By Elaine Magliaro
Patrick Svitek of The Texas Tribune reported yesterday that presidential hopeful and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would use her speech today in Houston “to call for expanded early voting across the country and criticize states like Texas for tightening election laws.” He said that Clinton is planning to “propose a national requirement of at least 20 days of in-person early voting in every state…” He added that the Democratic front-runner is also “expected to advocate for early voting on weekends and evenings across the country, all part of an effort to cut down on long lines and generally make it easier to cast a ballot.”
Svitek:
In her remarks, Clinton also will go after Republicans who have backed efforts to make it harder to vote… The critique likely will include Texas, whose voter ID law is considered the toughest in the nation. The measure was signed into law by former Gov. Rick Perry, who is set to launch his second bid for the White House outside Dallas a few hours before Clinton takes the stage in Houston.
According to The Dallas Morning News, the Texas voter ID law “requires voters to provide one of seven kinds of photo ID to cast a ballot. Four are available from the state Department of Public Safety — driver’s licenses, personal IDs, concealed-handgun permits and election identification certificates. Federally issued passports, citizenship certificates and military IDs also are acceptable.”
This may not seem like much of a problem…but it can be a major—if not near impossible—hurdle to overcome for some individuals. Watch the following video and you’ll understand why.
Texas Voter Identification Assistance Project
Under Texas’ new restrictive photo/voter ID law, more than 600,000 Texans now lack sufficient identification to vote in elections, with little to no help from the State of Texas to resolve the problems. The Texas Voter Identification Assistance Project, coordinated by the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit, provided assistance to Texas voters who wished to vote but lacked the newly required identification, and thus were disenfranchised. (Published April 24, 2015)
The Dallas Morning News:
Opponents said the old law required an ID — with or without a photo — such as a voter registration card, a utility bill, a bank statement or a pay stub that identified the voter and the voter’s address. They said that fraud was rare and that incidents of voters showing up at a poll pretending to be someone else were virtually nonexistent. They also complained about the exclusion of some photo IDs, including federal or state employee IDs and college student IDs.
In his article titled 12 reasons Texas’ new voter ID law is racist (AlterNet/Salon), Steven Rosenfeld wrote about the Supreme Court’s ruling that allowed the Texas voter ID law to go into effect last October:
But as Ginsburg’s blistering 7-page dissent made clear, the fight over Texas’s voter ID law is in a class by itself. That’s because a lower federal court held a trial and found that the law’s intent was to discriminate and disenfranchise, calling it a “poll tax,” and then that record was ignored by higher federal appeals courts—including the Supreme Court…
- Hundreds of thousands of Texans will have a hard time getting the ID.The ID law says that Texans can get a state-issued photo ID from police, but only in certain locations. “Those who lack the approved forms of identification may obtain an “election identification certificate” from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), but more than 400,000 eligible voters face round-trip travel times of three hours or more.”
- The trial court found that impact racist and discriminatory.“On an extensive factual record developed in the course of a nine-day trial, the District Court found Senate Bill 14 [the voter ID law] irreconcilable with Section 2 of the [federal] Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it was enacted with a racially discriminatory purpose and would yield a prohibited discriminatory result.”
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Lest we forget…it’s all a part of the conservative movement’s plan:
Paul Weyrich (1980) : ‘I Don’t Want Everybody to Vote’ — The Roots of GOP Voter Suppression
Note: Paul Weyrich is widely regarded as the “founding father of the conservative movement.” He founded ALEC and co-founded the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority, Council for National Policy, and Free Congress Foundation, among others.
