Just how tough are new voter identification requirements in Texas? Apparently tough enough that former U.S. House speaker Jim Wright reportedly was denied a voter ID card on Saturday.
"Nobody was ugly to us, but they insisted that they wouldn't give me an ID," Wright, a Democrat who resigned from Congress in 1989, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in a story about his experience at a Texas Department of Public Safety office.
The 90-year-old told the newspaper he realized last week that he didn't have a valid ID to vote in Tuesday's elections. He was refused a voter ID card because his driver's license expired in 2010 and his faculty identification from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, where he teaches, doesn't meet requirements under the state law enacted in 2011.
Well look at that, in their attempt to reduce the number of voters for Wendy Davis they have stopped an elderly white guy as well.
They disenfranchise enough to THEM and it will be the republicans who will find their voter ranks trimmed down to the bone.
And by the way this is, once again, a solution without a legitimate problem.
This from Politifact who looked into voter fraud in Texas:
Abbott spokeswoman Lauren Bean emailed us records showing that from August 2002 through September 2012, the office received 616 allegations of election-code violations and recorded 78 election-code prosecutions.
By our count, 46 of the prosecutions ended with a conviction, guilty plea, no-contest plea or guilty plea as part of deferred adjudication. Of those, 18 cases appeared to involve fraud committed by individual voters: 12 cases with ineligible voters, five cases of voter impersonation and one case of voting more than once.
So, by our reading of the attorney general’s records, 18 instances of voter fraud have been confirmed in Texas since 2002.
18 instances of somebody voting using somebody else's name in ten years.
And THAT was enough of a reason to disenfranchise thousands of potential voters, and one former Speaker of the House?
Gregg Abbott himself, got caught by this very same law and had to sign a affidavit saying he is who he is. LOL
ReplyDeleteThey probably have special exemptions for white Republican men. Why do I feel I may not be joking?
ReplyDeleteThe former Speaker is a Democrat so the law is working exactly as it was intended to work.
ReplyDelete"And THAT was enough of a reason to disenfranchise thousands of potential voters, and one former Speaker of the House?"
ReplyDeleteYep! Especially since it means thousands of females can't vote to help Wendy!
I'm hoping that the Justice Department will slam Texas for this and snub their noses at the SCOTUS ruling with an "I told you so!" comment.
Right Wing ideologues are not very good at anticipating unintended consequences. I'm beginning to wonder if their attempts in Texas to restrict voter rights may not come back to bite them in the butt.
ReplyDeleteThe elderly tend to vote more often for Republican candidates; rural white folks tend to vote more often for Republican candidates; low information voters and fundamentalists -- of which there are many -- also go for Republican candidates.
If it is more difficult for people to vote, seems like these are the demographics which will be most discouraged from jumping through all the new hoops.
why the elderly continuously tend to vote against their interests and vote republican is beyond me.
Deletehowever, I recently sat my grandmother down and explained to her that this isn't HER Republican Party that she and my late grandfather had voted for in the past.
while I had gone over the current republican parties take over by the tea party, and their love affair with corporations, it was their hatred for equality for women and the gay community that made her switch parties.
Don't forget Judge Sandra Watts: "A Texas district judge who has been voting for the past five decades was almost barred from the polls Tuesday"
ReplyDeletehttp://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/10/23/2821651/texas-judge-voter/
Also: "The judge who upheld Voter ID Laws has had a change of heart."
http://freakoutnation.com/2013/10/15/the-judge-who-framed-voter-id-laws-as-constitutional-now-says-it-disenfranchises-voters/
Tx Senator Wendy Davis added the amendment to the law that allowed a voter to sign an affidavit if the names did not match "enough". Because of this affidavit, Tx Atty General Greg Abbott was allowed to vote the other day when his Voter ID did not match his driver's license. Read that again: IF NOT FOR WENDY DAVIS, the woman he is running against for Governor in 2014, Greg Abbott would not have been allowed to vote. Ironic, huh?
ReplyDeleteRead this/add GA to voter problems courtesy of GOP:
ReplyDeleteVoting Rights At Risk in GA
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/voting-rights-at-risk-in-georgia-20131104
via @RollingStone
PMom_GA