Patterico's Pontifications

10/18/2014

U.S. Supreme Court Allows Texas Voter I.D. Law In Upcoming Midterm Elections

Filed under: General — Dana @ 1:45 pm



[guest post by Dana]

The U.S. Supreme Court this morning decided that Texas can continue enforcing its controversial voter identification law for the upcoming Nov. 4 midterm elections. This in spite of challenges by the U.S. Dept. of Justice. There was no explanation of the ruling provided from the court’s majority. Dissenting were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Writing a scathing dissent, Justice Ginsburg opined:

The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.

Last week, President Obama appointee U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos ruled that the law would discourage and deter minority voters, the majority of whom are black and Hispanic, as well as referring to it as an unconstitutional poll tax. Justice Ginsburg continued the line of thought:

The potential magnitude of racially discriminatory voter disenfranchisement counseled hesitation before disturbing the District Court’s findings and final judgment. Senate Bill 14 may prevent more than 600,000 registered Texas voters (about 4.5% of all registered voters) from voting in person for lack of compliant identification. A sharply disproportionate percentage of those voters are African-American or Hispanic.

(As a reminder, Texas allows for seven forms of acceptable identification. Also, if voting by mail, one does not have to submit a photo ID.)

–Dana

68 Responses to “U.S. Supreme Court Allows Texas Voter I.D. Law In Upcoming Midterm Elections”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  2. translated into english “How is our party supposed to win if they can’t cheat?”

    how the hell do these people get by everything else in life that requires an ID?

    utter and complete BS.

    redc1c4 (a6e73d)

  3. This topic makes leftist lose their peanut sized minds.

    JD (a7659b)

  4. the narrative is all that matters, JD.

    narciso (ee1f88)

  5. Can we please put an end to ‘early voting’? It’s the absentee ballots that are the serious problem. Limit their use to soldiers, diplomats and the like, college students, and shut ins, and require people to apply for them annually, with a photocopy of their driver’s license or passport. (And require they be mailed out sixty days in advance and counted at the same time the in-person ballots are counted). While we’re at it, can we require the use of paper ballots? Not every innovation in digital technology needs to be adopted, and to use touch screens and the like is to beg for trouble.

    One other innovation that’s absolutely necessary is to cross check voter rolls against lists of convicts. Another is to purge the voter rolls at least quadrennially, removing people who have not cast a ballot in that time.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  6. By this logic bus fares are a poll tax.

    Kevin M (b357ee)

  7. Do these liberals think black people are idiots? If you can waive the coost of IDs for the poor, what is the problem?

    OmegaPaladin (f4a293)

  8. Elgibility to vote by mail in Texas is limited, Art Deco:

    To be eligible to vote early by mail in Texas, you must:

    be 65 years or older;
    be disabled;
    be out of the county on election day and during the period for early voting by personal appearance; or
    be confined in jail, but otherwise eligible.

    I guess someone can claim they will be gone on voting day and during the early voting period, but we have generous early voting periods in Texas. Even with the disruption from the lawsuits, we will still have about 2 weeks of early voting and it’s very popular. About 30% of Texas votes were cast early in 1994, while almost 70% were in 2008.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  9. I’m sorry. Here’s the link for the early voting information and statistics in Texas. My linking skills have been deficient recently.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  10. I agree with Mr Deco regarding early voting, but for a different reason. Early voting effectively alters the constitutionally set voting day into a voting month, confuses the campaign, makes the discussion of the issues difficult and to some moot, and increases the cost and frequency of advertising (which now has to take place over a longer period).

    If you must have early voting, why is a week not long enough? Not everyone is a soldier stationed overseas, and even then this is not 1942; the means exist to get ballots to soldiers and back electronically.

    Kevin M (b357ee)

  11. alters the constitutionally set voting day into a voting month

    I don’t think the federal constitution mandates a specific day, though state constitutions might. I believe that states used to hold ballots at various times in November but the practice of the states congealed in the 1850s to having it on the earliest market day in November and this was later buttressed by federal statutory law. One thing we might do is replace the 1st Tuesday after the 1st Monday in November with the 1st Saturday in November, as the practice of having Tuesday market days has disappeared in the last 160 years.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  12. Because I’ll be seeing the U.S.A. in my Honda on voting day, Kevin M.
    Thats why!!!

    mg (31009b)

  13. With very few exceptions I believe we should only vote in person. It’s that important. How many people help Granma and Granps with their early ballot, I wonder?

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  14. utter and complete BS.

