Still the only voter ID anyone should need
Texas on Wednesday kicked off a voter education campaign ahead of the November elections amid heightened scrutiny of the state’s voter ID law.
Under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice and minority rights groups, the state is required to spend $2.5 million to educate voters about its voter ID requirements. Registered voters will be able to cast a ballot Nov. 8 without a photo ID under the agreement, which came weeks after a federal appeals court ruled that Texas’ 2011 voter identification law was discriminatory.
The inaugural Vote Texas event on Wednesday, at which Secretary of State Carlos Cascos told students at the University of Texas at Austin to get into the habit of voting at a young age, was planned before the agreement, Cascos said.
“Our role is not necessarily to increase the vote, but I think that with voter education, the voter training that we’re assisting with and reaching out to first-time voters about the importance of registering, that’ll translate into a greater voter participation,” Cascos said in an interview.
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Cascos is expected to travel across the state as part of the Vote Texas program. He’s scheduled to speak to Texas State University students in San Marcos on Thursday.
See here and here for the background. I hope there’s more to this than Secretary Cascos touring college campuses, but we’ll have to take the state’s word for it that there is.
And in other voter ID news:
With a tie vote in a closely watched case, the Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed a series of voting restrictions in North Carolina to remain blocked ahead of November’s elections. The court handed down an order denying the request by the state to allow it to implement some of the restrictive provisions — provisions that had been struck down and deemed discriminatory in their intent by a panel of judges on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month.
The order means the appeals court ruling will stand at least through November, while signaling that the Supreme Court is likely split on the larger issue of the legality of the restrictions.
So it’s really really going o matter who gets to finally pick a ninth Justice. Just putting it out there. Rick Hasen and Think Progress have more.