Texas voter ID law struck down: Impact on U.S. election?

In California we have the top two vote getters in the primary run off against each other in the general (unless someone takes 50%+ in the primary). So we get a Democrat and another Democrat in the general election.

 

Inconsistent joke when it comes to Voting rights Act cases and the 14th/15th amendment?

Do tell.

I'm sure I'm famous throughout the land for my whimsical approach to equal protection.

You're a bright boy, Bobby. It ought not be difficult for you to impeach me here.

 

Yup, pretty much the only thing where it's not fair to have people prove they are who they say they are is when they show up to vote.....because, reasons.

 

Activities that the Voting Rights Act applies to:

None of those things

 

And reasons = title 52 of the US code, among other things.

Way to showcase your own ignorance.

 

Probably makes no difference this cycle, but am glad more Americans can participate in US election.

 

it's cut and dry people, asking someone to prove who they are is a clear violation of their voting rights

 

I suspect you would have been making the same argument 60 years ago, something like "it's cut and dry people, asking someone to demonstrate they have basic education is a clear violation of their voting rights."

Personally, I see nothing wrong with requiring identification, so long as there's also a plan in place to help voting-eligible people who don't have it to obtain it.

 

...and that's the issue. The agenda pushers on the subject were not actually interested in addressing voter fraud. It was all proposed on a hypothetical case about voter fraud with not facts to substantiate the case.

Say what you want about the logic about voter ID, the source is tainted.

 

Sure, taken without context lots of things seem reasonable on a "personal" level. I mean it seems personally reasonable for Birmingham police officers to suppress protesters with firehoses - at least they're not using guns, right?

Who cares what you think though? - and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

There is a crapload of context around this, a record that fills thousands of pages, which the judges wrote an exhaustive explanation thereof. And that is just the trial record on this particular law, and not the whole voter fraud hoax.

 

Exactly. Its been clear that the backers of the most extreme voter ID law have not ever demonstrated that there is a compelling need, that there is a significant amount of voter fraud.

But what was determined, by one of the most conservative circuit courts in the country, that the State of Texas voter ID law was intended to discriminate.

Now, backers of this discriminatory are butt-hurt, and whining about unrelated instances when ID is required, but that is all it is, butthurt whining.

Instead of whining, it would be better to (1) prove the need, and (2) create an ID law that doesn't discriminate.

 

Yea, I read some of it. This was also a mostly conservative Court. Should speak volume on the ruling.

 

Maybe you missed my point, or I'm missing yours.

If every eligible voter had a valid ID in their possession, is there still a legal reason to be against an ID requirement?

My point is that any ID requirement must be coupled with a solid plan to get a valid ID in the possession of every eligible voter.

 

If every eligible voter owned a toothbrush, is there still a legal reason to be against a requirement that you bring proof of toothbrush ownership to the polls?

Your argument basically implies that an oppressive law that collides with rights shifts the burden to the oppressed to prove that it's hard to comply with.

The court here applied a better standard, which is that if you want an oppressive law that collides with the Voting Rights Act, inter alia, you better make damn sure you've got a real live, substantial and pervasive problem on the other side that you're trying to solve.

In this instance there isn't one.

 

Basically the morons who are against voter ID laws have to take the stance that requiring the same thing people are required to have in order to pick their children up from school in order to vote is oppression. You essentially have to be a partisan moron to take this stance fortunately/unfortunately we have several here.

 

So, basically, "don't mess with it if it isn't broken", because that tinkering could have consequences that disenfranchise segments of the population.

I think voter ID, in principle, its something that improves the integrity of the voting system. Even if cases of voter fraud in practice are rare and statistically negligible in the final tallies, putting safeguards in place that prevent potential abuse down the line is a good thing. But that must be balanced with consideration for how it affect the voting pool demographics.

That's why I would support an ID requirement so long as the necessary safeguards are in place to ensure eligible voters had valid IDs. Maybe that's impractical, I don't know, but I think that should be the goal. Why settle for the current situation, where large segments of the population don't have proper, legal identification? How is that a good thing?

 

and the problem with this is what?

 

The problem it's not a principle at stake here since voter fraud is a non-issue. It's really just new age voter disenfranchisement.

An oldie but goodie.


Why Voter ID Laws Aren’t Really about Fraud
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/why-voter-id-laws-arent-really-about-fraud/

Voters going to the polls in Texas starting this week will have to show one of a few specific forms of photo ID under a controversial new law upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court over the weekend.

The Texas law — along with 15 other voter ID laws passed since 2010 — was billed as a way to prevent people from impersonating eligible voters at the polls.

