Federal court rejects Texas voter ID law
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal court has ruled against a Texas law that would require voters to present photo IDs to election officials before being allowed to cast ballots in November.
A three-judge panel in Washington ruled Thursday that the law imposes “strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor” and noted that racial minorities in Texas are more likely to live in poverty.
The decision involves an increasingly contentious political issue: a push, largely by Republican-controlled legislatures and governor’s offices, to impose strict identification requirements on voters.
The ruling comes in the same week that South Carolina’s strict photo ID law is on trial in front of another three-judge panel in the same federal courthouse. A court ruling in the South Carolina case is expected in time for the November election.
Be great if both Perry and Haley lost in the same week.
Frankensteinbeck
Given that the only truly unifying platform among Republican leadership lately has been class warfare, coopting all divisions of hate to power it, maybe the ‘burdens on the poor’ part is the primary focus here, and ‘racial minorities’ is coincidental.
No, Occam’s Razor. They’re disenfranchising Democrats. Who those Democrats happen to be is immaterial. This method singles out a heavily Democratic block. That they’re sticking it to minorities and the poor just makes them tingle while they do it.
EDIT – I mean it about the tingle, too. I swear the GOP is less the party of ‘they must be destroyed’ hate than the party of spite lately. They’re burning to be Nelson going ‘HA HA!’ and have no higher goals.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
As I said in the previous thread, a progressive/liberal SCOTUS would have interpreted PA’s actions as violating the Voting Rights Act even if they weren’t part of the original list of states.
Violet
Excellent news. Too bad PA wasn’t covered by the Voting Rights Act. I wonder if that could be changed somehow.
KG
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Hell, they could have relied on 14th amendment equal protection and due process and privileges and immunities, too
danah gaz (fka gaz)
God I hate this. This had nothing to do with washington. Washington is a state.
This article was referring to the District of Columbia.
Culture of Truth
That’s great, but why doesn’t Eric Holder goes after some of these voter ID laws???
just kidding
From the opinion:
“Uncontested record evidence conclusively shows that the implicit costs of obtaining SB 14-qualifying ID will fall most heavily on the poor and that a disproportionately high percentage of African Americans and Hispanics in Texas live in poverty”
fester
@KG: yeah but the noted and oh so wised orginalist Nino Scalia et al said equal protection voting right claims were only a one shot deal in 2000
Roger Moore
@Violet:
Yes, if Congress can get together an pass a stronger VRA. When that happens, we’ll be in really good shape, except for the need to dodge flying pigs.
Tonal Crow
Not only do we still need the Voting Rights Act, we need to extend it to cover the new locations in which Republicans are attempting to institute racial discrimination.
—
Tag: Romney’s like Sarah Palin, but more dishonest.
Litlebritdifrnt
More good news #lyinryan is the top trending topic on twitter.
Kay
@Culture of Truth:
That’s what I love most about the voter fraud fraudsters. The sheer arrogance. They don’t even bother to contest anymore.
Perry’s an idiot who may or may not have a prescription drug issue, but the big win for me will be if Nikki Haley’s law goes down. I’ll recall her delightful peals of laughter on FOX when she was asked about the elderly AA voters in her state who were born at home. She thought it was all a big fucking joke. She and the FOX media celebrities were just chuckling away.
HA HA HA. That lovely forced laughter that I’ve really come to loathe on cable.
JPL
The Supreme Court will get rid of the pesky VRA because there is no right to vote in the Constitution. Welcome to Iran.
Punchy
But isnt Texas purposefully taking this to the Supreme Court, so that we get Kennedy and his ilk to rule that the VRA is unconsty?
Kay
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I think you have to call it a bad first impression if the entire day’s discussion revolves around whether Paul Ryan lies a lot or constantly.
Let’s hope that happens :)
I saw Jeb Bush is denying that Paul Ryan lies constantly. That’s a good debate! Keep that going.
Brian S
I know you mentioned Haley, but this piece on South Carolina’s law really points out how fucked up it is. It’s Catch-22 in real life. theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/08/in-south-carolina-shockingly-candid-talk-about-voter-discri…
Culture of Truth
Yes, they are appealing to the SCOTUS
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Kay: He doesn’t lie all the time; I bet when he needs toilet paper he’s telling the truth.
Kay
@Punchy:
They’re going to have so much trouble doing that, because Congress re-authorized it in 2006 with bipartisan majorities. President Bush had a big showy signing ceremony surrounded by civil rights leaders. It was all bullshit, of course, they knew they were taking it right to court, but still. They voted for it.
Incidentally, Harry Reid called it at the time. He issued an official statement that Republicans only voted for it because they didn’t want to take responsibility for gutting historic civil rights legislation, so intended to throw it to courts to do their dirty work.
My hope is some of the justices resent that. There’s no reason Republicans can’t overturn the VRA in Congress. They don’t have the balls to do it, and they don’t want their fingerprints on it, but they COULD do it in Congress, if they have the votes. The Court should make them.
Dork
@Culture of Truth: Can the SCOTUS adjudicate this by November?
FormerSwingVoter
Very OT, I apologize, but this article kinda stunned me. Ezra Klein has a very long take-down of Ryan’s speech last night:
washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/30/a-not-very-truthful-speech-in-a-not-very-truthful-…
The thing that is most remarkable is that he compares it to Palin’s speech four years ago… and concludes that Paul Ryan is far more dishonest than Sarah Palin. And it’s hard to disagree after reading.
The Ryan/Romney campaign has more of a complete disregard for facts and reality than Sarah Palin does. Wow.