SOURCES
In Houston, Clinton to Target Texas’ Voter ID Law (The Texas Tribune)
Court raises tough questions on Texas voter ID law (The Dallas Morning News)
12 reasons Texas’ new voter ID law is racist: Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s fiery 7-page dissent exposes the law for the discriminatory poll tax that it is (Salon/AlterNet)
Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
Texas becomes worse with each passing day. Good for Hillary Clinton!!!!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/03/1390225/-Hillary-Clinton-allies-plan-lawsuits-to-fight-voter-suppression# “Clinton herself will be speaking Thursday at Texas Southern University, a historically black college. Among other things she will be blasting the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 evisceration of the Voting Rights Act and targeting voter suppression moves in some states, including that of her Texas hosts. The Court’s ruling in that case and the unwillingness of Republicans in Congress to repair with amendments the damage it did are all part of various moves in many states to reduce the numbers of African Americans and other people of color who turn out at the polls. Those voters have in the past 50 years been more likely to vote for Democrats.”
Since voting rules are the states’ prerogative, the President only has the bully pulpit and the AG to make changes. Good for HC or she is pandering to those minorities who can vote.
bettykath,
Well, ever since SCOTUS invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act, states like Texas have been working on/passing legislation that will help to suppress voting of certain groups.
*****
Supreme Court Invalidates Key Part of Voting Rights Act
6/25/13
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/supreme-court-ruling.html?_r=0
Excerpt:
The decision will have immediate practical consequences. Texas announced shortly after the decision that a voter identification law that had been blocked would go into effect immediately, and that redistricting maps there would no longer need federal approval. Changes in voting procedures in the places that had been covered by the law, including ones concerning restrictions on early voting, will now be subject only to after-the-fact litigation.
It’s old but it’s still fitting. Hillary needs to get out there and really speak up regarding liberal progressive issues. Women’s issues are still huge, she could hone in on Walker, Wisconsin and the states that are basically making it almost impossible to access abortions. More attention to gay rights issues also. With the SC decision coming this month, she could get some mileage on that.
Supreme Court upholds Texas voter ID law
I would be happy to show my id to be able to vote.
voter id laws will keep everyone honest.
bron,
Did you watch the first video that I posted? If so, it should have given you pause for thought on the subject of Texas’s voter ID law.
” bettykath Good for HC or she is pandering to those minorities who can vote.” Although the Clinton’s certainly do have faults, both of them have always been strong advocates of voting rights.
Hillary Clinton Calls For Automatic, Universal Voter Registration
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/04/hillary-clinton-voting-rights_n_7513858.html
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton in a speech on Thursday called for universal, automatic voter registration, saying every citizen in the country should be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18, unless they opt-out.
Clinton spoke at Texas Southern University in Houston, where she was receiving the Barbara Jordan Public-Private Leadership Award. She also said Republican-led efforts in several states to further regulate voting and voter registration disproportionately harm both underrepresented communities and young people, adding that Republicans need to “stop fear mongering” about the “phantom epidemic” of voter fraud.
“All of these problems with voting just didn’t happen by accident,” she said. She argued that many voting laws were put in place to make it more difficult for some people to vote, and called for a national standard that would require every state in the country to offer at least 20 days of early in-person voting, including keeping polling stations open on weekends and evenings.
Clinton called the county’s voter registration system a “relic from an earlier age,” but said that changing the system would not come easily. The public, advocates, politicians and the court system should all play a role, she said.
“We need a Supreme Court that cares more about protecting the right to vote of a person to vote than the right of a corporation to buy an election,” Clinton said.
HC is probably the most qualified candidate since I have been paying attention, a lot of years. But I stopped voting for dems and reps a long time ago. She’s willing to make deals with devils. Her health care project was done behind closed doors and would have enriched large insurance companies, much like the ACA, with little concern for the small companies. Her comment, ” we came, we saw, he died” [paraphrased] is chilling. All the candidates, HC included, say what they think will get them the votes. I really want Bernie Sanders to do well.
Bettykath,
I hope Bernie does well too!
Elaine:
Some people will not be able to vote, some people cant see. Life sucks some times. The large majority of people will vote who are eligible to vote. Better a handful of disenfranchised voters than a bus full of illegal voters.
