Holder tells NAACP Texas voter ID law 'harmful' to minorities

[akatrex]

Holder tells NAACP Texas voter ID law 'harmful' to minorities

In our efforts to protect voting rights and to prevent voting fraud, we will be vigilant and strong,” Mr. Holder said. “But let me be clear: we will not allow political pretexts to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious right.”

Mr. Holder’s appearance coincided with a trial in Washington this week over whether a photo ID voting requirement enacted by Texas violates the Voting Rights Act. The Justice Department refused to allow the law to take effect, saying that the state had failed to prove that the law would not disproportionately suppress legitimate minority voters.

TEXAS: How to Apply

Visit any driver license office and complete an application. Be sure to bring the following:

1. Proof of identity.
2. Cash or check to pay a $16 fee ($5 if you're older than 60)

http://www.dmv.org/tx-texas/id-cards.php#Getting-an-ID-Card

Holy Crap Batman those requirements are outrageous!

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/holder-at-n-a-a-c-p-event-criticizes-voter-id-laws/

 

[coachdb18]

Holder tells NAACP Texas voter ID law 'harmful' to minorities

In our efforts to protect voting rights and to prevent voting fraud, we will be vigilant and strong,” Mr. Holder said. “But let me be clear: we will not allow political pretexts to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious right.”

Mr. Holder’s appearance coincided with a trial in Washington this week over whether a photo ID voting requirement enacted by Texas violates the Voting Rights Act. The Justice Department refused to allow the law to take effect, saying that the state had failed to prove that the law would not disproportionately suppress legitimate minority voters.

TEXAS: How to Apply

Visit any driver license office and complete an application. Be sure to bring the following:

1. Proof of identity.
2. Cash or check to pay a $16 fee ($5 if you're older than 60)

http://www.dmv.org/tx-texas/id-cards.php#Getting-an-ID-Card

Holy Crap Batman those requirements are outrageous!

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/holder-at-n-a-a-c-p-event-criticizes-voter-id-laws/

I don't think there's an illegal alien in the country that hasn't found a way to get a drivers license as a way to get the rest of their papers, so they can stay. It ain't that hard.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Indeed.

Discriminatory Texas Voter ID Law Challenged in Federal Court

Ari Berman on July 9, 2012 - 12:39 PM ET

This week the state of Texas will try to persuade a federal court in Washington to uphold its voter ID law. The facts, however, are not on Texas’s side.

In March the Justice Department blocked the state’s voter ID law, saying it violated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against minority voters. DOJ found that “over 600,000 registered voters do not have either a driver’s license or personal identification card issued by [the Department of Public Safety]—and that a disproportionate share of those registered voters are Hispanic.”

Wrote Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez:

We conclude that the total number of registered voters who lack a driver’s license or personal identification card issued by DPS could range from 603,892 to 795,955. The disparity between the percentages of Hispanics and non-Hispanics who lack these forms of identification ranges from 46.5 to 120.0 percent. That is, according to the state’s own data, a Hispanic registered voter is at least 46.5 percent, and potentially 120.0 percent, more likely than a non-Hispanic registered voter to lack this identification.

In court today, the Justice Department argued that the number of voters without ID is, in fact, double what the state estimated. “At least 1.4 million registered voters in Texas lack any form of state-issued ID accepted under [the law], and those voters are disproportionately Hispanic and black,” said DOJ lawyer Elizabeth Westfall.

Hispanics in Texas, who vote solidly Democratic, are not only more likely to lack ID compared to white voters, but will have a harder time obtaining the voter ID required by the state. There are DMV offices in only eighty-one of the state’s 254 counties. Not surprisingly, counties with a significant Hispanic population are less likely to have a DMV office, while Hispanic residents in such counties are twice as likely as whites to not have the right ID. Hispanics in Texas are also twice as likely as whites to not have a car. “During the legislative hearings, one senator stated that some voters in his district could have to travel up to 176 miles roundtrip in order to reach a driver’s license office,” wrote DOJ.

The law also places a significant burden on low-income residents. Texas is required to provide a free ID to voters, but an applicant must possess supporting documentation in order to qualify. “If a voter does not possess any of these documents, the least expensive option will be to spend $22 on a copy of the voter’s birth certificate,” DOJ noted. That expenditure can be rightly construed as a poll tax, which the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited.

