After a week of voter ID laws being struck down in battleground states, Texas has agreed to weaken its own voter ID law.
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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.
Under terms of the deal, voters who do not possess one of the seven valid forms of identification specified under the law will be allowed to fill out an affidavit ballot after swearing they were unable to procure a valid state-issued photo ID. “It provides critical safeguards for voters”, said Danielle Lang, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, which is representing U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, in the case. Voters without any of the newly added identification methods can still vote through a provisional ballot, which are counted by a ballot board.
Supporters of these laws have said they are necessary to prevent voter fraud.
That law had a strict list of acceptable photo IDs that opponents argued disenfranchised poor and minority voters.
In recent weeks, judges invalidated or undercut voter ID laws in Kansas, North Carolina, North Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin.
The changes come as judges across the country are blocking several GOP-controlled states from imposing stricter election rules this November.
U.S. Justice Department spokesman David Jacobs said the department didn’t have any comment on the accord, which still needs court approval. It’s reported that almost 600,000 eligible Texas voters did not have these forms of ID. But even the judges who wrote key opinions upholding the law in that case have since expressed concerns about how voter ID laws work out in practice.
Along with the affidavit, voters would present an alternate form of ID: voter registration card, birth certificate, a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck or some “any other government document that shows the name of the voter and an address”.
Texas will also be required to spend $2.5 million on voter outreach before November, roughly the amount it spent ahead of elections in 2013 and 2014 when the voter ID law first took effect.
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The agreement is unlikely to affect the November 8 presidential election, given Texas is a longtime Republican stronghold, but could influence local races in the state if more people cast votes. Numerous studies show that poor people and minorities are more likely to be without driver’s licenses and less likely to have the resources to obtain a license or an official ID, which in some states requires a trip to a distant office.
