This is outrageous.
Still the only voter ID anyone should need
The University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs recently completed a report, “The Texas Voter ID Law and the 2016 Election,” based on surveys of registered voters who sat out the 2016 elections in the state’s two highest profile battleground jurisdictions: Harris County and Congressional District 23 (CD-23), which stretches from San Antonio to El Paso.
We found almost all registered voters who did not vote had a valid photo ID, and virtually no one was prevented from voting for lack of one of the seven state-approved forms of photo ID needed to vote in person.
However, these registered voters were poorly informed about the photo ID regulations, which are the foundation for revised ID legislation now being considered in the Legislature.
It’s no surprise that the Texas Secretary of State’s 2016 public education campaign left some voters uninformed about the voter ID law, given that only $2.5 million was allocated for the effort and the requirements changed just months before the election.
But legislators can correct that problem, even as they consider other changes to the law. We urge them to take that responsibility seriously in light of what we discovered.
Thirty-seven percent of registered voters in Harris County and 45 percent of those in CD-23 did not vote in November. But almost all of them could have. Altogether, 97 percent of registered non-voters in Harris County and 98 percent of those in CD-23 had an unexpired, state-approved photo ID. That rose to 99 percent in Harris County and remained at 98 percent in CD-23 when acceptable expired IDs were considered.
[…]
Only 20 percent of non-voters could accurately identify the photo ID rules. Three out of five incorrectly believed all voters were required to provide a state-approved photo ID to vote in person, unaware that people could also vote by signing an affidavit and providing one of several supporting documents.
Latino non-voters were significantly less likely than Anglo and Harris County African American non-voters to accurately understand the rules. Latino non-voters in both locales were also significantly more likely to believe the photo ID rules were more restrictive than they actually were.
Three out of four non-voters incorrectly believed only a valid, unexpired Texas driver’s license qualified as a state-approved form of photo ID, and only 1 in 7 knew a license that had expired within four years qualified.
You can see the study here. You can’t tell me that this kind of confusion isn’t a part of the appeal for Republicans who advocate for voter ID, especially strict voter ID laws like Texas’. There’s a reason why that law was ruled to have been passed with discriminatory intent. That confusion will continue to be a factor going forward as well even as the law is invalidated (which may or may not continue to be the case as the appeals process gets underway). It’s going to take a large investment in voter education to counteract that effect, unlike the pathetically puny effort the state grudgingly put forward last year.
The Trib adds some reporting to the op-ed that the study’s authors published.
“If [Texas] just used rules similar to those enforced in 2016 but did a better job educating voters, we would see only very modest adverse effects on participation,” Jones said.
The survey results tracked similarly to findings in a 2015 joint Rice University and University of Houston study of CD-23 that found eligible voters stayed home because they erroneously thought they lacked proper IDs — possibly factoring into the outcome of Hurd’s close win over Democrat Pete Gallego.
Jones called it unrealistic to expect the secretary of state’s office, previously led by Carlos Cascos, to educate would-be voters across the vast state with just $2.5 million — a sum better suited to reach folks in just one of Texas’ 36 congressional districts.
A federal judge ordered Texas to launch the voter education effort just three months before Election Day last November, and the campaign hit an early speed bump when that same judge ordered the secretary of state’s office to correct and re-issue press materials following allegations that the office inaccurately described fixes to the ID rules.
The agency at the time called educating voters its top objective.
Researchers can’t analyze how effectively the agency has used its scarce resources for education because it has refused to release key details about where it purchased television and radio advertisements to publicize the relaxation to ID requirements in the run-up to the elections — secrecy supported by a ruling from Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The justification for that ruling and for the secrecy in the first place is that the work done by these overpriced consultants on behalf of the state was a “trade secret” on their part, which is bullshit on so many levels I can’t even begin to categorize them. Rep. Justin Rodriguez filed a bill to force transparency on this, which I suppose may now be moot in light of the ruling from Corpus Christi. What needs to happen, regardless of what becomes of that ruling, is that a crap-ton of money needs to be spent to undo the toxic effects of the voter ID law and make sure everyone who is eligible to vote knows it. Since the state isn’t going to spend that money, someone else needs to do it. If the Texas Democratic Party wants a cause to rally people to, that would be my recommendation.
Found it:
“We found almost all registered voters who did not vote had a valid photo ID, and virtually no one was prevented from voting for lack of one of the seven state-approved forms of photo ID needed to vote in person.”
But, muh disenfranchisement, muh racism!