    The judiciary have been begging to be dealt with very crudely for some time, along with the plaintiff’s attorneys who instigate these inane suits.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

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  16. fifteen poasts is and we has spam…

    is that a record?

    redc1c4 (2b3c9e)

  17. as I recall Cloward and Piven were at the Motor Voter signing ceremony;

    http://newsbusters.org/blogs/clay-waters/2014/10/18/whats-matter-kansas-new-york-times-says-its-kris-kobach-villain

    narciso (ee1f88)

  18. Texas needs more anarcho-libertarians. Voter ID laws don’t get passed when you have enough anarcho-libertarians.

    nk (dbc370)

  19. America being so fabulously incompetent and corrupt anything that lends confidence in the integrity of a public institution is a huge win

    happyfeet (532d1f)

  20. Just being born is a poll tax! It costs!

    Dan (00fc90)

  21. How is it that Mozambique, with a per capita GDP of $ 435 and an illiteracy rate of 48%, has just held an election requiring photo ID for its electorate, but so many on the left baulk when similar requirements are legislated in the US.

    Charlotte (6e3bfc)

  22. If you must have early voting, why is a week not long enough? Not everyone is a soldier stationed overseas, and even then this is not 1942; the means exist to get ballots to soldiers and back electronically.
    Kevin M (b357ee) — 10/18/2014 @ 3:16 pm

    I seem to recall that in 2008 and 2012 several states under Democrat administrations found ways to delay the delivery of ballots to military members stationed overseas and then not counting them because they were not returned in time to meet the state deadline. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

    in_awe (7c859a)

  23. enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law,

    It should be beneath the dignity of a Supreme Court justice to use inflammatory race-baiting rhetoric.
    I mean, she could say she thinks the effect of the law does more harm than good without saying that people who want to insure the results of an election are racists.
    Have members of SCOTUS always been this way and I just never paid attention before (I mean, as before the Planned Parenthood counsel made it there)?

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  24. Ginzburg is Carter legacy. Carter did not appoint any Supreme Court justices, but he appointed both Ginzburg and Breyer to stepping-stone Court of Appeals seats. “The evil that men do lives after them.”

    nk (dbc370)

  25. I’m more perplexed how we got six Catholics and three Jews. Cotton Mather must be spinning like a pinwheel.

    nk (dbc370)

  26. Make that 6 “Catholics”, as I’m not sure how many of them are Catholics, IYKWIM.
    Not by my criteria, but by the established Doctrine of the Catholic Church.

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  27. The potential magnitude of racially discriminatory voter disenfranchisement counseled hesitation before disturbing the District Court’s findings and final judgment. Senate Bill 14 may prevent more than 600,000 registered Texas voters (about 4.5% of all registered voters) from voting in person for lack of compliant identification.

    Except on one of the DFW news stations a leading critic of the new ID law, who is working to have it thrown out, gave the game away. She gave an interview and said she told her constituents that they “can leave their ID in their pocket.”

    It is not a burden to get an ID to vote or anything else. It is not a “poll tax.” Even the critics of the law know their backers have IDs; they just don’t want to show them. The whole point, as this critic of voter ID admitted, is to make sure nobody knows who is voting. The point is to corrupt elections.

    I wish I had the audio.

    Steve57 (4d34f4)

  28. Steve57:

    I haven’t seen that report, but as a Texan living in Texas I can tell you that this is not really much of a story in Texas. Ebola has pretty much drowned out everything else unless you are a lying leftist.

    Even before the the most recent law, we had to show either our registration card or state ID to vote. Besides, everyone knows that all election officials in Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin and the Rio Grande Valley are corrupt and the only reason for the lawsuit is to cheat.

    It’s the best GOTV the right has in the state. All of the conservative suburbs and rural areas know they have to vote to stop the urban left. Getting the urban voters to actually cast ballots is difficult and expensive. Those votes cost a lot of money.

    And, yes, by urban I mean minority. I condemn myself.

    Seriously, though, it is the truth. The Democrat Party spends millions in Texas to “help” people vote. The whole point of the opposition to the voter ID law is to save money for more competitive races in other red states. This is as true now as it was when LBJ was first elected to the Senate.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  29. Not near restrictive enough. Voting should require affirmative proof of citizenship.

    ErisGuy (76f8a7)

  30. This whole argument is just fucking beyond retarded.

    Like you can shit in a public restroom without a fucking picture ID any more.

    The idea that any legitimate voter can’t show ID is just beyond retarded in every possible way.

    Sorry, I usually try to ameliorate strong language, but this shit…. fuckin’ A

    IGotBupkis, "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses." (225d0d)

  31. Ginsburg is rabidly partisan and too stupid to be taken seriously. She’s an embarrassment to the Court and should never have been confirmed. Those same observations apply to Sotomayor and Kagan as well – as their records conclusively demonstrate.

    ropelight (ac1f49)

  32. Obviously, the DNC should just be allowed to fill out a ballot for any potential voter who fails to show at the polls. Not allowing this would be discriminatory against those who couldn’t make it. The GOP are such bullies!

