A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Texas’ strict voter ID law discriminates against minorities and the poor and must quickly be scrubbed of those effects before the November election.
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Texas has agreed to spend at least $2.5 million for a public outreach campaign to educate voters about the new procedures by no later than August 15.
“In many ways, the challenged provisions in (the North Carolina law) constitute solutions in search of a problem”, Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
North Carolina’s elicited the ire of the appeals court because of its brief list of acceptable photo IDs and an accompanying suite of other restrictive rules, including ones forbidding voters from registering to vote on Election Day, from registering before reaching the voting age of 18, and from casting early ballots. A trial judge had found that more than 600,000 Texans, including a disproportionate number of blacks and Hispanics, lacked one of the forms of identification required under the law.
But, welcome as such decisions are, they can’t substitute for a new federal law that would once again require states with a history of discrimination to obtain prior federal approval of changes in their voting practices.
The real voter fraud is the one being perpetrated on voters by state officials who are systematically trying to disenfranchise minority voters as the Republican base shrinks.
Many people don’t drive, and states may accept a hunting license or a military ID as legitimate identification, but not a government employee card or student ID, or a Medicaid or Medicare card. He alluded to a 2008 Supreme Court ruling that upheld an IN voter-ID law. 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. Those without an ID can sign an affidavit that certifies they are a US citizen and present proof of residence, such as a utility bill, bank statement or paycheck. But suppressing the minority vote in 2020-a presidential election year when more Democrats turn out, and the next key year for redistricting-was essential to the GOP strategy of holding onto these gerrymandered gains for another decade.
José Felipé Anderson is a Professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and an Adjunct Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
The Texas Attorney Genreal’s office said in a statement that because the November election is in less than 100 days, the current deal solves as an “interim remedy” while the office evaluates a possible appeal to the Fifth Circuit to the U.S. Supreme Court. He’d sought to change his voter registration at the Department of Motor Vehicles, but the update didn’t get to county officials by the election. As a Republican leader in Pennsylvania’s Legislature indiscreetly put it in 2012: “Voter ID … is gonna allow Gov. (Mitt) Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania”. It is critical the State of North Dakota provide Native Americans an equal and meaningful opportunity to vote in the 2016 election. Under the law as originally written, any voter lacking state-issued photo ID or a passport would have been denied the right to vote on Election Day.
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