Federal Judge Strikes Down Texas Voter ID Law Again
“The court has found that the SB 5 process does not fully relieve minorities of the burden of discriminatory features of the law.”
A federal judge has once again struck down the Texas voter ID law, stating that the changes the lawmakers made over the summer did not eliminate the discriminatory language. From The Hill:
U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos ruled that the law was enacted with the deliberate intent to discriminate against black and Hispanic voters. Ramos said that it violates the Voting Rights Act and the 14th and 15th Amendments of the Constitution.
The original 2011 law, Senate Bill 14, one of the most restrictive in the nation, requires registered voters to present one of seven forms of government-issued photo ID in order to cast a ballot.
Lawmakers responded to previous judicial pushback against that bill by passing Senate Bill 5, a revamped version of the voter ID law this summer. The judge on Wednesday issued an injunction barring enforcement of that measure as well.
That measure created options for voters who say they cannot “reasonably” obtain one of the seven forms of identification outlined by the state.
I blogged about this subject in April when Judge Ramos struck down the law a second time:
U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos made this same ruling in 2014, which forced an appeal. The Fifth Circuit issued a stay against the order. The Supreme Court stepped in and allowed Texas to use the voter ID law.
But last July the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans asked the judge “to re-examine the decision” since the judges found that “some of the evidence used by the judge wasn’t relevant.” The two sides reached a deal for the 2016 election, which allowed a voter to “sign a declaration swearing that he or she has had a reasonable difficulty that prevented obtaining one of the accepted forms of photo identification.”
Over the summer, the Texas legislation passed Senate Bill 5, which added U.S. passport books and cards as accepted forms of ID.
Judge Ramos decided that the rewrite did not change the discriminatory language in the original bill. From The Hill:
“The court has found that the SB 5 [Declaration of Reasonable Impediment] process does not fully relieve minorities of the burden of discriminatory features of the law,” she wrote.
“Thus the court has the power to enjoin SB 5 as a continuing violation of the law as determined in this case,” she continued. “The court thus issues injunctive relief to prevent ongoing violations of federal law and the recurrence of illegal behavior.”
“This feature remains discriminatory because SB 5 perpetuates the selection of types of ID most likely to be possessed by Anglo voters and, disproportionately, not possessed by Hispanics and African-Americans,” she wrote.
The judge’s decision also stated that the state of “Texas couldn’t be trusted to educate voters about changes to its ID law, following its widely criticized efforts ahead of elections in 2016 that were marked by confusion at the polls.” Ramos acknowledged that Texas promised to spend $4 million on voter education, but she noted that this promise is nowhere in “SB 5 or any other statute.”
If no one touches Ramos’s decision, then no one will have to show an ID in future elections. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he will appeal:
“The U.S. Department of Justice is satisfied that the amended voter ID law has no discriminatory purpose or effect,” he said in a statement. “Safeguarding the integrity of elections in Texas is essential to preserving our democracy. The 5th Circuit should reverse the entirety of the district court’s ruling.”
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Comments
The real problem here is that our system is bad at identifying partisan judges. The TX legislature is forced to assume that the judge is making good faith arguments, and will therefore be forced to jump through an endless series of hoops to satisfy him (which of course will be impossible).
It would be much simpler to ask the judge what measures he would deem acceptable, but then he’d just say that it’s not his responsibility to make those recommendations.
Right. “I know what I’ll accept, you have to guess what it is.”
what he’ll accept is voter fraud…
anything else is off the table.
“This feature remains discriminatory because SB 5 perpetuates the selection of types of ID most likely to be possessed by Anglo voters and, disproportionately, not possessed by Hispanics and African-Americans,” she wrote.
This is total..and racial…bullshit.
Simply amazing.
Color diversity = racism in plain sight.
It seems to be a progressive condition. I suppose we should go along to get along until full replacement and loss of rights occurs.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond is staffed with similarly biased judges. The North Carolina law they struck down bent over backwards to make allowances for people without driver’s licenses, and election officials did two years of voter notification and education before the law took effect. It made no difference. In North Carolina, it’s racist to ask for an ID. In Virginia, one state north and the former capital of the Confederacy, it’s not racist. Go figure.
Says a white man.