Texas Republicans, as in other states, claim the law is needed to combat so-called “voter fraud.” Governor Rick Perry said the state had “multiple cases of voter fraud”—even though there were just five complaints of voter impersonation in Texas during the 2008 and 2010 elections out of 13 million votes cast. The real purpose of the voter ID law, which passed the state legislature at the beginning of 2011 as “emergency” legislation, is to benefit Republicans. For example, a handgun permit is considered an acceptable form of ID but a university ID is not. The law is yet another way Texas Republicans are trying to dilute the Democratic-leaning youth and minority vote in the state. (In the 2008 election, Barack Obama won just 26 percent of the white vote in Texas, but 63 percent from Hispanics and 98 percent from African-Americans. He beat John McCain among 18-to-29-year-olds in Texas but lost among every other age group.)

Texas has the dubious distinction of being the only place where the DOJ has blocked the state’s redistricting plan and its voter ID law, for diminishing the ability of minority voters to participate in the political process. Hispanics and African-Americans accounted for 80 percent of Texas’s booming population growth between 2000–10, yet the redistricting plan passed by Texas Republicans last year actually decreased the number of seats in Congress and the state legislature where minority voters will be able to elect a candidate of their choice. As a result, white Republicans, although now a demographic minority in the state, will be able to retain a huge political majority for the next decade. The League of Women Voters called it “by far the most extreme example of racial gerrymandering among all the redistricting proposals passed by lawmakers so far this year.” (The Texas redistricting map also has yet to be precleared in federal court.)

If a three-judge federal court panel rules against the state’s voter ID law, Texas has vowed to challenge the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires parts or all of sixteen states with a history of racial discrimination to clear any voting changes with the federal government to make sure they do not adversely impact minority voters. Attorney General Eric Holder has called Section 5 the “keystone of our voting rights.” (Texas has lost more Section 5 enforcement suits than any other state.) Already, Republicans in four states (Alaska, Arizona, Florida and South Carolina) and two local jurisdictions (in Alabama and North Carolina) are challenging the constitutionality of Section 5. A case originating in Shelby County, Alabama, is likely to reach the Supreme Court this year or next. According to a study by Columbia University law professor Nate Persily, “there have been more challenges to the Voting Rights Act in the past two years than in the previous 45 years combined,” reports Reuters. The Texas Republican Party platform goes even further, calling for repeal of the entire Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Yet the wave of restrictive voting laws passed by Republicans since the 2010 election proves that the Voting Rights Act is as important as it ever was. Texas, in many ways, is emblematic of how conservatives are responding to an increasingly diverse electorate by passing laws that dilute minority voting rights. Texas Congressman Charlie Gonzales, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, calls the state’s redistricting plan and voter ID law “exhibits A and B as to why Texas needs scrutiny under Section 5.”

 

[jeninflorida]

Remember, only in America is it illegal to ask for proof of identity or citizenship but you better damn well have proof of Health Insurance on you at all times

 

[coachdb18]

Eventually, people will just grt so fucking tired of Holders bullshit, he'll get taken out behind the woodshed and the proper beating will ensue...

 

[KingOrfeo]

And more:

Texas Wants to Say Adios to the Voting Rights Act's Authority

Voting Rights Watch 2012 on July 10, 2012 - 2:22 PM ET

Look up at your clock. By this same hour tomorrow, more than 1,500 US-born Latinos will have celebrated a milestone birthday, and turned 18. They’ll be eligible to vote in local, state and federal elections in their home states—but if that state is Texas, that right is under threat.

A case being heard this week by a panel of judges in DC will determine if Texas can demand strict forms of photo ID at the polls. The Lone Star State passed the bill and it was signed into law early this year. But what’s more broadly in question is the federal government’s continued power under the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Under the Voting Rights Act, Texas, along with other states that have historically discriminated against people of color around elections, must seek preclearance from the Department of Justice for changes to voting districts or regulations. And in the case of Texas’s voter ID law, that permission was denied. Texas admits that more than 600,000 people lack the necessary identification required—but insists that the law isn’t discriminatory because no-cost ID will be made available, and voters who still lack ID will still be able to cast provisional ballots.

But even when they’re free, IDs are not always so easy to acquire. In Mississippi, another Southern state waiting on DOJ preclearance, voters need a birth certificate to get an ID—but can’t get that birth certificate unless they already have an ID in their possession. And provisional ballots are often challenged, so casting one does not guarantee that the vote will count.