Culture of Truth
@Dork: Yes
Lex
JPL @ 12 beat me to it. Yes, the Roberts court has invited challenges to the VRA just as it did to McCain-Feingold. That’s not how SCOTUS is supposed to act, but then neither was installing the loser in the White House after the 2000 election so …
Amir Khalid
@Culture of Truth:
I can’t imagine them appealing to anybody.
(Sorry, I couldn’t resist that set-up line.)
Bokonon
Meanwhile, in Ohio, the wingnuts are doubling down on their claim that the Obama administration is trying to cut back on military personnel’s voting rights.
A conservative friend of mine posted something on Facebook this morning … penned by Jay Sekulow, the right-wing lawyer who provides legal commentary on Fox News (and who litigates lots of school prayer cases). Sekulow’s post claimed that the Obama administration’s filings in the Ohio case said that there was “no good reason” for military members to vote early.
The screaching and outrage from the comments was deafening. Virtually all agreed that this was typical corruption and abuse by the Obama administration (who hate the troops, and love them some voting fraud, and want to prevent conservatives from voting).
Of course, this is a lie. That is NOT what the Obama administration said in the Ohio case. They said that there was not a good reason to cut back on the existing early voting rights of everyone else … and yet somehow keep it for military personnel. The state’s own rationale doesn’t work.
But the wingnuts are listening to their own sources of information. And those sources lie vigorously and often whenever necessary for the greater good.
It is a con job. Of course, the flip side is that people on the receiving end of the con job want to believe it.
schrodinger's cat
BTW did anybody ask Nikki Haley for her reaction about the crazy gunman at the Sikh temple. She is such a collaborator. Disgusting.
rlrr
@schrodinger’s cat:
Is Haley a practicing Sikh?
rlrr
@rlrr:
Answering myself: Haley is a Methodist.
I doubt a Sikh would be allowed to advance so far in the Republican party…
schrodinger's cat
@rlrr: No but she was born as one. I think she has converted (probably out of political expediency, but who really knows), but her parents are still practicing Sikhs, I have seen pictures of her father wearing a turban and I have read that she still occasionally goes to gurudwaras.
Yutsano
@rlrr: She found Jeebus, but her family is still Sikh.
schrodinger's cat
@Yutsano: You know Sikh gurus preferred to die rather than convert when hounded by Mogul Emperors (especially Aurangzeb) quite unlike opportunistic Ms Haley.
Ben Franklin
@Frankensteinbeck:
They’re disenfranchising Democrats. Who those Democrats happen to be is immaterial.
They’re desperate to retain their White cudgel. Their emerging minority status requires they limit the voting of any not truly American.
Felinious Wench
Across Texas, Conservatives felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of their voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
It’s been a good couple of days to be a Texas liberal.
schrodinger's cat
@Ben Franklin: And we do know that Real American == People who vote Republican. That’s why people in Massachusetts where the Revolution began are Fake Americans but people from Southern states that wanted to secede == Real Americans.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
The power of Congress to protect voting rights is also clearly black letter law. All of the Amendments that deal with voting rights include explicit Congressional enforcement power. I will never again doubt the willingness of wingnut judges to make political decisions that go against longstanding jurisprudence and the obvious reading of the Constitution, but they’ll have to twist themselves into some very complex knots to explain why Section II of the 15th Amendment doesn’t give Congress explicit power to pass the VRA.
Ben Franklin
@schrodinger’s cat:
It’s politically unworkable, but a nice fantasy I heard the other day, suggesting all Border States(heh) who go Red in November, should lose all that nasty Federal Funding, ASAP.
Nemesis
Has the gop already won on the vote suppression issue?
If they are lucky, a few illegitimate laws will remain on the books through November.
OTOH voting registration and outreach have been disrupted in many states, Whether the lost ground can be made up is a good question.
Cassidy
@Bokonon: I have a lot of family in Ohio, most of them evangelicals and RWer’s. After a few posts from them and their fauxtrage, I put up a status with the facts and called them on the bullshit. They haven’t out anything up since.
Smiling Mortician
@danah gaz (fka gaz):
Why the hate? I live in the one that’s a state, but I recognize that my state shares its name with a pretty important city, and the name of the city predates the name of the state by roughly a century.
? Martin
I wonder if there will be any backlash to this in Nov. Will minority voters turn out in higher numbers? The polls so far (and there aren’t many) are showing a single digit Romney lead. We know latino turnout can reverse that.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Smiling Mortician: It bothers me immensely because, while this one is clear once you read the part about federal court, in many instances, you’ll have a hard time determining where they are talking about, despite being located on opposite sides of the US. So if I read about some shooting in DC or something, I have to dig to find out where they are actually talking about.
Is it really so difficult for these lazy assed reporters and copy editors to append DC to the end?
gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
From what I gather Nikki and hubby were raising the kids with exposure to both cultures – Sikh and Methodist – like a lot of mixed race couples do, but when Nikki’s political ambitions/potential to advance shot up she had to drop the Sikh part and go full Methodist, because Republicans aren’t going to vote for a non-Christian.
BonnyAnne
@danah gaz (fka gaz):
The fact that it could so so so easily be differentiated (St vs DC) is a constant aggravation to me as well.
When I read the other day about the soldiers in Georgia who were plotting to take over a fort and poison Washington’s apple crop my first thought was “huh, DC grows apples? I didn’t realize there was much agriculture in the city.” That’s how much I’m used to hearing “Washington” and assuming it’s referencing DC, not the state.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@BonnyAnne: Exactly.
jp7505a
And why the GOP can’t wait to have the SCOTUS team declare it unconstitutional.
Gus
So Texas will soon have more liberal voting laws than Minnesota? That’s fucked up.