I long ago recounted the story of what it took for me to get my dad the kind of ID required by TX. It wasn’t technically required in NY, but he needed the ID for other purposes. Among other things, I had to apply to the city in which he was born and I had to include a copy of my birth certificate listing him as my father
Please feel free to make sophomoric jokes about my parentage. Bill Maher showed a picture of Trump next to an orangutan and claimed that he would give a $5 million to charity if anyone could prove that Trump was not fathered by an orangutan. Trump produced a copy of his birth certificate and demanded the money. Then he sued to get the money. Does anyone think he got the money? Did Trump not get the joke? The likeness is pretty good. I can understand why Trump wanted the money. He funds his foundation with OPM and then donates in his name.
Anyway, there were other steps that required time, money and paperwork. I had the wherewithal to jump through the hoops. But it is easy for me to imagine what it would have taken had we all moved to TX. Cue more jokes about how I am not welcome.
See if you brainiacs can get the point.
Oh, yeah – my father flew in WW II. He got shot at, was involved in a crash landing during training and was forced down in Belgium by mechanical problems. I would be livid if anyone questioned his right to vote.
Why should anyone who doesn’t know your father not question his right to vote? Are they supposed to take his word for it? Why should they? Because he says he’s a veteran? How is his word for that better than his word that he’s eligible in the first place? If he can’t prove it he shouldn’t be allowed to vote, just as he can’t open a bank account or get a job (both of which I assume he no longer needs to do).
That wasn’t the point. You are either obtuse or disingenuous.
That is exactly the point. I don’t know your father from Adam, so why should I let him vote just because he tells me he’s the person on the roll, and that he’s eligible to vote? He could be anyone, or he could be who he says he is but be ineligible, so tell me exactly why should I accept his claim without seeing at least as much evidence as he’d need to get a job, open a bank account, or get social security?
“why should I let him vote?” Who the f are you to let or stop anyone from voting? Not only are you obtuse, but you are arrogant to boot. That is a really nasty combination.
And you still missed the point of the story. I would point it out to you, but I get more pleasure out of knowing that you are clueless.
Lets get to the bottom line. You think that suppressing votes benefits helps you win. I think that keeping any citizen from voting is sacrilege. It is interesting that Kobach found all of 9 prosecute-able cases of voter fraud in Kansas (out of over 1.2 million votes cast), but now he wants to make a federal case.
Milhouse: You’re arguing with a TROLL (hello TROLL).
YellowSnake doesn’t care that his argument has no basis in reality. He’s arguing that you should “take his father’s word for it” that he is who he says he is because he says who he says he is, and to question his right to vote on the basis of his word is somehow an insult.
Oh, yeah – my father flew in WW II. He got shot at, was involved in a crash landing during training and was forced down in Belgium by mechanical problems. I would be livid if anyone questioned his right to vote.
I call bull-crap on this claim. YellowSnake: If your father flew (for the United States as a citizen) in WWII, there’s a record SOMEWHERE in the military that shows his eligibility as a citizen. If he flew FOR SOMEONE ELSE, then he’s probably ineligible to vote anyway, unless he was later naturalized as a US citizen, and therefore he would ALREADY have the documentation necessary.
Oh, I know. Maybe one of us should claim we’re his new banker, all we need is his Routing Number and Bank Account number, and we’ll make sure he gets the investment returns he wants. He should accept, because we say we are who we say we are.
(Let’s see if he understands whimsy; my guess is no).
I thought it was obvious, but evidently not. Who is it in Texas that prevents people without ID from voting? The inspectors at the polling place, of course. So assuming I’m one of those, and your father comes to me for a ballot, asserting that he is the person whose name is on the roll, and that he is validly enrolled, but refuses to offer me any evidence of his assertion, and when I ask him for some he gets huffy because, he says, he flew a plane for my grandparents’ freedom, so how dare I question his word? Tell me why I should take his word for any of this.
The bottom line is that I don’t give a flying **** whom it helps win. I think a policy of handing out ballots to anyone who asks is criminally negligent at best, but in fact deliberately designed as an open invitation to fraud. I think in-person fraud is the least of the problems, but also the easiest fixed, and requiring ID and finger-staining should be the absolute minimum standard.
I also think the rolls need a serious cleaning up, for which purpose boards of election should have access to federal databases to verify whether someone is a US citizen. I think that since current rolls are such a mess the best solution is to make everyone re-register, showing proof of eligibility. And that while control of the process should remain local, each board of elections should be required regularly to submit its rolls to a federal agency, with full identifying information on each voter, for verification, including a check for duplicates and aliens.
