Supreme Court Blocks GOP Voter Disenfranchisement Law

This blog has repeatedly noted that part of the Republican Party's  playbook is to disenfranchise as many minority voters as possible so that the shrinking GOP base can still manage to cast a majority of votes.   In state after state, GOP controlled legislatures have passed strict voter ID laws under the guise of preventing nonexistent voter fraud.  This evening, the U. S. Supreme Court blocked the GOP passed bill in Wisconsin.  Similarly, a federal court in Texas has blocked that state's GOP enacted draconian voter ID law.  First these highlights from the Washington Post:

The Supreme Court on Thursday stopped officials in Wisconsin from requiring voters there to provide photo identification before casting their ballots in the coming election.

Three of the court’s more conservative members dissented, saying they would have allowed officials to require identification.

The requirement, one of the strictest in the nation, is part of a state law enacted in 2011 but mostly blocked by various courts in the interim. A federal trial judge had blocked it, saying it would “deter or prevent a substantial number of the 300,000-plus registered voters who lack ID from voting,” disproportionately affecting black and Hispanic voters.

In Texas, the Houston Chronicle looks at the breaking news in that state.  Here are excerpts:

A federal judge on Thursday blocked Texas from enforcing voter ID requirements just weeks ahead of the November elections, knocking down a law that the U.S. Justice Department condemned in court as the state's latest means of suppressing minority turnout.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi is a defeat for Republican-backed photo ID measures that have swept across the U.S. in recent years and mostly been upheld in court. However, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday night blocked Wisconsin from implementing a law requiring voters to present photo IDs.

Gonzales Ramos, an appointee of President Barack Obama, never signaled during a two-week trial in September that she intended to rule on the Texas law — rebuked as the toughest of its kind in the U.S. — before Election Day. But the timing could spare an estimated 13.6 million registered Texas voters from needing one of seven kinds of photos identification to cast a ballot.

The Justice Department says more than 600,000 of those voters, mostly blacks and Hispanics, currently lack any eligible ID to vote.

Rather than change its platform to meet the views and needs of a changing population, the GOP prefers to continue to prostitute itself to Christofascists and white supremacists.   Once again, I find myself ashamed to have ever been a Republican.  Today's GOP is very, very ugly.