Texas Voter ID Law Gets the Go-Ahead
After several rewrites, the latest version of the law passed legal muster…for now
Friday, the Fifth Circuit gave the hotly contested Texas voter ID law the go-ahead.
After several rewrites, the latest version of the law passed legal muster.
From the Dallas Morning News:
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that Texas’ revamped voter identification law can go into effect.
In its 2-1 decision, the appeals court reversed a lower court’s ruling which had blocked the controversial voter identification law after the Legislature had made changes to it in 2017.
“The Texas legislature passed a law designed to cure all the flaws cited in evidence when the case was first tried. The legislature succeeded in its goal,” the ruling written by Judge Edith H. Jones read. “Yet the plaintiffs were unsatisfied and successfully pressed the district court to enjoin not only SB 14, but also the new ameliorative law (“SB 5″). Because the district court’s permanent injunction and order for further relief abused its discretion, we reverse and render.”
Judge James E. Graves, Jr., a Barack Obama appointee, dissented in part from the majority opinion.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton applauded the court’s decision.
The 2011 law has been bouncing through the court system for years. Mary blogged a year ago:
A federal judge has again rejected the 2011 Texas voter ID law, stating that the legislators meant to discriminate against minority voters.
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.”
Ramos went back to the drawing board but came to the same conclusion.
The law was again rewritten in an attempt remove what was deemed “discriminatory language,” only to be shot down yet again.
Full deciion here:
4 27 17 Veasey v Abbott Opinion by Legal Insurrection on Scribd
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Comments
hopefully this will be a template for other states to have sensible voter id laws and get rid of motor voter where illegals get drivers license and get automatically a voter id.
Fiction
Hopefully this voter ID will follow Stand Your Ground laws trajectory, and that both will become widespread.
Nope, California. Several states have seen moves to make obtaining DLs sans ID easier, and California and other states go ballistic at the thought of differentiating citizen vs. Non-citizen DLs, either officially or by including birthplace in the databases.
Assuming FREE Photo ID availability for the poor, and giving the very rare and weird “born at home so no birth certificate” type of cases an easy route get photo ID regardless, the only possible reason to not require voter ID is not “fairness” but “need to cheat”.
Cash a check, receive welfare, open a bank account, get a credit/debit card, buy cigs, buy BEER FGS, the list of everyday things that require ID is fairly large, and the claim that “the poor” or “minorities” are so stupid and incompent that expecting them to have ID is ludicrous.
TRUTH
See YellowTroll. I can do put a word in bold too.
It still is fiction Skunker; even if you have figured out HTML 1.0
Oooo. A new moniker from YellowTroll. I feel like I’m back in Junior High School. Thank you for making me feel young again.
Apparently YellowTroll, you seem unable to support your assertion with any sort of rational argument. Whereas the individuals showing illegal aliens being registered illegally to vote through motor-voter are legion.
Truth, no proof of citizenship required. In fact, you’ll be fired if you question their declaration.
Some state agencies require you to ask if illegals want to register to vote every time you interact with them even if they’ve told you a hundred times they are illegal or if they have refused a hundred times.
This thread is a perfect example of why YGIF needs to be banned from this blog. There was a chance for a good discussion of the issue, but the Troll turned it into a hatefest that was all about him. It drives people away from the writers piece, and helps this blog in no way whatsoever.
Ban YGIF permanently.
Some people exaggerate and/or lie. Some people repeat unsubstantiated claims made by right-wing media that fit the narrative.
How do I know that? Because some people I know do that.
You’re a fool. I worked for those agencies. Every single contact you had to ask if they wanted to register to vote. Every single time.
Before that I was a police officer and nearly every illegal I arrested had one piece of id with the voter’s registration checked. One illegal got a jury summons while waiting for ins to send him back.
Suck it up butter cup, boots on the ground says, “yup they vote and in numbers”.
Except for CA and OR, where it is possible for an Illegal Alien to agree to be registered to vote, Motor Voter only gives them the application to register to vote. If an Illegal lies and fills out the registration card, they will potentially have government issued ID. CA claims that the Illegal Aliens get a special Driver’s License, I don’t know if Illegals can skip that to get a regular driver’s license by lying about their status.
They fill it out at the dmv by checking a box marked affidavit of voter eligibility and signing right there in the dmv same piece of paper as the license form. At dshs it is a form the state worker fills out for them and they sign. It then goes directly into the mail they never leave the office with it.
More legislating from the bench.
The District Court Judge, or the Fifth Circuit? I could guess, but I’d rather know which you meant for sure.