The DOJ and civil rights groups, meanwhile, argue that the law discriminates against Latinos and other marginalized voters in Texas. When Attorney General Eric Holder addressed the National Council of La Raza this past weekend, he made clear that the DOJ is vigilantly watching threats to voting rights through “redistricting plans, photo identification requirements, and changes affecting third party registration,” not just for Latinos and other people of color, but also for people with disabilities and those living abroad.

The number of Latino voters around the nation is rising—youth especially. Half of all eligible Latino voters are under the age of 40; one-third are between 18 and 34. Back in Texas, which boasts the second-largest Latino population after California, young Latinos who are enrolled in college won’t be eligible to use their school ID in order to vote under the new law. Yet a concealed handgun permit is perfectly valid at the polls. One might think that under Texas’s new law, gun toting is rewarded, but higher education is not.

Harris County, which encompasses Houston, remains Texas’s largest county, and according to the most recent census data, Latinos make up more than 40 percent of the population there. In Hidalgo County, Texas’s eighth-largest county, more than 90 percent of the population is Latino. Texas holds the second-highest number of electoral votes (again, after California), but it’s not certain that the rising number of young Latinos there will be eligible to have their vote counted under the new law.

Beyond voter ID in Texas and other states, redistricting, registration restrictions and voter purges are targeting Latino voters in Florida, Colorado and beyond. Although the black vote is also being targeted, we should remember that the right for Latinos to vote for local seats, state ballot initiatives and federal elections, which is guarded under the Voting Rights Act, is increasingly under threat.

 

[akatrex]

Discriminatory Texas Voter ID Law Challenged in Federal Court

Ari Berman on July 9, 2012 - 12:39 PM ET

This week the state of Texas will try to persuade a federal court in Washington to uphold its voter ID law. The facts, however, are not on Texas’s side.

In March the Justice Department blocked the state’s voter ID law, saying it violated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against minority voters. DOJ found that “over 600,000 registered voters do not have either a driver’s license or personal identification card issued by [the Department of Public Safety]—and that a disproportionate share of those registered voters are Hispanic.”


Yep those folks cannot :

1. Buy Beer

2. Buy Wine

3. Buy Cigarettes

4. Buy Lotto Tickets

5. Cash their unemployment checks

5. Sit at a Bar

6. Play at a Casino

7. Fly

8. etc. etc...............

http://www.westernjournalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/eric-holder1742.jpg

Holder is the "New" Munson!

 

[coachdb18]

Discriminatory Texas Voter ID Law Challenged in Federal Court

Ari Berman on July 9, 2012 - 12:39 PM ET

This week the state of Texas will try to persuade a federal court in Washington to uphold its voter ID law. The facts, however, are not on Texas’s side.

In March the Justice Department blocked the state’s voter ID law, saying it violated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against minority voters. DOJ found that “over 600,000 registered voters do not have either a driver’s license or personal identification card issued by [the Department of Public Safety]—and that a disproportionate share of those registered voters are Hispanic.”


Yep those folks cannot :

1. Buy Beer

2. Buy Wine

3. Buy Cigarettes

4. Buy Lotto Tickets

5. Cash their unemployment checks

5. Sit at a Bar

6. Play at a Casino

7. Fly

8. etc. etc...............

http://www.westernjournalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/eric-holder1742.jpg

I defy ANYONE to find a wetback without a drivers license... it's the first fake ID they get, so they can get all the rest of those entitlements, like Social Security

 

[fgarvb1]

Fuck a bunch of Holder.

 

[semen4her]

America is a police state.

I don't know why anyone would want to move there, job or no job.

 

[semen4her]

I defy ANYONE to find a wetback without a drivers license... it's the first fake ID they get, so they can get all the rest of those entitlements, like Social Security

Easy, vettepigeon lives off of social security.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

Holder is a racist tool of the Liberal/Minority Coalition. A few years ago the SCOTUS upheld a similar law and the Justice department then filed a brief supporting the law.

That wouldn't have been W's Justice Department, would it? Talk about racist tools.

 

[KRCummings]

Holder's a joke and Texas is a joke. Neither one of them is a funny joke.

 

[unregistered]

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

You gotta have photo ID to go see Holder talk.

 

[unregistered]

 

[RobDownSouth]

You gotta have photo ID to go see Holder talk.

About that right-wing bullshit about having to "have a photo ID to go see Holder talk"....

False equivalence anyone?