed arguments by Republican lawmakers that the law was aimed at preventing voter fraud.
It’s gratifying that the federal courts are taking a sophisticated view of what constitutes racial discrimination in voting (and scrutinizing claims that restrictions are created to prevent largely imaginary voter fraud).
The threat to voting rights goes beyond these four states.
Good news on voter ID laws is coming from Texas, Kansas, North Dakota and MI, all of which bodes well for the advocates against voter suppression.
Though the deal should answer questions over how Texas will administer its next elections, it will not end legal wrangling over the 2011 rules, known as the nation’s strictest, which have cost state taxpayers more than $3.5 million.
It’s not just voter ID laws.
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“I’m confident this law opens the voting booth to everyone”, Dunn said. The League of Women Voters of Texas supported this remedy.