This shows why the judiciary, which has amassed far too much power in this country, is so important. And even with this, we see an Obama appointee was in decent of the decision. We see it in the SCOTUS, where politics from the leftists on the bench weigh heavier than our Constitution.
I guess it depends on where you sit. I see right wing judges imposing their ideology because perfectly qualified judges were blocked without so much as a hearing.
These laws address a problem that simply doesn’t exist. It sanctions voter suppression. It will slow down the inevitable; but it will not stop it.
These laws are dishonorable; as is the president. You have ceded the moral high ground. You are left without ethics. This is about winning at all costs.
You implication that only people like you have a right to claim the Constitution as theirs is repugnant and contrary to the very document that you claim to honor. The 14th Amendment makes it clear that no citizen should have his right to vote infringed.
Show us on the doll where the bad man touched you and made you feel bad.
Go to any urban area, walk up to 100 minority people, over the age of 16. I’ll bet 98 of them could tell you where the DMV is.
How is that suppression?
I think anyone who calls that suppression is incredibly bigoted. By saying that because someone is not white, that person is simply too ignorant to be able to go to the dmv to obtain a license/state ID to vote.
You guess? I knew where the DMV was when I was 12. I could get there by bus or bicycle, but it didn’t get me a license.
Suppression is a fact. So it can’t be bigoted. Ohio ended voting on the last Sunday before election day in order to suppress “Souls to the Polls”. FL removed polling places in order to length lines in urban areas.
AL closed some DMV locations and reduced hours in others where the residents were primarily black and poor. Hours outside of 9-5 were cancelled so that working stiffs couldn’t get there without jeopardizing their jobs.
The red states, especially in the south, are practiced at this art of suppression.
I appreciate your attempt at rhetorical jujitsu, but it is sophistry. I think we both know who the bigots are. The President of the United states is one of them. So is the Governor of TX.
Bull. And you know it’s bull. No one is being ‘suppressed’ by actually having to prove they have the right to vote. Someone’s vote is suppressed every time someone is illegally allowed to vote, thus negating someone’s legal vote.
Every MVD is my county is closed on the weekends and in the evenings. It’s not to suppress the ability of black or brown people to get a driver’s license or register vehicles, it’s because the workers are state government employees who aren’t required to work nights and weekends. I live in a Minority-majority state so you can stuff any cries of racism. No one has ever been fired for having to take a day off or come in late due to vehicle registrations or having to get a new license. We’re all in the same boat so employers and employees all understand the system.
Please. Any registered voter in FL can request a mail-in ballot and vote from the comfort of her recliner, which is what I do. Are you saying minorities can’t buy stamps?
@hrhdhd I don’t suggest anything. The long lines in Dade & Broward Counties are documented and the election was close. That is exactly where you want to do suppression.
@Sanddog But in AL, which is the state that I cited, they did it selectively and recently. Coincidence? Maybe, but it stretches credulity.
Different malevolent agencies choose different tactics.
In theory there is nothing wrong with a literacy test, but we know how literacy tests were used to suppress minority voting.
And who runs the elections in those counties? The Democratic Party. It’s entirely up to them how many sites to open and how many machines to make available. If there are lines it’s entirely their fault.
Yes, literacy tests were shamefully abused in many cases, but the correct response would have been to make sure they were enforced fairly and impartially, not to ban them. The ban on such tests is largely responsible for the mess the country’s in.
Okay, so now you’re saying they’re not smart enough to request a mail-in ballot vs. stand in a long line?
There really is no excuse that anyone cannot not invest a small effort in getting ID. If they are too shiftless to do so, that is solely their fault.
I am asked for, and cheerfully present ID every time I vote.
If the law “addressed a problem that didn’t exist” the the Dems wouldn’t care about voter ID
no citizen should have his right to vote infringed.
Written tests, photo IDs (which have to be paid for, of course; none of this “free ID” nonsense), fingerprints, personal references … none of these are “infringements” of a right, as we were informed by the SC in the Heller decision.
Oh YellowTroll, there you go again.
The 14th Amendment makes it clear that no citizen should have his right to vote infringed.
When you can show us how you can reasonably prove that a CITIZEN is having their vote infringed without showing some document that conclusively establishes that person’s citizenship status, we’ll listen to your bile.
No, it doesn’t. There is no constitutional right to vote.
That Texan Law needs to Go Nation-wide!
The second amendment also makes it clear that no citizen should have his right to keep and bear arms infringed, yet there are states that require special id cards to own or get a gun.
IMO if you are unable to pass a background check to purchase a firearm then you are the type of reprobate I don’t want to have a say in making decisions that affect my life!
The 2nd doesn’t mention citizens. The right is one of “the people”.