And I think a carefully designed, fair and simple test should be reintroduced, to weed out those too stupid or uninformed to vote. Perhaps Heinlein’s idea of requiring voters to solve a randomly generated quadratic equations; civic groups could offer free classes in how to do this, which people can take and retake until they get it. Anyone genuinely incapable of learning how, or too lazy to bother learning how despite knowing the consequences, doesn’t deserve the franchise.
And I think anyone who earns the majority of his income from a government, whether federal, state, or local, should not be allowed to vote for that level of government. Yes, that means servicemen shouldn’t have the vote in federal elections, but nor should welfare recipients.
And I think absentee votes should be severely restricted, and in most cases replaced by mobile polling places that come to hospitals, nursing homes, etc., so people can vote in person, after their identity and eligibility has been verified.
@Chuck Skinner No wonder you are a Trumpeteer. You can’t tell the truth from a lie.
Idiot, the point was that there are records and I got them. It was hard, time consuming and cost money. Not every citizen has a son who can do that for them. That is why you should be very careful before suppressing the rights of people who are weaker than you. This great country has a habit of doing that.
But you don’t really doubt me. You just have to discredit me the way your Master does. The idea that I might be telling you the truth is scary. So call me whatever you like.
As for giving you information – forget it. Then you could threaten my personal life the way some people have been threatened on twitter.
I actually have done computer security work. I know that no one is safe from a security breach. But you don’t strike me as the person to do it.
Nobody who knows what he is doing would say that. As for whimsy, I see none in your Master. I see narcissism and malignancy, but no whimsy.
@Milhouse Are you claiming to be a member or employee of the Board of Elections or a vigilante poll watcher? You said something about ‘we should not allow that person to vote’. That sounded like a vigilante. Poll watchers get to watch. You can’t just confront someone because you don’t like their looks. All you can do is observe that the rules are being followed.
You obstruct my right to vote and I will see you in jail. This is not a game. There are poll watchers watching you. They have lawyers and you will find yourself before a judge. Maybe it will be a corrupt party hack. But maybe you will be sanctioned.
You were speculating on whether illiterates should get to vote. You strike me as exceedingly ignorant. That is worse. I am not just talking about this thread. You are a follower and an apparatchik. I haven’t seen you have an original idea, yet. Congratulations, you found a home. Nobody, but me is going to question your brilliance – online. In real life, I suspect it doesn’t go that well.
[YellowSnake]I actually have done computer security work. I know that no one is safe from a security breach. But you don’t strike me as the person to do it.
[Chuck Skinner] Oh, I know. Maybe one of us should claim we’re his new banker, all we need is his Routing Number and Bank Account number, and we’ll make sure he gets the investment returns he wants. [End Chuck Skinner]
Nobody who knows what he is doing would say that. As for whimsy, I see none in your Master. I see narcissism and malignancy, but no whimsy.[End YellowSnake]
You ENTIRELY missed the point of my banking statement. This is why I call you a TROLL.
My point was that someone who is not willing to provide documentation of his identity for voting purposes should be given the same level of skepticism as the “Nigerian Prince that want’s to deposit $10 Million into your bank account” (aka a 419 Nigerian Criminal Code scam).
@Chuck Skinner Can me a troll. Should I call you a bigot or some other meaningless epithet? At worst, I misunderstood your comment about the bank.
You are right about the bank account. By coincidence, we saw a bank officer on another errand on the day I got him his temporary license. It turns out that his bank’s computer system flagged his expired license and we had to produce the temporary.
But it is not required to have a bank account in order to be eligible to vote. Until such time as more than 9 people out of 1.2 million voters in a state like Kansas commit fraud, the voter id laws are an undue burden and should not trump the very real concern that a large number of citizens are being disenfranchised. It is a matter of competing concerns. In addition, there was a history of voter suppression in some locales. Even a borough of NYC was under per-approval because of various shenanigans.
What my “whiteness” has to do with it is a complete mystery founded in your racism.
NOBODY in Texas CANNOT get one of the several documents provided in the statute.
VERY FEW…if any…can truthfully say this is any kind of impediment to voting. ESPECIALLY provided that they can simply fill out a form saying they are who they are, and then go vote.
“It wasn’t technically required in NY, but he needed the ID for other purposes.”
Like what? Voting in a union election?
BTW, the NAACP used to do useful, beneficial work, like going into an area with a rented van and helping people to do the needed paperwork. Not any more. That seems never to occur to them.
Jujitsu. That has gotten to be a hallmark of the right. Take every criticism and turn it back. Yep, it is my racism that suppresses hispanic voting.