    Jim C (bf5f98)

  33. Well, if the standard is the “potential for discrimination,” why don’t we just kill all the white people until we get an exact number of each race represented in society? That should take care of any potential electoral gains because of racism.

    Ludicrous.

    Patricia (5fc097)

  34. The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law

    No it isn’t Ginsberg, you stupid bit5h. The greatest threat to public confidence in elections is having a system which not only allows but encourages fraud. Any idiot knows how easy it is to get ID. And any idiot knows how easy it is to “stuff the ballot box” with illegal aliens, dead people and multiple ballots if there’s nobody checking ID. That’s the simple truth and the only people who don’t want a secure vote are people who want to or who are cheating!

    why don’t we just kill all the white people

    Please Patricia, don’t give them any more ideas. They’re already trying to shut up the clergy.

    Hoagie (4dfb34)

  35. Dissenting were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

    Really?

    Amazing. I never would have guessed…

    J.P. (cc46f4)

  36. 穆帅曾经暗示,是他选择抛却路易斯,将其卖给年夜巴黎。路易斯反驳了这一说法,他暗示切尔西曾经为其开出新合同,是他选择转会年夜巴&#40

    ?? (717efa)

  37. i would agree with the sentiment expressed in #, but i lack the diplomatic restraint and tact my fellow commenter displayed…

    what he said. 😎

    redc1c4 (cf3b04)

  38. #30…

    i SWEAR i edited it!

    redc1c4 (cf3b04)

  39. How do all those poor Blacks and Hispanics purchase alcohol and cigarettes without ID?

    PRM (94601a)

  40. 7. OmegaPaladin (f4a293) — 10/18/2014 @ 3:10 pm

    If you can waive the coost of IDs for the poor, what is the problem?

    For one thing, the states are too cheap to ACTUALLY DO IT.

    They charge some minimal fees, don’t advertise the waivers, and it costs trouble and time and money to get the underlying documents.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  41. You don’t need ID for cigarettes and alcohol if you look old enough.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  42. I was with my 74-year-old mom over the weekend. She does not drive and has an expired state ID. This kind of bummed me out regarding my stance on this issue. Then again, when she visits her regular polling place, they would recognize her and probably allow her to vote. Unless there were election judges tasked with enforcing the voter ID law. Hmm.

    carlitos (c24ed5)

  43. Kevin M (b357ee) — 10/18/2014 @ 3:16 pm

    and even then this is not 1942; the means exist to get ballots to soldiers and back electronically

    But then you run into issues of the secret ballot, and voter impersonation, which is much easier to do with an absentee ballot than in person, and even easier with a computer.

    Actually all these things can be handled, They just require a little money, and thinking. You could verify everything with a soignature, or typing – every person has a typing signature, at least on the same keybaord.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  44. Or, she could get it renewed.

    JD (46826b)

  45. 11. It’s the Presidential electors who have to all vote on the same day. the rest may be established merely by federal law.

    In Louisiana and Georgia Senate runoffs this year might take place past election day.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  46. It’s not a problem is they are willing to use the same old picture.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  47. JD – I know, but she’s much more likely not to bother. She doesn’t travel, and doesn’t really need ID for anything else. When she goes to the doctor or the hospital, they accept her expired ID. From what she said, she’d probably not bother to vote vs. renewing the thing if it were necessary.

    I know, it’s only $20, but she doesn’t drive a car either, so why make a special trip.

    Admittedly, this is a sample size of n=1, but it made me think twice.

    carlitos (c24ed5)

  48. Carlitos, I am an election judfge in Houston and I can tell you I don’t care if I have gone to church with you all my life, if you don’t have the required documentation, you cannot vote in my precinct.

    Rorschach (61bf43)

  49. That was my point about voter ID laws. Those on the margins of society via age, income, whatever, are less likely to have current ID.

    carlitos (c24ed5)

  50. Has the premise of voter ID suppresses turnout proven to be true anywhere?

    JD (46826b)

  51. I don’t know. I’ve been on both sides of it. When Mrs. carlito and I were judges we had folks trying to vote that clearly weren’t registered. On the other hand, this thing with my mom bugs me.

    carlitos (c24ed5)

  52. JD, in the last election we had a record turnout and shockingly few people (under a dozen I believe if memory serves)who wished to take advantage of the provisional vote loophole for those who did not have ID in Harris County.

    Rorschach (61bf43)

  53. And as far as the cost of the ID goes, in texas, the cost of an ID for voting purposes is zero.

    Rorschach (61bf43)

  54. Carlitos – is there voter ID law in Chicago and IL?

    JD (46826b)

  55. They charge some minimal fees, don’t advertise the waivers, and it costs trouble and time and money to get the underlying documents.