Who rented the bus?
bron,
Where have buses full of illegal voters been allowed to vote? Is it just a “handful of disenfranchised voters” who will not be able to vote–or hundreds of thousands in Texas?
I remember back in the early 90’s when Hillary was trying to get a healthcare bill passed (Hillary care if I recall), that was one of the big freakouts was that it would require a national I D card.
bron,
Myth of Voter Fraud
https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/voter-fraud
It is important to protect the integrity of our elections. But we must be careful not to undermine free and fair access to the ballot in the name of preventing voter fraud.
The Brennan Center’s ongoing examination of voter fraud claims reveal that voter fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is nearly non-existent, and much of the problems associated with alleged fraud in elections relates to unintentional mistakes by voters or election administrators. Our report “The Truth About Voter Fraud” reveals most allegations of fraud turn out to be baseless — and that of the few allegations remaining, most reveal election irregularities and other forms of election misconduct.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/supreme-court-texas-voter-id-law-history “n Saturday morning, the Supreme Court ruled that Texas’ harsh voter ID law could remain in effect for the upcoming midterm elections, potentially disenfranchising some 600,000 mostly black and Latino voters. In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that the law may be “purposefully discriminatory” and warned that it “likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.” And Ginsburg noted that Texas’ 2011 law falls in line with the state’s long history of discriminatory voting laws. Here is a look at that history, based on expert testimony by Orville Vernon Burton, a professor of history at Clemson University, and Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison:
1865: Voter intimidation. Beginning with emancipation, African Americans in Texas were regularly denied the right to vote, through intimidation and violence, including lynching.
1895: The first all-white primaries begin. In the mid-1890s, Texas legislators pushed a law requiring political parties to hold primaries and allowing those political parties to set racist qualifications for who could participate.” And the list goes on and on…..
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a35474/hillary-clinton-voting-rights-act/ “Make no mistake. This is a fight worth making and a debate worth having. The Republican party considers its efforts to restrict the franchise an unalloyed triumph. It helped get Greg Abbott elected governor of Texas. Scott Walker never shuts up about the grotesque law that he and his pet legislature enacted in Wisconsin, the state that gave us so many of the mechanisms by which the money power first was struck from our elections. And, in where-the-fck else, Kansas, Governor Sam Brownback may allow his secretary of state, Kris Kobach, the man behind the Papers, Please theory of immigration law, to prosecute “voter fraud” cases that state prosecutors had declared non-starters. Voter suppression is a litmus test on the political Right now, and it is a central pillar of Republican politics general, and it has been ever since Karl Rove used it as the casus belli in his purge of U.S. Attorneys nine years ago. It is a long game they’ve been playing.
As hard as it may be for the likes of Chris Cillizza to understand, there is considerable merit in taking on important issues that do not necessarily poll as well as “Eeek! Moosssslims!” does. The corruption of our politics by the money power, and the new mechanisms enacted to safeguard it, is the fundamental issue of our time because, unless it is reversed, and soon, all of the other issues won’t matter because no real solutions will emerge from the one place where they are supposed to emerge. Ms. Rodham Clinton seems to get this. Good on her for bringing it up.”
The biggest voting fraud are the computers that are easily hacked or are deliberately set up for vote switching. Even in the last mid-term elections the results here suspicious. These computers have been exposed several times but I haven’t heard about them being fixed. btw, these machines are the sole proprietary property of the companies with owners that are staunch Reps.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121974/cnn-poll-rand-paul-not-popular-republican-women?utm_content=buffer6ef94&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer “Why is Paul so unpopular among women? Setting aside what women think about Paul’s personal qualities, which would require pure speculation, consider what sets him apart from all the other candidates vying for the GOP nomination: his highly distinct political philosophy. While not a doctrinaire libertarian, Paul is by far the most libertarian-leaning candidate in the race. And there’s plenty of evidence that the libertarian worldview leaves most women cold, despite the fact that female intellectuals—Ayn Rand, most famously—have been pivotal in creating libertarianism.” Not surprised……….