Yes, it was a union election – of course not. But while we are on the topic, it was unions that brought the middle class to blue collar America while the south was luring companies to come for the cheap labor. The south did it before Mexico, China or Bangladesh . I know because there use to be a clean union called the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU). They fought for decent wages, safe working conditions and benefits. They built co-op apartment buildings. They were based in NYC and they benefited the community. Sneer all you want. You have no idea what you are talking about. They even ran a bank to provide cheap checking when checking was expensive.
My dad got old and let his drivers license and passport expire. As far as I figure they were still good for identification. He didn’t become someone else. They still had pictures of him and his identification information.
According to the League of Women Voters (as non-partisan as they come), they can no longer canvass people to register because they cannot supply the supporting documents to the registrar. When I moved where I live, I registered on my way to the pharmacy. It was easy enough for my local clerk to validate my information. They didn’t need the documents you feel are sacred. They had a list of where I had lived before and where I was registered to vote.
The true irony is that when I first got my driving license, I was never asked to identify myself. I provided a birth certificate and my address. As I have moved through 4 states, each time I have presented my old license and was issued a license in the new state – sometimes I took a written test. So I could have committed a fraud 50 years ago and still be continuing it.
You are racist to feel that whites have no appreciation of the requirements to obtain valid proof if identification. The courthouse and county health office are the same location for all. The forms are the same. Heck, even the postage is the same. If I can do it, then all should be able to do it.
Yeah, I’m the racist. Happy now? Thanks for sharing.
Which side did your relative fight on?
How dare you?
People like you claim to ‘Love America’. But you don’t seem to like America very much.
In case your liberal edukashun left out a few facts, there were 3 sides at play in Europe in WWII. And since I don’t know you or your father, he could be a ruskie, a national socialist or on the allied side. Since you sound like an international socialist I have no way of determining your heritage other than that.
Would I have telling the story if my father wasn’t an American citizen. BTW, I mentioned that I ordered him a birth certificate to prove his identity. What good would his birth certificate be if he wasn’t born in the USA? There also used to be a law that if you joined another country’s army you forfeited your US citizenship. That law was in effect during WW II. Even Lindbergh shut up after the Nazis declared war on us.
Apparently you conservative edjukation can’t put 1 & 1 together. Feel free to keep picking at this – you know damn well what side he fought on. Apparently you didn’t learn how to deduce things either.
But I think you were just trying to be snide. You succeeded. That is certainly the way to make America Great Again – attack the Patriots and disparage their service.
Feel free to answer back, but I am done with this thread. You either don’t get it or you don’t want to get it – like your Master.
No, actually we DON’T know what side he fought on, because you told us that he didn’t ALREADY have the documents necessary to vote, and you whined (engage whiny voice) about it being such a trial for him to have to go get them and it taking so much resources. boo hooo. (end whiny voice).
If it was such a difficulty, how do we KNOW your father fought in WW-II? Where were his military records? Where was his birth certificate?
Renewing a passport is not difficult. It’s just time consuming. If he (or you) can’t be bothered to make the effort, why should we let him (or you) choose whom should make the rules for the rest of us who will make the effort?
@Chuck Skinner It is impossible to renew a passport if you have let it expire by more than a certain period. You can look up the period. I don’t need to.
15 YEARS. If you couldn’t renew his passport off his old passport, then it expired MORE THAN 15 YEARS ago.
@Chuck Skinner – If you had not been so eager to prove me wrong on this one point, you might have noticed that there are two applicable expiration dates. 5 Years to do it by mail. 15 Years to do it in person. I honestly don’t remember the length of the expiration; except that it was more than 5 years. It could have been 15 – I just looked in my files and I can’t find the old one. But since it was more than 5, it still required an in-person visit which required an appointment. At least in the post offices that are convenient to where he lives, they only have a limited schedule and the appointment had to be made in person because I couldn’t seem to get the right person on the phone. That was two trips with a total travel time for me of 3 hours each. I visit my father on my schedule, but for these chores I had to do it on a prescribed schedule.
I did not claim it was impossible or extremely difficult. What I stated was that it required time during normal business hours, transportation (my car) and money. It also required someone (me in my father’s case) to assist
As I previously wrote, I did not do this to prove a point. I got him a certified copy of his birth certificate, a passport and a driver’s license (not a non-driver ID). The latter, I was able to get because the license had expired 30 or 60 days before. But I had to take him to the DMV. It could not be done by mail or internet because it had expired. I had to fill out the forms for him and the clerk allowed me to prompt him for answers to some questions – the clerk could have asked me to step back. The only thing my father did was take the eye test.
