August 30th, 2012
12:18 PM ET
11 years ago
BREAKING: Texas voter ID law struck down
(CNN) - A federal appeals court in Washington has struck down the Texas voter ID law which required photos for voters at the polls, saying the law amounts to racial discrimination.
The decision is considered a major victory for the Obama administration and its Democratic allies who had challenged the law.
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@joepub, get up to speed, it is not about the voter ID that is a different issue before the courts, another backstab the Republicans are trying to pull.
What we have here is the tried-and-true method called Gerrymandering. In case they did not teach you this in an American high school, it works like this: you set up the elected boundaries so that the other side has no possible way of getting anyone elected, even if they are 49% of the public, zero representatives in the legislature.
For example you have a town mostly hispanic democrats that by law have enough people in the area to have one representative in the Texas legislature. To prevent the possibility that a democrat will get elected, the Republicans split the town up to be represented by three voting districts. But to do this you want three solid republican districts, that can be hundreds of miles away. You extend those republican districts, typically following the highways ten feet on each side, to get to that little town to be rubbed out. So then you have this little town controlled three different ways by three elected republicans who know they are not going to get any votes from that broken down town, screw them, no opponents will be elected, their kingship secure.
It is illegal, dates to 1812, and the Texas Republicans thought they could get away with an election process crime.
Relating to your concern about voter id, the number of fraudulent individuals voting is pretty small and the methods used for rigging would not be stopped by voter id. Righing computerized voting machines and absentee voting by Alzheimer's patients are much bigger concerns, something republicans are not trying to fix. Also there is a difference between registering to vote, and actually voting. The republican's have been focusing on turning away registered voters by technicalities, and most voters do not know how to demand a provisional ballot.
myviewis- the problem is which IDs are acceptable- in many cases it is not any picture ID, it is a special ID yet to be distributed. The election is how many days away?
This is just GOP voter fraud at work- accept it.
You should show ID to vote. How else can you regulate who walks in and votes? Should random people be able to walk in and use my name to vote?
I don't think so.
I use my ID to buy alcohol, to drive a car, even to buy rated-R movie tickets. It's pretty basic. If you can't prove who you are, you shouldn't be able to vote simply because you could be someone else.
May I humbly recommend that Texas overturn the fed decision by requiring TWO voter photo I.D.s ?
Washington is out of control....the States have authority here per the U.S. Constitution. Read it, and Madison`s Federalist Papers too.
II probably should have read all the comments, since someone may have said something already, but I have always had to provide picture ID to vote. Show the poll worker the id, they check my name and address against the voter registration roll, I get a ballot. Why is this such a bad thing?
da wrote on page 1:
what a travesty. ID required to board a plane, but not to exercise one of the most important duties of a citizen. hideous.
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What is hideous is equating the constitutionally guaranteed *right to vote* with something irrelevant and immaterial.