Grits returns to a question he has asked before. The Dallas News last week (March 24) published a feature behind the paywall by reporter Terrence Stutz titled “Texas lawmakers want brakes put on driver surcharges for road violations,” as well as an editorial on the public part of their site calling for the repeal of [...]
Posts Tagged ‘voter ID’
Committee time
Now the real work gets started. House Speaker Joe Straus announced committee assignments for the Legislature’s lower chamber on Thursday, ending speculation over key chairmanships and giving lawmakers the go-ahead to start considering bills. Here’s his list. Of the standing committees, 32 are chaired by men, six by women. That’s one more female chair than [...]
SCOTUS voter ID update
The matter is officially with the Supreme Court now. A federal court deferred further proceedings in a lawsuit filed by Texas over the state’s voter identification law until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on whether part of the Voting Rights Act is constitutional. A three-judge panel in Washington said today that “in the interest of [...]
Parties split on waiting for SCOTUS
Texas Redistricting: Lawyers for the Justice Department and intervenors in the Texas voter ID case told the court yesterday that the court should put off consideration of Texas’ claim that section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional until the Supreme Court decides the pending Shelby County v. Holder case next year. That case involves a [...]
Voter ID case will likely wait for SCOTUS, too
Texas Redistricting: In a move not too surprising, the three-judge panel in the Texas voter ID case also has asked the parties to brief the question of whether the court should delay taking up questions about the constitutionality of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act given Supreme Court’s grant of cert. in Shelby County [...]
SCOTUS to review Section 5
Gird your loins. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge brought by Shelby County, Alabama to the continued constitutionality of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. In its order taking the case, the high court limited the issues before the court to the question of “[w]hether Congress’ decision in 2006 to reauthorize [...]
On voter confidence
There was one more interesting aspect to that poll of Harris County from last week, and it had to do with how confident voters were that the vote they cast would be counted. This KUHF story goes into that result. A new KUHF/KHOU poll shows that black voters aren’t as confident as other voters that [...]
That Chron story on True The Vote
For a variety of reasons, I never got around to reading that Sunday Chron story about True The Vote, that self-styled “watchdog” group that claims to be interested in ferreting out all those instances of “vote fraud” that nobody else can find, mostly because they don’t exist. I just couldn’t bring myself to read it, [...]
Voting-related lawsuit updates
From Texas Redistricting: The three-judge panel presiding over the Texas voter ID entered an order this morning adopting a briefing schedule for questions about the constitutionality of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. With minor differences, the schedule tracks the proposal made by lawyers for the Justice Department and intervenors. Here’s the schedule: Texas [...]
More on Texas proving the need for the Voting Rights Act
From the DMN: “There have been growing arguments that the Voting Rights Act is obsolete and should be struck down,” says University of Michigan law professor Ellen Katz, a nationally recognized expert on the Voting Rights Act. “But [Gov.] Rick Perry and the state of Texas, through their overreach in these cases, may have just [...]
The state of Texas has already proven the case for the Voting Rights Act
So as you know, the state of Texas had its rear end handed to it in both the redistricting and voter ID preclearance lawsuits. Both of these rulings will be appealed to the Supreme Court, with the ultimate goal being a constitutional challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which is the provision [...]
Federal court refuses to preclear Texas voter ID bill
Another bad day in court for Texas Republicans. A federal three-judge panel on Thursday blocked the Texas voter ID law passed by the Republican Legislature, saying the new restrictions would place an unfair burden on Latinos, racial minorities and the poor. The ruling by the federal panel is the second blow to Texas in as [...]
Waiting for Rick (and Greg, and David)
Ross Ramsey breaks out his crystal ball and looks ahead to the 2014 election. Remember this: In his long history in state politics — closing in on three decades — [Rick] Perry has run for everything he said he was going to run for. Given his history, the safest assumption is that Perry will be [...]
Poli Sci profs against voter ID
Rice political science professor Mark Jones writes an op-ed in the Chron that does a thorough job of dissecting Texas’ contentious voter ID law. Nearly one out of every three Texas counties lacks an operational DPS office, and no office is open after 6 p.m. or on weekends. DPS offices in the largest urban counties [...]
Voter ID trial wraps up
I didn’t follow the day to day reports from the voter ID preclearance trial, mostly because there wasn’t anything in the testimony that was truly unexpected. Lots of numbers, some of questionable provenance, were presented. The state continued to claim that nobody would be prevented from voting, not even the people who don’t have drivers [...]
Voter ID trial, day one
And they’re off, with the state bringing the funny math as part of its case. A Justice Department lawyer, Elizabeth Westfall, argued that the law has the potential to prevent 1.4 million Texans from voting who are eligible but lack the required photo identification — a disproportionate number of them minorities. Previewing the case the [...]
Voter ID trial starts today
Another big lawsuit in a year that’s seen plenty of them. The decades-old legal battle between states’ rights and civil rights returns to a familiar venue – a federal courtroom – on Monday as lawyers for the state of Texas try to convince a panel of judges that the U.S. Justice Department has no legal [...]
