Still the only voter ID anyone should need
This much is clear after two days of early voting in Texas: Legal wrangling over the state’s voter identification law is stirring confusion at the polls.
Amid Texans’ mad dash to polling places this week, the front end of 12 days of voting before Election Day, civil rights groups and some voters are questioning how some county election officials are portraying the state’s voter identification requirements, which a federal judge softened in August.
Among the complaints in pockets of Texas: years-old posters inaccurately describing the rules — more than a dozen instances in Bexar County — and poll workers who were reluctant to tell voters that some could cast ballots without photo identification.
Though it’s not clear that anyone walked away from the polls because of misinformation or partial information, civil rights advocates called the sporadic reports troubling.
“Not everybody is an aggressive voter. Some people are shy and laid back, and if you’re told you have to have an ID, it might cause them to get out of line and go home,” said Jose Garza, a lawyer working for groups challenging the state’s strict 2011 voter ID law.
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Now, after two days of early voting, some complain that local elections officials are only further muddying Texans’ understanding.
In Bexar County, for instance, lawyers for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said they spotted outdated posters — those describing the strict 2011 ID rules without the new caveats — hanging in at least 14 of the county’s 43 polling places at various points during early voting.
“This is a situation where the Secretary of State produced [updated] materials, and you can find them online,” said Nina Perales, the group’s vice president of litigation. “The idea that polling place supply boxes were being filled with the wrong posters is so incredibly frustrating for people who have been working on this issue for years.”
Donna Parker, a spokesman for Bexar County Clerk Jacque Callanen, said Tuesday afternoon that the old posters had since been replaced with accurate ones.
But Perales disputed that the problem was fixed, saying that her group spotted eight polling places on Tuesday that still had misleading info — outdated posters either hanging alone or adjacent to the updated signage.
Here’s an eyewitness account of a problem that occurred in Harris County. I’m willing to give the election workers the benefit of the doubt. It’s been very busy, all of this is new, and Lord knows there has been a rash of misinformation coming from the state. But that’s the point – the state has been acting in bad faith, and that attitude has been echoed by some local officials, most prominently our own Stan Stanart. The fact that there is confusion should not come as a surprise – it’s practically guaranteed. It’s all of a piece with what is happening all around the country, and the motivation for these actions is plain as day. All of this needs to be stopped, and I hope it’s high up on Hillary Clinton’s agenda after the election. The Texas Civil Rights Project and ThinkProgress have more.