YET another victory for our Republic and the voters in Texas and across the nation! Another smack down for the repiglicans and tea-baggers intent on stealing the election through voter suppression....
A federal court on Thursday rejected a Texas law
that would require voters to present photo IDs to election officials
before being allowed to cast ballots in November.
A
three-judge panel in Washington unanimously ruled that the law imposes
"strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor" and noted that racial
minorities in Texas are more likely to live in poverty.
The
decision involves an increasingly contentious political issue: a push,
largely by Republican-controlled legislatures and governors' offices, to
impose strict identification requirements on voters.
Republicans
are aggressively seeking the requirements in the name of stamping out
voter fraud. Democrats, with support from a number of studies, say fraud
at the polls is largely non-existent and that Republicans are simply
trying to disenfranchise minorities, poor people and college students
all groups that tend to back Democrats.
In
the Texas case, the Justice Department called several lawmakers, all of
them Democrats, who said they detected a clear racial motive in the push
for the voter ID law. Lawyers for Texas argued that the state was
simply tightening its laws. Texas called experts who demonstrated that
voter ID laws had a minimal effect on turnout. Republican lawmakers
testified that the legislation was the result of a popular demand for
more election protections.
The judges in the
Texas case are Rosemary Collyer, an appointee of President George W.
Bush; Robert Wilkins, an appointee of President Barack Obama; and David
Tatel, an appeals court judge appointed by President Bill Clinton.
Tatel,
writing for the panel, called the Texas law "the most stringent in the
nation." He said it would impose a heavier burden on voters than a
similar law in Indiana, previously upheld by the Supreme Court, and one
in Georgia, which the Justice Department allowed to take effect without
objection.
The decision comes the same week
that South Carolina's strict photo ID law is on trial in front of
another three-judge panel in the same federal courthouse. A court ruling
in the South Carolina case is expected before the November election.
During
an appearance in Houston in July, Attorney General Eric Holder said
Texas' photo ID requirement amounts to a poll tax, a term that harkens
back to the days after Reconstruction when blacks across the South were
stripped of their right to vote. The attorney general told the NAACP
that many Texas voters seeking to cast ballots would struggle to pay for
the documents they might need to obtain the required photo ID.
Last
December, South Carolina's voter ID requirement became the first such
law to be rejected by the Justice Department in nearly 20 years.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said the attorney general
made a "very serious error" by blocking it. Romney said the requirement
is easy to meet and will stem voter fraud.
"We
don't want people voting multiple times" and "you can get a photo ID
free from your state. You can get it at the time you register to vote,"
Romney said.
Assistant Attorney General
Thomas Perez, the Justice Department's chief civil rights enforcer, has
said the Texas and South Carolina photo ID laws will hinder many
citizens, particularly minorities, in exercising their right to vote.
Across
much of the South, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is viewed as an overly
intrusive burden on the states a relic once used by the Justice
Department's civil rights division to remedy discriminatory practices
that no longer exist. Under Section 5 of the act, Texas, South Carolina
and all or parts of 14 other states must obtain clearance from the
Justice Department's civil rights division or a federal court before
carrying out changes in elections. The states are mostly in the South
and all have a history of discriminating against blacks, American
Indians, Asian-Americans, Alaskan Natives or Hispanics.
Last
year, new voter ID laws passed in Kansas, Mississippi, Rhode Island and
Wisconsin. In addition to Texas and South Carolina, Alabama and
Tennessee tightened existing voter ID laws to require photo ID.
Governors in Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire and North
Carolina vetoed strict new photo ID laws.
This
year, Pennsylvania enacted its own law and voting-rights groups who
filed suit in an effort to stop it are appealing to the state Supreme
Court. A hearing is scheduled for Sept. 13 in Philadelphia. The
Republican administration of Gov. Tom Corbett says a U.S. Justice
Department inquiry into the state's tough new voter identification law
is politically motivated. The department is requesting the state's voter
registration list, plus any database of registered voters who lack a
valid photo ID that the law requires voters to show before their ballots
can be counted.
In Wisconsin, a county judge
ruled in July that the state's new photo ID law impairs the right to
vote. In an appeal, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, a
Republican, is arguing that the ID law doesn't impose an undue burden
because voters can get free state ID cards.
Since
the last election, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Wisconsin and Texas and other
states have tried to limit or ban the use of student IDs as voter
identification. In Florida, lawmakers tried to limit "third party"
organizations, including student groups, from registering new voters.
At
a recent congressional hearing, Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa said
the decision to contest the Texas and South Carolina laws shows
insensitivity by the Justice Department to voter fraud.
Election
administrators and academics who monitor the issue said in-person fraud
is rare because someone would have to impersonate a registered voter
and risk arrest.
A report by the Brennan
Center for Justice determined that new voting restrictions could
suppress the votes of more than 5 million young, minority, low-income
and disabled voters
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/30/160318424/texas-voter-id-law-sets-strict-burdens-court-says?ft=3&f=1001&sc=nl&cc=nh-20120831
