Texas agreed Wednesday to weaken its voter ID law as courts across the US, with only months before the November election, are blocking Republican-controlled states from imposing polling place restrictions that critics say target minorities and the poor. But in the Secretary of State race in the nation’s most Hispanic state, voter ID remains a hot topic with the GOP nominee saying New Mexico needs a strict voter identification law to battle fraud.
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The agreement comes about two weeks after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that S.B.
Texas worked fast to soften the law before Election Day after a federal appeals court last month ruled that the tough ID restrictions – which accepted concealed handgun permits at polling place, but not college student IDs – violated the federal Voting Rights Acts.
The deal also specifies that the state “shall continue to educate voters in subsequent elections concerning both voter identification requirements and the opportunity for voters who do not possess SB 14 ID and can not reasonably obtain it to cast a regular ballot”.
Under the old law, voters without a photo ID could cast provisional ballots that would only be counted if the voter presented a valid ID within six days.
The deal requires the state of Texas to allot $2.5 million for voter outreach efforts, such as through purchasing advertising on the television or in newspapers.
A federal judge must still approve the changes. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article. With evidence in hand, courts also blocked voting restrictions of various types in North Carolina, Wisconsin, North Dakota and OH over the past two weeks. Donald Trump referenced the rulings Tuesday while reiterating his concerns that the presidential election will be “rigged” against him.
In this February 26, 2014 file photo, an election official checks a voter’s photo identification at an early voting polling site in Austin, Texas.
“The U.S. Supreme Court said that Voter ID is a legitimate means of preventing voter fraud, and Texans widely support it to defend the integrity of our elections”, the statement reads.
Under the state’s agreement with the Obama administration and voting-rights advocates, people lacking one of the required IDs will have more options in November.
North Dakota’s voter-identification requirement is on hold after a federal judge sided Monday with a group of Native Americans who said the law unfairly burdens them.
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Election law expert Richard Hasen, who works as a professor at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law, said the agreement amounts to a “darn good deal for plaintiffs”. “The judges ignored all the evidence about improved turnout under Voter ID laws and the lack of any discrimination at all”.