But voter ID laws don’t address what appears to be a more common source of voter fraud: mail-in absentee ballots.

A FRONTLINE analysis of voting laws nationwide found that only six of the 31 states that require ID at the polls apply those standards to absentee voters, who are generally whiter and older than in-person voters. And two states with strict photo ID policies for in-person voters — Rhode Island and Georgia — have recently passed bills that allow anyone to mail in a ballot.

Voter fraud generally rarely happens. When it does, election law experts say it happens more often through mail-in ballots than people impersonating eligible voters at the polls. An analysis by News21, a journalism project at Arizona State University, found 28 cases of voter fraud convictions since 2000. Of those, 14 percent involved absentee ballot fraud. Voter impersonation, the form of fraud that voter ID laws are designed to prevent, made up only 3.6 percent of those cases. (Other types included double voting, the most common form, at 25 percent, and felons voting when they were prohibited from doing so. But neither of those would be prevented by voter ID laws, either.)

Mark Obenshain, a Republican Virginia state senator who was the primary sponsor of his state’s voter ID law, said that lawmakers tried to balance improving security with maintaining access to the ballot for elderly and disabled people.

“There are good arguments that there are gaps with absentee ballots,” he said. “But the issue is, how can we close that gap without unduly burdening the right to vote?” Obenshain said that these voters might not have access to a scanner or Xerox machine to make a copy of their ID.

And, because absentee ballots must be sent to a voter’s registered address, they are still relatively secure, Obenshain said. “It doesn’t warrant making the voters jump through unnecessary hoops.”

Who Votes Absentee?

Absentee voters tend to be older and whiter than in-person voters. In 2012, nearly half, or 46 percent, of mail-in voters were aged 60 and older, and more than 75 percent were white, according to an analysis by Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida who tracks demographic trends in voting. Older white Americans generally are more likely to vote Republican.

African-Americans, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic, are less likely to use mail-in ballots. Although they make up about 13 percent of the population, only 8 percent voted by mail in 2012.

Either way, most states — nine — of the 16 that have passed stricter voter ID laws since 2010 only allow voters to mail in ballots if they have an excuse, such as an illness, disability or old age.

Who Is Impacted by Voter ID Laws?

Laws that require photo ID at the polls vary, but the strictest laws limit the forms of acceptable documentation to only a handful of cards. For example, in Texas, voters must show one of seven forms of state or federal-issue photo ID, with a valid expiration date: a driver’s license, a personal ID card issued by the state, a concealed handgun license, a military ID, citizenship certificate or a passport. The name on the ID must exactly match the one on the voter rolls.

African-Americans and Latinos are more likely to lack one of these qualifying IDs, according to several estimates. Even when the state offers a free photo ID, these voters, who are disproportionately low-income, may not be able to procure the underlying documents, such as a birth certificate, to obtain one.

In Texas, for example, challengers to the law cited an African-American grandmother who could not afford the $25 to purchase her birth certificate to get an ID, and an elderly African-American veteran and longtime voter who was turned away at the polls in 2013 despite having three types of ID, because none qualified under the new law.

And new research from the Government Accountability Office, an independent agency that prepares reports for members of Congress, suggests that voter ID laws are having an impact at the polls. Turnout dropped among both young people and African-Americans in Kansas and Tennessee after new voter ID requirements took effect in 2012, the study found.

Six of the 16 states that have passed voter ID laws since 2010 have a documented history of discriminating against minority voters. All but one of those states’ laws were put in place after the Supreme Court overturned a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that required them to seek approval from the Justice Department for any voting-law changes.

Courts have so far blocked three ID laws. A state judge struck down Pennsylvania’s law earlier this year, determining that it discriminated against low-income and minority voters. Two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Wisconsin’s from taking effect for this election, and last week, a state court declared Arkansas’ voter ID law unconstitutional. Lawsuits are currently pending against similar laws in North Carolina and Alabama, though they won’t be decided before the November elections.

Voter ID laws have all been sponsored by Republicans and passed overwhelmingly by Republican legislatures. A conservative U.S. circuit judge, Richard Posner, in a recent scathing critique of these laws, calling the expressed concern about fraud a “a mere fig leaf” and that they instead “appear to be aimed at limiting voting by minorities, particularly blacks.”

“There is only one motivation for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud,” Posner wrote, “…and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the burdens.”

Obenshain, the Virginia senator, said his law wasn’t about keeping voters from the polls. “There’s only one class of people who are going to be discouraged from voting, and that’s fraudulent voters.”

 

Why not try to make something that is statistically perfect absolutely perfect, at significant cost?

Because that's simply not how rational regulation works, in which costs are balanced against benefits.