Friday, April 24, 2015

Texas Photo Voter ID Law Update


A federal appeals court will hear oral arguments on April 28, 2015, in a case that could have national implications for states that require voters to present government-issued forms of photo identification at the polls.

The issue at hand, Texas' contentious photo ID law, is expected to ultimately make its way to the Supreme Court.  But first a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear the case.  There, voting rights advocates will argue that a federal judge's ruling from October, which called the law an unconstitutional "poll tax," intentionally discriminatory and an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote, should be upheld.  Critics of the law argued that hundreds of thousands of Texans lacked the correct form of identification, but the state's leadership has insisted that the law is meant to protect against voter fraud and is not an effort to make it more difficult for any demographic to vote.

In light of the imminent election in November 2014, the 5th Circuit stayed the federal judge's ruling.  The Supreme Court then declined an emergency request to prevent the law from going into effect.  This decision not to intervene, according to SCOTUSblog, "was the first time since 1982 that the Supreme Court has allowed a law restricting voting access to be enforced after a federal court had ruled it to be unconstitutional because it intentionally discriminated against minorities."

During November 2014 elections, a number of Texans weren't prepared for the new requirements.  As the Brennan Center for Justice has documented, voters whose driver's licenses had expired, or those who did not bring their licenses with them, were unable to vote and were forced to cast provisional ballots.  In many cases, those ballots were not counted because the voters couldn't follow up within six days of the election with the correct form of identification.

Voting rights experts have argued that Texas has a tough standard to overcome in arguing that the federal judge's decision made errors and was clearly wrong.

One of my issues with photo ID laws, it does not stop absentee ballot requests from people who should not get a ballot.  If their is any new laws, this is the issue that needs to be fixed.











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