Rick Perry’s Voter ID Law Thrown Out
August 31, 2012 8:24 am
Common sense reigned on Thursday as Federal Judges in the District of Columbia ruled that Rick Perry’s 2011 Texas Voter ID act would disproportionately affect minority voters — specifically Texas’ burgeoning Latino population. (Texas is one of the states required to clear changes in voting procedures with the Justice Department of D.C. Federal Court, a requirement provided by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and drafted in an effort to prevent discriminatory polling practices.)
The three judges hearing the case, brought by the Department of Justice, ruled that the Texas voter ID act is indeed discriminatory.
“The State of Texas enacted a voter ID law that — at least to our knowledge — is the most stringent in the country,” the opinion reads. “That law will almost certainly have retrogressive effect: it imposes strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor, and racial minorities in Texas are disproportionately likely to live in poverty.”
The judges were sure to distinguish the ruling as applicable only to the Texas law, though in clearly alluding to the partisan and even racist motivation behind the law, the Department of Justice and Federal Judges join Attorney General Eric Holder in asserting that the laws seek to instate retrogressive, discriminatory practices.
Governor Rick Perry condemned Eric Holder’s unplanned NAACP Convention criticisms of voter ID laws as equitable to racist “poll taxes,” calling on President Obama to distance himself from Holder’s comments. (Perry felt that the comments were untrue and meant to “incite racial tension.”)
It’s been a bad week for conservative Texas power grabs — Tuesday, the three-judge panel threw out the state’s redistricting plan because they felt that it also attempted to suppress minority votes. Keep this up and Texas could start looking a little purple.
Image from here