It was only when all this BS about how easy it was to get an acceptable ID kept being repeated, that I realized that I had direct experience that contradicted that notion.
No he did not need all 3. But I wanted him to have all 3 – as do I. Each one required its own set of challenges that might be difficult for unassisted elderly or poor people; especially those that are unfamiliar with modern procedures or whose job would limit time flexibility. The drivers license as opposed to the non-drivers ID was a bit of a joke. He will never drive again. But the non-drivers ID would still have required a trip to the DMV.
This also does not deal with people who have never had a drivers license. If they were poor and born at home they may not have a registered birth certificate on file. I understand this was fairly common in the poor, rural south.
I understand that in Alabama they have closed many rural DMV offices or severely limited the hours. It was ostensibly done to save money. Perhaps it is just coincidence that it wad done in predominately black areas. I hate to be cynic, considering the noble reasons offered by everyone on this site. But could it be that white politicians in the south wish to remain in power by whatever means necessary?
“U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos ruled that the law was enacted with the deliberate intent to discriminate against black and Hispanic voters.”
Can the state legislators sue the judge for libel?
No. The Judge is protected by “Judicial Immunity.” Generally this protects a Judge even if the Judge acts with corrupt or malicious intent.
Historically, Judicial Immunity was associated with the English common law idea that “the King can do no wrong” as a sub-set of Sovereign immunity.
Judges, as the King’s delegates for dispensing justice, accordingly ought not to be drawn into question for any supposed corruption as it would slander of the justice of the King.
We’ve just replaced the “king” part with an “elected governmental body.”
Minority = individual? Or minority = color [diversity]?
That said, with a trillion dollar welfare industrial complex, what excuse is there that Americans remain unidentified?
Another ruling from the twilight fringe (a.k.a. penumbra).
What appears to me to be discriminatory is the judges view and attitude that minorities are too incompetent and stupid to acquire a piece of ID in 2017
This. If you are too lazy and/or stupid to acquire an ID, you should not be allowed to vote.
They even used to require a literacy test – imagine, you have to be able to read what you are voting for.
Indeed one of the worst things Congress ever did was ban literacy tests, just because they were sometimes being abused. The police power to arrest people is often abused, but nobody ever suggested that the remedy is to ban arrests altogether! When a police force is abusing its power severe measures are taken, sometimes policemen end up in prison, but the arrest power remains intact, because it is obviously right and good and necessary. The same is true for literacy tests; those who lack the tools to form an informed opinion should not be allowed to vote. Such tests must be both inherently fair and administered fairly, and Congress should have ensured that this was rigorously enforced.
This one I have to object to, because it actually became important in a recent Court case.
One of my colleagues came to me with a practical question: She had a client that was assigned to her by the Court in a Child Protective Services case, where the client had to file a “verified” motion (why would take too long to explain here).
The requirements for a “verified” motion require you to know that the document you are signing states what it purports to state, and the Affiant swearing that it is true and correct.
The reason that it became important here, was that the individual was entirely illiterate. He was one of those people who lived on the fringes of society, with a 4th grade education, he was very competent and had good decision-making skills, but it was impossible to impart information to him in a written form.
My colleague asked me “how do I write a verified motion for this person?” I said here’s what you do: you have your assistant personally read the document aloud to this individual in the presence of a Notary Public. You have your assistant execute a separate affidavit that she personally communicated the contents of the document to the individual, in a true and correct reading of the document presented prior to the signing of the Verification before the SAME notary at the same time. Thus, the Notary becomes an independent witness both to the communication of the document AND to the verification by the signer.
Same issue with a literacy test. If someone can communicate the information TO the voter, and then the Voter has the ability to make an informed decision WITH that assistance, the literacy of the voter ceases to be required. However, it does require a certain amount of “trust” in the voter.
I’m not sure it’s possible for an illiterate person to become informed enough about current affairs to form a valuable opinion on who should govern and make the laws. Is there enough information available in the form of recordings? If there is, then an alternative to the literacy test could be a very carefully designed test of the voter’s knowledge, both of basic civics and current affairs. The questions would have to be thoroughly vetted for complete neutrality, so that any informed person would give the same answer regardless of political opinion.
As has been stated, the judge just knows the illegals can’t vote if one needs present valid ID.
I’d like to see a judge rule no one needs ID to buy a gun. That would give us hours and days of fun watching the diapers soil over on the left.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that our good judge would prefer that only those who cannot buy guns would be the only ones allowed to vote.