    My goodness, I would hate to force the permanently aggrieved class any costs or trouble, time and money. Those things are just for us muttonheads that play by the rules. Did it ever dawn on you that we may be far better off if these idiots didn’t vote?

    “You don’t need ID for cigarettes and alcohol if you look old enough.” But you do need it if you don’t look old enough. So what?

    Hoagie (4dfb34)

  56. Carlitos – is there voter ID law in Chicago and IL?

    JD (46826b) — 10/20/2014 @ 1:04 pm

    No, they just compare your signature. The problems we had as election judges was when people clearly lived in the wrong precinct or ward, or hadn’t registered, and another voter wanted to “vouch” for them.

    carlitos (c24ed5)

  57. SF:

    They charge some minimal fees, don’t advertise the waivers, and it costs trouble and time and money to get the underlying documents.

    55. Hoagie (4dfb34) — 10/20/2014 @ 1:36 pm

    My goodness, I would hate to force the permanently aggrieved class any costs or trouble, time and money.

    This is to vote. There’s not supposed to be any fee for it. This is exactly the grounds on which some states may lose their cases.

    Now, some people might not have it already, especially the elderly. Another problem is if this is something not used daily, or is stolen or lost.

    Those things are just for us muttonheads that play by the rules.

    I didn’t know there was a rule everyone had to have a car, or drive.

    Did it ever dawn on you that we may be far better off if these idiots didn’t vote?

    I;m sure it occured to the Republican legislatures that passed these bills.

    Although actually they may lose more Republican votes than Democratic ones – the Republican ones, one by one; the Democratic ones in clumps.

    There’s lots of people who don’t make particularly good voters.

    “You don’t need ID for cigarettes and alcohol if you look old enough.” But you do need it if you don’t look old enough.

    So what?

    So, it’s not an example of how much ID might be needed.

    Now, maybe young people who smoke or buy beer, may be sure to get ID.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  58. Rorschach (61bf43) — 10/20/2014 @ 12:50 pm

    shockingly few people (under a dozen I believe if memory serves)who wished to take advantage of the provisional vote loophole for those who did not have ID in Harris County.

    Someone really has to plan things out to take advantage of that, or know taht they can. Maybe some people with expiring ID could do that.

    But they probably have to show that they are poor etc.

    Anyone that integrated into society probably already got one for another reason.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  59. 50. JD (46826b) — 10/20/2014 @ 12:27 pm

    Has the premise of voter ID suppresses turnout proven to be true anywhere?

    It probably does in more rural, more Republican counties.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  60. “No, they just compare your signature. The problems we had as election judges was when people clearly lived in the wrong precinct or ward, or hadn’t registered, and another voter wanted to “vouch” for them.”

    I don’t see how that is a problem. There are rules in place.

    JD (46826b)

  61. Sammy – I didn’t ask what you think, or what probably might be. I asked if it had been borne out

    JD (46826b)

  62. 61. I don’t know. Republican turnoput was down in 2012 but I don’t think anyone has investigated this angle.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

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  64. Republican turnoput was down in 2012 but I don’t think anyone has investigated this angle.

    If voter ID cards lowered Republican turnout then the Democrats would be for voter ID’s not against. Hell, they’d be giving them away on street corners.

    BTW, I never stated “I didn’t know there was a rule everyone had to have a car, or drive” and that’s just ridiculous. Being snarky doesn’t make one right. Anyone who wants an ID can get an ID and if it was law the democrap party would supply them for free.

    Hoagie (4dfb34)

  65. In the 35th Ward, I give them my voter registration card only for the correct spelling of my name, and they match my signature like carlitos said. I have always wondered how that other guy, right after me in the book, with the same name except for one missing letter, votes.

    nk (dbc370)

  66. Good Lord, when will that bitty die or retire??? AT this point I hope she hangs on two more years, but even if tomorrow I won’t shed a tear for her legal departure, even if I wish her well in the afterlife- And neither Sotomayor nor Kagan have had an original thought in decades? Ever..?

    NeoCon_1 (d30da7)

  67. No, there is no vote fraud. But this is a bit raw even for Cook County: http://eagnews.org/chicagoland-voting-machine-casts-candidates-vote-for-his-dem-opponent-2/

    nk (dbc370)

  68. Did you see this? Justice Ginsburg had some boo boos in her dissent that have been changed-edited-removed. Apparently this type of SCOTUS correction does happen occasionally but not often.

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10/22/rare-correction-made-in-justice-ginsburgs-dissent-on-texas-voter-id-law/

    elissa (f2fc00)


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