Yet another voting-related lawsuit
I had completely forgotten about this. A federal judge in Galveston is to consider motions in a lawsuit filed by a Washington-based voters’ rights group that contends Texas laws make it illegally difficult to register voters. The group Voting for America is seeking an injunction to block enforcement of laws they say keep registration records [...]
You sure you’re registered?
Your voter registration could get cancelled without you realizing what’s happening. More than 300,000 valid voters were notified they could be removed from Texas rolls from November 2008 to November 2010 – often because they were mistaken for someone else or failed to receive or respond to generic form letters, according to Houston Chronicle interviews [...]
Abbott gives on legislative privilege
About time. In an effort to move to trial more quickly, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has quietly dropped his opposition to the Department of Justice’s request to take depositions from state lawmakers in the voter identification case. In March, Abbott asked a federal court in Washington to shield 12 state lawmakers from giving depositions [...]
A trio of trial updates
Planned Parenthood versus Texas: A ruling affecting health care, including contraception, for some 130,000 low-income Texas women probably won’t come until late this year as Planned Parenthood and the state of Texas plan for mid-October oral arguments in their legal fight. The state is appealing a preliminary injunction that U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel granted [...]
Voter ID trial likely to be delayed
And if it is, it’s all the fault of the State of Texas. In another blow to advocates of Texas’ voter ID law, a federal district court ruled today that the law will likely not be in place by the November general election unless the state turns over requested documents by Wednesday. [...] Late last [...]
Delay in voter ID trial requested
From Michael Li: Intervenors in the Texas voter ID case asked the court today to delay the scheduled July 9 start of trial in the case, citing discovery delays by the State of Texas. The intervenors said the delays had already put the parties at least five weeks behind schedule. According to the motion: From [...]
Who testifies about voter ID?
That was the question before the federal court on Tuesday. U.S. Justice Department lawyers told a federal three-judge panel Tuesday that Texas legislators should not be shielded from testifying in a voter ID case. But lawyers for state Attorney General Greg Abbott said deposing statehouse Republicans to determine legislative intent of the new photo ID [...]
Voter ID lawsuit action this week
Tomorrow, the DC Court will hear “oral argument on the State of Texas’ request to block the depositions of 12 Republican legislators who were involved with the voter ID bill, including State Sen. Dan Patrick and state representatives Debbie Riddle and Leo Berman as well as Speaker Joe Straus”. The motion also sought to bar [...]
Examining the voter ID lie
I’ve complained quite a bit at how the media in Texas lazily reports the voter ID issue as a simple “he said/she said” dispute when a cursory examination of the facts shows how ridiculous the pro-voter ID case is, so I’ll give the Chron some credit for this story that asks whether the facts justify [...]
Why no ID?
Grits asks an interesting question. Why do so many adult Texans lack ID? In part because 2 million drivers have had their drivers licenses revoked because of nonpayment of the Driver Responsibility Surcharge, which readers will recall is a stiff civil penalty tacked on top of any fines, punishments or court costs stemming from certain [...]
Texas goes long on voter ID
From Michael Li: The State of Texas is seeking permission from the three-judge panel in the voter ID case to file an amended complaint that would directly challenge the constitutionality of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The amended complaint told the court in the introduction that, as an alternative grounds for relief, “the [...]
More on the feds’ rejection of the Texas voter ID law
Here’s the Trib story. The U.S. Department of Justice has rejected Texas’ application for preclearance of its voter ID law, saying the state did not prove that the bill would not have a discriminatory effect on minority voters. “The department’s letter states that Texas did not meet its burden under Section 5 of the Voting [...]
DOJ refuses to preclear Texas voter ID law
Good news. I’m not in a position to do any analysis of this now – I’ll have something for tomorrow morning – but for now I wanted to note this development. The state will proceed with its lawsuit, so we are far from the end of the road on this.
News flash: The voter ID law will do exactly what it was intended to do
And that is to make it harder to vote. Mostly for the poor, the elderly, college students, and minorities. This is a feature, not a bug. The state’s contested voter ID law could provoke widespread complications in the upcoming presidential elections, with as many as 18 percent of all registered voters across Texas apparently lacking [...]
Why do we make it so hard to vote?
News item: Many voter registrations around the country are outdated or incorrect. Some 24 million voter registrations in the United States contain significant errors, including about 1.8 million dead people still on the rolls and many more approved to vote in multiple states, according to a report released Tuesday. Even though the inaccuracies impact one [...]
Meet the voter ID three judge panel
As you know, the state of Texas has filed a lawsuit in the DC District Federal Court – the same court that is hearing the preclearance lawsuit – to get the odious voter ID law precleared. Michael Li introduces us to the judges that will be hearing this case. Texas’ suit over its voter ID [...]
Texas files suit to preclear voter ID
They’re a mighty busy bunch at the OAG these days. The Texas attorney general’s office today filed suit against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice to have the state’s controversial voter ID law implemented without further delay. The law, Senate Bill 14 by state Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, was scheduled [...]