Justice Department Blocks GOP Voter ID Law in Texas - Is Virginia Next?

Besides striving to humiliate women and force them to undergo invasive ultrasounds, Republicans in Texas and Virginia have waged a war to suppress minority voter turn out by imposing ID restrictions that could disenfranchise thousands of likely Democratic leaning voters. Particular targets of the GOP plans are blacks and Hispanics. Fortunately, for now the Justice Department has intervened and blocked implementation of the Texas law. Some speculate that Virginia's law could meet a similar fate. The Washington Post looks ate the situation and here are highlights:

The Obama administration on Monday blocked a new law in Texas that requires voters to show a photo ID, drawing fierce criticism from Republicans who say the move was aimed at boosting President Obama’s reelection prospects. The Justice Department said that the law disproportionately harms Hispanic voters.

“Even using the data most favorable to the state, Hispanics disproportionately lack either a driver’s license or a personal identification card,” Thomas Perez, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, wrote in a letter to Keith Ingram, director of elections for the Texas secretary of state.

The action follows a similar move in late December to block a voter ID law in South Carolina that federal officials said adversely affects black voters.

The challenges are part of an escalating national legal battle over voter ID laws that has become more intense because it is an election year. Eight states passed voter ID laws last year, and critics say the new statutes could hurt turnout among minority voters and others, many of whom helped elect Obama in 2008. But supporters of the measures — seven of which were signed by Republican governors and one by an independent — say they are needed to combat voter fraud.

Blocking the voter ID laws represents the first time the government has rejected such statutes in nearly 20 years and is in line with efforts by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to make the enforcement of civil rights a centerpiece of his tenure.

“The reality is that — in jurisdictions across the country — both overt and subtle forms of discrimination remain all too common and have not yet been relegated to the pages of history,” Holder said in a recent speech.

The Justice Department has the power to block the South Carolina and Texas laws under Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which requires 16 states or parts of states with a history of discrimination to receive federal approval before changing their voting laws. The states must prove to the federal government that the new statutes would not discriminate against minority voters.

The Texas law requires voters to present one of the following documents: a state-issued driver’s license or identification card, a military photo ID, a passport, a U.S. citizenship certificate with a photo, or a concealed-carry handgun license.

“Texas’s voter ID law would prevent countless Latinos, African Americans, elderly citizens and others from casting their ballot,” said Katie O’Connor, a staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project.

One has to wonder when the GOP will devise a means to block gays from voting. They certainly seek to keep us third or fourth class citizens in every other way possible. Blocking us from voting would be a logical extension of the party's anti-gay animus.