Voter IDs - and the GOP - on Trial

Even though all the data shows that voter fraud is rare, around the country Republican controlled state legislatures have passed voter ID laws which in the last analysis have but one goal: minimize the minority vote since it is assumed that minorities will vote for Democrats.  The demagogues in the GOP continue to nonetheless make outrageous and bombastic claims about voter fraud since for the right, truth and honest mean nothing - even as they demagogues wrap themselves in religiosity.  A lawsuit in Texas is focusing on that state's thinly veiled law aimed at keeping Hispanic voters from the polls.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at the case and the lows the GOP will stoop to in an effort to win.  Here are excerpts:

Representative Trey Martinez Fischer, the chairman of the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus in the Texas House of Representatives, flew to Washington this week to persuade a panel of federal judges to invalidate a requirement that voters must have an ID card. His trip was less arduous than the one some residents would have to endure to get a government-issued photo ID. 

“In West Texas, some people would have a 200-mile round-trip drive” to the nearest state office to get a card, he testified, according to The Dallas Morning News. More than a quarter of the state’s counties don’t even have an office to get a driver’s license or voter card. Lines at the San Antonio motor vehicles offices are often more than two hours long, he said. 

Texas is one of 10 Republican-controlled states that have imposed a government ID requirement to vote, purportedly to reduce fraud but actually to dissuade poor and minority voters who tend to vote Democratic.

 

Texas is  . . . . .  is covered by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which allows the Justice Department to disapprove of any change in voting procedures in areas with a history of discrimination.  That’s exactly what the department did in March, saying the law imposes a huge disadvantage on Hispanic voters, who lack a government ID, like a driver’s license or gun permit, at a far higher rate than the general population. Texas sued, and a trial began Monday. 

Those defending Texas’ law told the judges that “only” 168,000 eligible voters in Texas lack a government-issued ID, but federal officials said the number is actually closer to 1.4 million, mostly Hispanic and black voters. Texas, of course, was unable to demonstrate any level of voter fraud that would justify the law, pointing only to five prosecutions for voter impersonation.

The same effect is being seen in other states. In Pennsylvania, 758,000 registered voters lack ID cards and could be turned away at the polls in November. 

Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. said Tuesday that 25 percent of black citizens lack an ID card, compared with 8 percent of white citizens. These requirements, he said, are the modern equivalent of a poll tax. Of course, states aren’t allowed to charge for a card, but he is correct that using this tactic to erect barriers to participation harks back to Jim Crow efforts. And the stakes are no less high because Texas is expected to ask the Supreme Court to strike down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act — the provision that allows the federal government to preapprove changes in voting procedure — if the three-judge panel rules against its voter-ID requirement.  People died to achieve that federal law, but 47 years later, the discrimination has not disappeared.

This is yet another example of why in good conscience, I can't be a Republican.  And what's striking is that as the Christofascists have come to control the GOP there is a direct correlation with the Party's dishonesty, racism and  contempt for average American, not to mention minorities.  I'm sure if they could figure out a way to do it, the Virginia GOP would seek to keep LGBT citizens from voting since we disproportionately vote Democrat.  As a discussed with a black woman yesterday at the Obama event, for a gay to vote for today's GOP would be like her voting for a candidate who was active in the KKK.