TEXAS - The war on women expands to voting = Please sign Credo Petition

[Coyotl]

The war on women expands to voting
Heidi Hess, CREDO Action
Today at 8:37 AM
CREDO action

Texas’ latest attack on women's rights is at the ballot box

The petition to Texas Secretary of State Steen reads:

Do everything that you can to stop Texas’ voter ID law from disenfranchising women voters. You should immediately issue an opinion about the potential negative impacts of the law on married and divorced women; direct poll workers to interpret the “substantially similar” names requirement in the broadest way possible; and stop spreading the misleading information that a provisional ballot is equivalent to a vote at the polls.

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Dear xxxxxxxx,
Protect women's right to vote

A new voter ID law in Texas could disenfranchise over one-third of women voters. National pressure is needed to make sure women’s votes count.

Governor Rick Perry and the Texas Legislature spent the summer trampling women’s reproductive rights. Now, they are enforcing a voter ID law that jeopardizes Texas women’s, especially married women’s, right to vote because women are more likely to change their names after a marriage or divorce.

Texas’ secretary of state could take action to make sure that every woman’s vote counts. But so far he’s only downplayed the potential problem. We need to generate massive local and national pressure when partisan election officials try to suppress our votes.

Women in Texas have already been pummeled by the anti-woman extremism of the Texas Legislature and Governor Perry. To disenfranchise them at the ballot box is another blow we simply can’t allow. Can you add your voice to urge Secretary of State Steen to stop this terrible bill from suppressing the votes of Texas women? Click here to automatically sign the petition.

Last week, news broke that Judge Sandra Watts was forced to use a provisional ballot to vote because the name on her driver’s license didn’t match the name on her voter registration form.1 It was the first time in 49 years that she’d had a problem voting. The problem? Her middle names didn’t match (on one document it’s the middle name from her birth certificate, on the other it’s her maiden name).

Texas’ top election official, John Steen, is already trying to do damage control, without doing anything to solve the problem. He put out a statement trying to downplay the “substantially similar” names requirement, and trying to calm voters by reminding them that even if there’s a problem at the polls, voters won’t be turned away, they’ll simply have to file a provisional ballot.2

But provisional ballots are rarely counted. Having to file one is essentially the same as being turned away at the polls. And when a whopping 34% of women do not have an ID that matches their legal name, the potential problem is too big to ignore.3

Secretary of State Steen needs to do everything he can to make sure that there’s no risk of disenfranchisement. And while he can’t undo the law, he can issue an opinion that not only reiterates the need for broad application of the “substantially similar” requirement, but emphasizes the real risk to women’s franchise from the Voter ID law as it’s written.

He’ll need national pressure if he’s going to act. Can you help make sure the secretary of state protects Texas women’s right to vote? Click here to automatically sign.

Voter ID laws were pushed by Governor Perry and the legislature as essential to remedy voter fraud, but there’s almost no evidence that voter fraud even exists in Texas. One person has been convicted of voter impersonation in Texas since 2000. Just one.

In fact, the evidence that voter fraud exists nationally is so thin, and the potential threat of disenfranchisement is so great, that one of the country’s most respected federal judges has announced that he now agrees with the dissenting opinion on a 2005 Indiana ID law that he upheld. The dissent claimed that the law was “a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout” by certain voters who tended to vote Democratic and was like using “a sledgehammer to hit either a real or imaginary fly on a glass coffee table.”5

Combine the lack of real fraud with a look at who’s likely to be impacted by voter ID laws and it’s clear that voter ID laws don’t serve any purpose other than rigging elections for Republicans.

CREDO believes that measures should be taken to stop disenfranchisement of minority, student and low-income voters, and that ultimately voter ID laws should be overturned by legislatures or in the courts. The U. S. Department of Justice has already filed a suit to protect minority voters in Texas. These new revelations that so many Texas women could lose the right to vote need to be addressed specifically and immediately. If we can stop this power grab by the right in Texas it can provide momentum for protecting other categories of affected voters, and for attacking Republican voter suppression in other states.

The Texas secretary of state can’t undo this terrible law, but he can try to limit its damage. Can you ask him to do everything he can to make sure no woman is denied her right to vote? Click here to automatically sign the petition.

Thanks for making sure women, and their votes, count -- especially in Texas, where women's rights are under such persistent attack.

Heidi Hess, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

[MoonRiver]

1. Done and shared!

SOB ReTHUGS!

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Done. n/t