In a blow to Texas Republicans' effort to disenfranchise poor and minority voters, a federal court blocked the state's contentious voter ID law today. Texas was one of ten states that sought to prevent so-called voter fraud by requiring a valid government identification in order for someone to vote.
By rejecting the law, the three panel court scolded the state for targeting the poverty-stricken, minorities and the elderly, all of whom are the most likely groups to not have the proper identification necessary to vote. Nine other states have introduced these modern-day Jim Crow laws, and South Carolina's is being challenged at this moment, as well.
Pennsylvania's law was inexplicably upheld in mid-August. In that state, more than 14 percent of the eligible voters don't have a voter ID, and most of those are either very poor or minorities. These demographic groups overwhelmingly support Barack Obama, and as such, the law can only be seen as a violation of their right to vote.
The Pennsylvania ruling is being appealed, and hopefully Texas' outcome will force the appeals judge to look a little more closely at the Pennsylvania law. Already in places like Wisconsin, the law has had negative effects, especially on the very elderly who often lack original birth certificates necessary to get a valid ID.
Even if some of those affected by the law have all the necessary paperwork, they often don't have the time due to work constraints, or the transportation needed to get to government office. In Texas, getting a government ID is no easy task. You can't just show up, take a number and leave in 30 minutes. Dallas/Fort Worth's NBC affiliate did a report about the Texas Department of Public Safety's notoriously long waits, with lines often snaking around the building.
It might take up to 3 hours of waiting in line just to get seen by the door clerk to get a number. Then you have to wait in the official line, which can take another one to two hours. If you end up not having the proper paperwork, you have to come back and do it all over again. The poor often don't have the luxury of spending an entire work day dealing with the Texas DPS mess, so they just go without.
Texas' attorney general Greg Abbot tried to convince the panel that 50 cases of fraud out of 13 million voters warranted creating a voter ID law. Thankfully, the court disagreed. Funny thing about this whole thing is that some of the voter fraud wasn't even committed by illegal aliens. Last month, an Arizona Republican running for Pinal County Supervisor was found to be casting votes in his dead girlfriend's name for five years after her death. That's right, a Republican politician cast votes in a dead person's name not once, but many times. Of course he denied the allegations, but hey, don't they all?
Talk about Republican hypocrisy, eh?
©2012 Reno Berkeley for Gather News. Berkeley can be found on Tumblr, Google+, and Facebook.
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Comments: 18
However, our new Govenor, Nikki Haley, in her Teapublican wisdom, has chosen to sue the federal government on the grounds that she believes that the feds do not have the authority to dictate voting rights and laws to indivdual states.
I know, it's a WTF moment, but what else can you expect from a candidate who actually ran and won the govenor's office on the Teapublican ticket in 2010.
Blue Texas by 2016?
And I agree that most of that will be due to a demographic shift among Hispanic voters, but I like to think that a small part of it is because the Republican party has become too ridiculous for some of the "angry white guys" they've been courting.
ID's are nothing more than tools by the right to intimdate the poor and minorities and to keep them from the wealth and opportunities the rich right want to hoard for themselves.
And let's not just stop with voting. Why suppress any "rights" because some are "a minority and/or poor."
Let's do away with the ID requirments for:
passports, visas, marriage license, drivers license, home loans, credit card applications, purchases of alcohol or cigarettes, medical care (won't matter now anyway since obamacare is "free" to everyone anyway, right?), open a bank account, get a job, purchasing a hand gun, volunteering at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, receiving prescription medecine, to serve on Jury Duty, to board a plane, to get a SS number, to get welfare benefits, to come into the United States, and to visit the white house.
The only legitimate reason for ID is to identify and report those in the military who are attempting to vote early in Ohio. These men and women in the military who are trying to cheat the system by voting early (which Ohio state law has shamefully allowed for many years) must be reported immediately to the Obama Justice Department and be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Requiring ID's just does not make sense. It's like putting locks on cars or homes. It's like allowing the President to be protected by the secret service. It's like having a nation with enforced borders. It's like protecting minors from the dangers of alcohol and cigarettes. It's like keeping people from defrauding medicare and the welfare system. It's like restricting felons from purchasing and own a handgun. And let's face it. Who wants this stuff to happen. To require voters to have an ID sets a dangerous precendence.
(aaahhhh) I think part of me just died.
I don't think it's a valid excuse for people to say they are just "going without" a driver's license. You need an ID to buy cigaretts, to buy alcohol, to get into a bar, to get a Costco membership, and sometimes even at the check out when making a purchase with your visa debit card.
With that said, I did hear about voters being taken off the roles here in Colorado. Mostly minorities and disabled people. I don't know if it's true but simply removing people from the registered voter database is inexcusable and dirty.
Making someone show ID to vote is acceptable. Especially in Texas. A border state. Come on. Without ID there could be disproportionate numbers of illegals voting.
Now if they start asking for ID only those with brown skin, that's a real problem. IDing everyone is not a problem.
And yet millions of people either manage to do all these things, as well as the other things Lee mentioned, without ID or with ID that wouldn't meet the requirements set by these voter ID laws.
I imagine some might vote by mail these days????
Which is another question....how do these mail-in ballots figure into this? If someone signs up for the permanent mail-in ballot and then doesn't renew their ID, they can still vote.
This is a case where technology can be helpful or harmful, depending on how you look at it. If the voting database cross referenced the BMV database and deleted anyone not registered to drive, a certain segment of the populate is eliminated.
And how do they know if someone is a felon or not?
Further, throughout recorded history, the Christian Church, in one form or another, have been accusing the rest of the world of assaulting the church doctrine and it's teachings. When in reality, it is the Christian Church which has been assaulting everyone else's rights, freedoms and privacy since the organized institution of the Christian faith. Even in their own Bible teachings, the Christian Church and it's followers are recorded to have time and time again, assaulted nations of people without provocation. Doing so, but for sole reason and purpose, that the Christian Church is now and always has been, determined to rule the world through Devine Theocracy.
I am not saying that the entire Christian faith is bad, for it certainly is not. The Christian religion for the most part is a good thing for multitudes of the world's people. What I am saying, is, that there is an sinister element in the heirarchy of the church which has passed down through the generations, the false idea that it is the Christian Church and only the Christian Faith, which should lead the populace of the world. Not government rule, but Church Theology should reign supreme as the one and only law. This false prophecy is now being taught to the masses within the Christian faith. Such indoctrination has begun spread even into our political system and must be shown for what it truly is, {i.e.} the ambitions of the heirarchy church.
And your party of choice is doing the same thing!
"This false prophecy is now being taught to the masses within the Christian faith."
Nice conspiracy theory there Scott! LOL!