A bit of good news in the battles over Republican voter suppression tactics. A three judge appeals court panel struck down a photo ID law in Texas, noting that it has a disproportionate impact on poor and minority voters.
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.
CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen reports the law required new forms of voter identification even for Texas residents who have long voted accurately.
The court ruled that the new voter identification law in Texas would have an unconstitutional impact on the right to vote for poor people and especially Hispanics and African-Americans – the same minorities who were protected earlier in the week from Republican redistricting by another federal court panel.
A similar South Carolina law is being challenged in the same appeals court, but in front of a different panel. Another federal court struck down Florida’s onerous new restrictions on voter registration laws as well. Unfortunately, a court in Pennsylvania upheld that state’s photo ID laws a couple weeks ago.
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Francisco Bacopa
September 3, 2012 at 12:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I guess it was OK to strike down the Texas law because Texas is not considered a swing state in this election. Pennsylvania is a more likely swing state, but is almost certainly blue this election, so the PA law was upheld.
subbie
September 3, 2012 at 12:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
One small correction: it wasn’t an appeals panel that struck the Texas law, it was a District Court panel.
Chiroptera
September 3, 2012 at 12:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Francisco Bacopa, #1:
Heh. That thought occurred to me as well.
larianlequella
September 3, 2012 at 2:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed, do we know if there are any specific appeals going on in PA to continue to fight that voter suppression? As Francisco says, it’s a swing state. In 2008, Obama carried the state by a margin that is much less than the number of people potentially affected by the PA law…
inquisitiveraven
September 4, 2012 at 1:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m guessing my earlier comment is being held for moderation because I put in a couple of links. If that’s the case, I’d like some notice of the fact. Until Ed releases it, here’s the url for for information on how to get a free voter ID in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, sans hyperlink: http://www.dmv.state.pa.us/pdotforms/voterid/2New%20Department%20of%20State%20ID.pdf
I was wondering if the PA law might not have been struck down because of this.
democommie
September 4, 2012 at 7:45 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Inquisitiveraven:
That there is a link to a way to get indformation about how to obtain a free photo ID is positively Orwellian in its conception. A certain class of people (lets call them black, for lack of a better term) who are poor and more likely to vote democratic than republican, are effectively disenfranchised by the requirement that they have a photo ID to vote. You then give those people the opportunity to get a free photo ID by providing a netlink which they can use with their often non-existent computer skilz on their non-existent internet connections.
They don’t require an ID to vote where I live. You walk in, give them your name, they check you off the list and you get a ballot. Easypeasy lemonsqueezy.
greg1466
September 4, 2012 at 9:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Jebus, being from PA, how depressing to learn that even Texas can get it right!
eric
September 4, 2012 at 9:57 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m frankly as concerned, or even more concerned about the recent FL laws restricting voter registration drives. Those sorts of laws seem to me to be far more direct attacks on minority and poor voters. There is simply no good reason to disallow or limit registration at any time of year, in any place, for any person. Worst case scenario, you say that registrations received x days (i.e. 1, 2, 7, whatever) before a vote cannot be processed in time – but you still allow them to be collected and you still send out registration cards to the applicants, for the next vote.
I’d probably be fine with some form of voter ID as long as the state made a good effort to make it easy and free for people to get…and, at a minimum, “good effort” in this case means supporting NGO voter registration and voter information drives – not working against them. We need to strongly oppose those sorts of FL laws where they are copied by other states.
democommie
September 5, 2012 at 7:48 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“We need to strongly oppose those sorts of FL laws where they are copied by other states.”
Call me a paranoic, but I’d be looking for the “Free Hand” of ALEC being up the asses of the legispuppets in FL and other places.
inquisitiveraven
September 6, 2012 at 6:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Democommie: Yeah, but most of those people have access to a TV one way or another. The other link I put in the comment that never posted was to a TV news program. It was from a Pittsburgh station, but I expect that other stations across the state also carried the story.
No, the real problem is that the places where you can get the ID tend to close at 4:15 M-F (I think the idea is to finish processing by 5:00, since they don’t kick you out if you get in at the last minute, but based on my most recent experience, that doesn’t work, at least not in the urban centers) and keep really short hours on Saturday. IOW, the working poor are going to have a hard time getting to the centers when they’re open.