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.
Still the only voter ID anyone should need
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 are limited in number, with the closest location often a substantial distance from the home of many residents. For instance, not one of the DPS offices in Harris County is inside the 610 Loop. Additionally, most DPS offices are poorly served by mass transit, a significant issue given that a large proportion of those in need of an EIC lack a driver’s license. Finally, waits of two to three hours are not uncommon at DPS offices.
The level of access to DPS offices in Texas contrasts markedly with that in Indiana, whose 2005 photo identification law was determined to be constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008. Every Indiana county has at least one Bureau of Motor Vehicles office, and those offices are generally open for four hours on Saturday. Indiana’s most populous county (Marion) has 12 offices for the 911,000 inhabitants residing within its 396 square miles, one office more than Harris County, which has a population (4.181 million) and land area (1,704 square miles) more than four times that of Marion County.
Ironically, SB 14 does not address the most common type of voting malfeasance in Texas: mail-in ballot fraud. While rare, it nonetheless is a problem of equal, if not greater, concern than voter impersonation fraud. And yet, SB 14 does nothing to combat it, neglecting to follow the example of a half -dozen states that mandate a voter’s signature on the mail-in ballot envelope be verified by a notary public or two witnesses. Under SB 14, a photo ID is not required to vote by mail.
When crafting SB 14, lawmakers likely determined that the negligible benefits in fraud prevention obtained by enhancing the integrity of the mail-in ballot process paled in comparison to the negative impact this reform would have on Texans, primarily those 65 and older, by making voting by mail more difficult for some and leading others to refrain from casting a ballot altogether. However, this same logic holds for SB 14’s photo ID requirement, which provides a miniscule enhancement in electoral integrity at the cost of placing even more onerous demands on a larger number of Texans.
Of course, as Jones notes, those who vote by mail are disproportionately Anglo and Republican, so naturally the Lege wasn’t interested in adding any obstacles to them voting. The bit about Indiana and its preponderance of DPS offices is something I didn’t know, and it adds another layer to the disingenuousness of Texas’ claims that voter ID isn’t so bad because of how it has gone in Indiana. I hope the Justice Department made all this plain to the judges. Anyway, also recently on the op-ed pages we had this piece in the Statesman by UT-Pan Am poli sci prof Jessica Lavariega Monforti, who mostly rounds up and recaps research on the deleterious effects of voter ID from the Brennan Center, and this Express News column by Ricardo Pimental making the obvious but insufficiently acknowledged point that voter ID is all about voter suppression. Check ’em out.
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