The Observer reports.
Still the only voter ID anyone should need
Election Day last week brought plenty of complaints at the polls about Texas’ new voter ID law, but it also brought one major complaint in Corpus Christi federal court, where nine voters joined La Unión Del Pueblo Entero in suing the state over its tough new voting requirements.
The plaintiffs are long-time voters from South Texas who lack the photo ID now required to vote in Texas since the 2011 law took effect. “The State knew or should have known,” the suit says, “that Hispanic and African-American Texans disproportionately lack the forms of photo ID required by SB 14.”
[…]
The new complaint is focused specifically on the burden the law places on poor, rural voters, according to David Hall, executive director of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which is representing the new plaintiffs.
“What we were trying to do is fill in a niche that didn’t seem to be addressed much by the Justice Department suit or the other plaintiffs,” he told the Observer. “Most of our clients don’t have a handy certified copy of a birth certificate, so they’re going to be paying some money.”
That cost varies from $22—for the copy of a birth certificate you’d need in order to get a new state ID—to $345 for a copy of citizenship papers, according to the complaint. For residents of rural Willacy, Goliad or Karnes counties, getting that paperwork together can mean long, costly trips to the closest DPS office.
These are all familiar concerns to critics of the voter ID law—often raised by Democrats during the Legislature’s debate over the law, and dismissed by Republicans as abstract worries. Each of the nine plaintiffs in this suit demonstrate the very real problems Texas’ voter ID law created.
Eulalio Mendez, Jr., is an 82-year-old man living in Willacy County whose driver’s license expired in June 2012, and who has no way to travel to the DPS office in Harlingen that issues ID cards. Roxsanne Hernandez, in the Goliad County town of Berclair, had her state ID card stolen last year and doesn’t have a copy of her birth certificate. Estela Garcia Espinoza is a 69-year-old Raymondville woman who no longer drives, and whose license expired four years ago. She was born on a Starr County ranch in 1944 and her birth was never officially registered.
All the plaintiffs had voted regularly before this year, according to the complaint, and have incomes well below the poverty line.
Courthouse News has more on the suit; you can see a copy of it at the Observer. As I’ve been saying, the problem with voter ID is the effect it has on the hundreds of thousands of people in the state who don’t have an ID and who can’t easily get it. The plaintiffs in this lawsuit, all of whom have been effectively disenfranchised by the law, are clear examples of this, and no happy-talk pronouncement about how “smoothly” this past election went by Republican election officials can change that. Unfortunately, the trial may not even begin before next November’s election, so whatever the full effect of this law may be, we’ll feel it. I hope we’ll be able to get an injunction before then, but we’ll see. Texas Redistricting, who also reported that the Texas League of Young Voters has amended its complaint to include non-race based claims, has more.