Which is why both citizens and legal residents have the right to bear arms. There is no guarantee in the Constitution for a “right to vote”. Elections were left up to the states with the feds later enacting protections for race, age and sex.
The second amendment makes no distinction between citizens and aliens.
Anybody want to bet that some judge in Texas will suddenly discover the law is invalid about three days before the next election, thus ruling that voter ID cannot be used.
My money is on a Federal judge in Hawaii!
The Fifth Circuit would place an emergency stay on the ruling in less than a couple of hours. That sort of crap has been tried before, that is far too late to make a ruling which has an effect on an election.
Government-issued photo IDs are so hard to get that I have three of them.I have never met an adult who doesn’t have an ID of some sort. Give me a break.
Not to mention that if someone alleges they are so destitute they can’t afford the cost of a Driver’s License/Personal ID Card and has no other acceptable ID, there is a special for voting only state issued ID card. It was supposed to cost something like $5.00 but the cost can be waived for indigents.
@rdm
1st: Long ago on this site I documented the time, money and effort I needed to get my elderly dad’s birth certificate after he let his driver’s license lapse. Not everyone has those resources available to them. My dad lived was born in the USA and his whole life here. He is a combat veteran of WW II.
2nd, when the venerable and non-partisan League of Women Voters says that new voter-id laws have made it more difficult for them to have registration drives in some states, it should give any ingenuousness person pause. Statement by Elisabeth MacNamara, President, LWVUS
new voter-id laws have made it more difficult for them to have registration drives
Well d’uh, that’s what the laws are intended to do—make it more difficult to register illegal voters.
Good point. MacNamara assumes that every person who couldn’t register because they lacked ID was in fact eligible, but on what basis? It’s even less logical than assuming every such person was in eligible.
“Thank you Mr. Conyers and member of the committee for holding this discussion which will help focus our nation’s attention on voter suppression legislation that is sweeping this country. The right to vote and have your vote counted is the very foundation of our democracy and today it is under attack.”
I did not read further. There is no point. It’s clear when she refers to voter photo ID laws as “voter suppression”, and claims the right to vote is under attack, that she is not there to enhance understanding about the issue. She’s there to give a hyper-partisan political speech.
Citizenship carries with it lots of responsibilities. Most people believe showing a photo ID to vote is a fair burden. Gallup polled it as an 80-20 issue. Unsurprisingly, your position is the fringe extremist one.
http://news.gallup.com/poll/194741/four-five-americans-support-voter-laws-early-voting.aspx
BTW, Jimmy Carter and James Baker co-chaired the Commission on Federal Election Reform. The commission published it’s report in 2005. 18 out of 21 commission members voted to recommend photo voter ID laws to instill confidence in the integrity of elections. They cited a study of registered voters in Indiana, Maryland and Mississippi that found that only 1.2% of registered voters did not already have a form of photo ID that they could use to vote.
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/opinion/03carter.html
At this point, continuing to pretend it is about voter suppression is just a lame marketing gimmick by Democrats. You think telling minorities that Republicans are enacting voter integrity laws to suppress their vote will anger them and motivate them to vote against Republicans. But when it’s an 80/20 issue, I’m not sure how effective your marketing gimmick is. Good luck.
The League of Women Voters has not been non-partisan for a long time.
The League of Women Voters gave up “nonpartisan ” a long time ago. Who first observed that unless an organization is explicitly conservative, it will become liberal? Or, more accurately, leftist?
Most often attributed to the late Robert Conquest.
“Liberal” and “libertine” have very similar origins. The idea of being “liberal”, being accepting of others without prejudice is distorted by the left. The left will actively drive out those of opposing views. So a mix of liberals and conservatives will find the conservatives engaging the left in conversation, and the left trying to get rid of conservatives. I have heard that on the Supreme Court, especially after the 2000 election, the left bloc is very circumspect about writing their decisions. There are few if any dissents from the majority. The right will write an opinion, and have dissenters, who will either vote for or against, but say “I agree, but I think the reasoning is wrong, and should be…” The Left is incredibly intolerant, unless they are protecting one of their own.
None of that is true. “Liberal” in politics originally meant (and in much of the world still means) what is now known in the US as “conservative” or “libertarian” views. The socialists stole the term, just as they steal everything else that isn’t nailed down.
And the four “liberals” on the Supreme Court often do disagree with each other, and one or more of them often does vote with “conservatives”. Many decisions are not made on bloc lines.
Hence, why I make the distinction between “liberal” (as in classical liberalism) and “Statist” or “Progressive” (as in the Marxist-Leninist format of the modern alleged liberal).