Still the only voter ID anyone should need
The Obama administration and several civil rights groups are urging a federal appeals court to fast track the process of temporarily fixing Texas’ voter ID law in time for the upcoming Nov. 3 elections.
In court filings Thursday, the Justice Department and civil rights groups asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to allow a lower court to start getting to work immediately on an interim remedy to the law passed in 2011 by the state’s Republican-led Legislature.
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The 5th Circuit bounced a portion of the case back to a federal court in Corpus Christi and instructed it to correct the law ahead of the upcoming election while the rest of the case works through the courts. The 5th Circuit noted the lower court should craft a remedy that would “avoid election eve uncertainties and emergencies.”
However, the 5th Circuit is set to retain jurisdiction of the case until Sept. 28.
DOJ and the civil rights groups argue that timeline might not allow for an interim solution to be put in place across the state for early voting, which starts on Oct. 19. They’ve asked the 5th Circuit to allow the federal court in Corpus Christi to come up with a fix earlier.
“The timely entry of interim relief mitigates SB14’s discriminatory result while also minimizing any voter confusion or disruption to upcoming election-day preparations, including poll-worker training and the issuance of election-related information, materials, and notices,” DOJ wrote, referring to the voter ID law by the bill number it was assigned in the 2011 Legislature, Senate Bill 14.
See here for the background. The AG’s office, of course, opposes this, and they have until August 28 to file a response. One possible remedy, at least for now, is to allow voter registration cards to be used as voter ID cards, as was done before this stupid law was passed. The plaintiffs say they are open to that as one option from the menu, though they would like to consider a broader range of choices as well. It sure would be nice to have something in place to address this for this year, especially since we were denied that by the same Fifth Circuit last year.
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