Obama Administration Blocks Texas' New Voter ID Law
Mar 13, 2012 7:26 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) - A photo ID requirement for voters in Texas could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of registered Hispanics, the Justice Department declared Monday in its latest move against Republican-led voting changes in many states that have drawn protests from minorities, poor people and students.
The Justice objection means that now a federal court in Washington will decide whether Texas, as well as South Carolina, will be allowed to enforce its new voter photo ID requirements. Justice's move merely blocked a Texas law until the court rules.
Other states have similar laws and more are moving toward them as advocates portray the restrictions as needed to combat voter fraud.
The Justice Department conveyed its objection in a letter to Texas officials that was also filed in the U.S. District Court case in Washington between Texas and the department. Justice said Hispanic voters in Texas are at least 50 percent more likely and possibly more than twice as likely as non-Hispanic voters to lack a driver's license or a personal state-issued photo ID, which the Texas law requires.
read: http://www.kxnet.com/story/17136671/justice-dept-opposes-texas-voter-id-law
WASHINGTON — A photo ID requirement for voters in Texas could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of registered Hispanics, the Justice Department declared Monday in its latest move against Republican-led voting changes in many states that have drawn protests from minorities, poor people and students.
The Justice objection means that now a federal court in Washington will decide whether Texas, as well as South Carolina, will be allowed to enforce its new voter photo ID requirements. Justice's move merely blocked a Texas law until the court rules.
The Justice Department conveyed its objection in a letter to Texas officials that was also filed in the U.S. District Court case in Washington between Texas and the department. Justice said Hispanic voters in Texas are at least 50 percent more likely and possibly more than twice as likely as non-Hispanic voters to lack a driver's license or a personal state-issued photo ID, which the Texas law requires.
The range was so broad because Texas provided two sets of registered voter data to the Justice Department. It relied on the two Texas-supplied lists for the estimates of 175,000 and 304,000 registered Hispanic Texas voters who do not have driver's licenses or state-issued IDs.
read: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765558948/Justice-Dept-TX-law-could-limit-Hispanic-voting.html
Texas must win federal approval of any changes affecting elections before the changes go into effect because of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Section 5 of the law obligates Texas and several other states, mostly in the South, with a history of discrimination against minorities to demonstrate that election law revisions "have neither the purpose nor the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color or membership in a language minority group."
Multiple-state fight
Thirty-one states have voter ID laws. Legal challenges are under way in states including Texas, South Carolina, Wisconsin and Kansas.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, said it's sad anyone would assert that the Justice Department made a political decision.
"They made a decision calculated on the data the state sent them," she said, adding that the statistics lack information on African-American voters, which the state must provide to the court.
read: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/03/12/3804561/texas-voter-id-law-heads-to-federal.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
