Thread: Motion Filed Against DOJ Witch Hunt on Texas Voter ID

Motion Filed Against DOJ Witch Hunt on Texas Voter ID

Katie Pavlich | Sep 26, 2013

Voter integrity group True the Vote has filed a motion intervening in a Department of Justice lawsuit against the voter identification law in Texas.

"The Holder Justice Department has made clear its litigation against Texas will serve as a warning that other states should not pursue election integrity measures - True the Vote stands ready to fight their effort to dilute voters' rights," True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said in statement. "Over 80 percent of Americans favor laws changing to require photo voter identification at the polls. When the DOJ makes baseless claims to obscure the integrity of the voting process, we will not stand idly by. If Texas is to be labeled a political prize by the Plaintiffs and their Interveners, attacking election integrity will not be an acceptable strategy."
In August, Attorney General Eric Holder issued a lawsuit to stop a strongly supported voter identification law in Texas after the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act, which resulted in southern states being allowed to change election laws without asking DOJ for permission first. After issuing the lawsuit, Holder argued he would not allow a Supreme Court decision to declare "open season" on voting rights.
"The Plaintiff [DOJ] is attempting to obtain a remedy which this Court does nothave the jurisdiction to grant. This Court does not have the authority to impose statewidemandates on Texas to submit all future state, county and local election law changes to thePlaintiff for approval under Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act," the motion states.
Texas Governor Rick Perry has vowed to do whatever it takes to fight DOJ on this issue.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/09/26/motion-filed-against-doj-witch-hunt-on-texas-voter-id-n1710294




In other words let the Illegals vote

No lessons yet from voter ID law

By CHRIS TOMLINSON, Associated Press | November 10, 2013 | Updated: November 10, 2013 10:34am

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas has enforced its Voter ID law for the first time statewide, but there isn't enough data yet to claim the law was either harmless or an affront to voters' rights.

There were no major problems reported at polling stations during early voting or on Election Day last week. But there were anecdotal reports of people having trouble voting even with one of the seven forms of government-issued photo IDs allowed under the law. For instance one election judge didn't know that a U.S. passport was an acceptable form of ID until a supervisor intervened.

Supporters of the law claim that the turnout proved the law was not impeding voters. Republican Attorney GeneralGreg Abbott said opponents of the voter ID law had "run out of claims" about hardships.

"I haven't ever seen anything that was overhyped as much as some partisan efforts to overhype concerns about this, when in reality, there has been no problems whatsoever," Abbott said last week.

Texas Secretary of State John Steen said the attention surrounding the rollout of the ID law might even have driven more voters to the polls.
However, there is little evidence for either claim.

Out of 13.4 million registered voters, only 1.1 million cast ballots in the 2013 election. That's about 8.5 percent of the electorate and certainly a big jump from 2011 when only 5.4 percent of voters showed up. But 2011 was not a typical year and had extremely low turnout.

In 2009, about 1 million people cast ballots, representing 8.1 percent of the electorate. So 2013 was roughly the same as 2009, when there was no Voter ID law. This year's election also had major statewide initiatives on the ballot, an Astrodome referendum in Harris County and a Houston mayoral race that drove more voters to the polls.

There is no evidence to suggest Voter ID boosted turnout, but there is equally no evidence that Voter ID suppressed turnout.

The Associated Press analyzed data obtained under an open records request and determined that 5.46 percent of Texas registered voters did not have a photo ID on file with the Department of Public Safety. That data varied considerably from county to county, with counties that had a high percentage of minorities or a high poverty rate having a higher proportion of registered voters without a matching DPS ID card.

During the 2013 election, though, there was no clear correlation between voter turnout and the percentage of voters without a corresponding ID card at the county level.

Of the 22 Texas counties with more than 100,000 residents, 10 counties had a higher than average proportion of voters without a matching DPS ID card. But voter turnout was lower in only two of those counties when compared to 2009. Turnout was higher in the other eight.

The Texas secretary of state's office, responsible for tallying statewide votes, also reported only 2,354 provisional ballots, an indicator of the number of people who arrived at the polls without an authorized ID. That's only 0.2 percent of the voters who showed up.

These statistics, though, don't necessarily mean the Voter ID law did not discourage some voters from going to the polls at all. Only the most committed voter turns out for referendums on constitutional amendments, and drawing a conclusion based on 8.5 percent of voters at the county level would be statistically unsound.

Nevertheless, experts will pour over precinct-level voter data to look for evidence the law disproportionately impacted minorities, which would be grounds for a federal judge to overturn it as unconstitutional.
The Justice Department, civil rights groups and U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey have filed a federal lawsuit to get the law thrown out and the judge is trying to set a schedule this week. Veasey's attorneys want a trial before the general election in November 2014, but his allies want one afterward so they can use voter data from that election to bolster their case.

The judge has not decided a course of action, while Abbott has asked for the case to be thrown out.

In the meantime, neither side should be rushing to conclusions about the law based on the data so far.

___http://www.chron.com/news/texas/arti...id=rrhoustontx

Originally Posted by Newmexican

That data varied considerably from county to county, with counties that had a high percentage of minorities or a high poverty rate having a higher proportion of registered voters without a matching DPS ID card.

That might be an argument for increasing the publicity for ID cards, but untimately people cannot be forced to get them - and ultimately it is people's responsibility to get a required card. IMO it's no different from getting a driver's license, if people want to drive on public roads.
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While Voter ID is great in a way a major issue that is even bigger is absentee ballots. Absentee ballots are still the #1 form of fraud with voter fraud and those require nothing. Need a way to fix the absentee ballot issue before we can really say we are working on handling the issue.