This ruling could only make sense to an SJW. The ruling is clearly racist on its face.
This is Bush’s fault. He had a chance to allow the Voting Rights Act to expire when he was in office or to significantly modify it to require voter ID. He made the wrong choice.
Trump and the Repubs likely will not get it done either, because the Repubs in Congress are afraid of being called names. And there were 200-300 neo nazis in Charlottesville, so obviously this country is terribly racist even though whites elected a black-ish guy as POTUS no. 44.
It is a peculiar thing that the other citizen-govt interactions requiring exactly the same type of ID has not chilled and certainly not frozen citizen participation. Just look at participation in welfare, food stamps, WIC, free school lunch, disability, govt housing, govt subsidized housing, etc., etc.
What about the racial bigotry in assuming that minorities just aren’t as swift as whites, asians, and indians and cannot procure a photo ID? How do blacks and hispanics stand for such nonsense in an environment of hyper racial sensitivity and constant offense?
I am going to perform a search and see if there is peer reviewed, empirical evidence from research using sound methods to determine that there is a surfeit of ID among whites and a deficit among blacks and hispanics.
This is a great video and everyone should see it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llDM-44Zb8w
Last week I went to my nearest branch of the San Antonio library system to request a book through WorldCat. The first thing the librarian told me was that my library card had expired—they are only good for two years at at time (why?)—and then she demanded some identification to prove who I was to renew the card. Can you believe the racism!
I am not a lawyer so don’t beat me up but I seem to remember other voter Id laws being appealed to SCOTUS to get around activist judges. Why do they keep repeating going to this judge?
She’s the judge who heard the original case. It has been up to the Supremes, who lifted (IIRC) her injunction and sent it back down.
The Fifth Circuit (usually one of our best) asked the trial court judge to re-examine her ruling. Now she has, and despite a new law drafted specifically to counter some of her prior opinion.
She’s not only wrong, but obdurate. This is why we have appellate courts.
Hispanics must not be allowed on the bench. I see no evidence that Hispanic judges care about the law, only La Raza.
One of the stupidest posts ever to darken these threads. We have excellent judges of all stripes, and we have disasters of all stripes.
Just like any cross-section of humanity.
Just another ruling by a “wise Latina.”
Here is a list of the 7 acceptable forms of photo ID:
(1) Texas driver license issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS)
(2) Texas Election Identification Certificate issued by DPS
(3) Texas personal identification card issued by DPS
(4) Texas license to carry a handgun issued by DPS
(5) United States military identification card containing the person’s photograph
(6) United States citizenship certificate containing the person’s photograph
(7) United States passport.
So according to this judge, minorities can’t get Texas drivers’ licenses, minorities can’t get Texas handgun permits, minorities can’t get U.S. military ID’s, minorities can’t get U.S. passports, minorities can’t get U.S. citizenship papers, etc.
This is utter bull$hit. The reason more white people have these forms of ID is simple — there are more white people than minorities living in Texas! That’s why non-whites are called “minorities” in the first place.
Texas needs to appeal this idiotic decision immediately.
BTW, those ID cards issued by Texas’ DPS are FREE.
https://www.texastribune.org/2013/06/25/dps-begin-offering-free-voter-id-cards-week/
Ever checkout what is required for PreCheck. I guess TSA is based on a racist policy too.
The most serious impediment to getting a qualifying form of ID is that they are issued by government bureaucracies. I just went through getting a learner’s permit for my grandson, and it involved contradictory instructions for obtaining an appointment with the DMV, one 20 minute trip to the DMV (with an acute parking shortage) where we discovered we needed a notarized document, obtaining the notarized document, and another 20 minute trip to the DMV.
And I pity the people who work at the DMV.
My suggestion for a while now has been that legislatures shouldn’t specify a voter-qualifying document, beyond its being one sufficient to identify the presenter as qualified to buy a firearm from a federally-licensed firearm dealer.
Then let the Dems agonize between illegal voting and gun control.
It’s a little dark…
but I LIKE it…!!!
How dare the State of Texas attempt to protect the votes of its citizens. Don’t they understand the long tradition of ballot box stuffing? How can we possibly allow the vulgar citizens of this country to elect their own politicians honestly. Just look what happened in the last Presidential election.
This judge has a fixed ideological bias and nothing that anyone does will change that. His decision is all about continuing to allow the stuffing of the ballot box, nothing more.