The U.S. Fifth Circuit declared Texas’s strict voter ID law discriminatory yesterday. The court rejected a lower court ruling that the requirement to present one of seven state-approved forms of ID to vote constitutes a poll tax, but it held that the voter ID law nonetheless discriminates against minorities, since minorities are far less likely to have the required IDs.
Voter ID laws are among the tools Republicans have used to disenfranchise an increasingly nonwhite and non-Republican electorate. Republicans use inflated claims about voter fraud to cover the racial bias of voter ID laws. In this case, the Fifth Circuit found that the district court’s evidence for Texas’s discriminatory intent was “infirm” and remanded the case for further discussion of that point.
This ruling probably does not bear on South Dakota’s voter ID law, SDCL 12-18-6.1. We aren’t as strict as Texas: South Dakota voters can sign an affidavit in lieu of presenting ID (and I do this every time, on principle and as a friendly reminder to my election officials of the complexity of South Dakota election law). The Texas voter ID law allows voters without ID to sign an affidavit as well, but Texas affidaviteers have to come back to the county registrar and show an ID within six days for their ballot to be counted. South Dakota’s affidaviteers don’t need to return with ID (at least they’ve never asked me to do so, and they must have counted my ballots, since I haven’t been purged from the rolls for not voting); a signature is as good as a driver’s license.
The affidavit exception saves South Dakota’s voter ID law from discriminating only if people know about it. That means that our election workers need to make that legal option clear to anyone who comes to the polls without ID. Portraying ID as an absolute requirement could be read as discriminatory voter suppression akin to the now=court-hobbled strict Texas voter ID law.
I’ll bet that in Texas those who sign the affidavit are given a provisional ballot that is put in an envelope and set aside to be counted later, if the person signing it shows up with an ID. Here in SD the ballots of affidavit signers are are not segregated but rather go in the regular ballot box with no way to identify which ones are the ballots of affidavit signers.
Neither law does anything to prevent voter fraud, at least the SD law doesn’t go to the extremes of the Texas law in suppressing voter involvement.
during each vote, i insist on the affidavit as an announced protest to new republican voter i.d. restriction. vote attendants are often not too happy w/the “attitude”
my question-how else do republicans use and who do they sell my privacy data too?
Some Republicans are sure that there is massive election fraud because they lose elections. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is absolutely positive there is massive fraud and he has helped write many of the ALEC voter ID model laws. He has claimed that the counties don’t pursue voter fraud but the county prosecutors have not had a case referred to them for investigation and action. He now has the authority to prosecute voter fraud in Kansas but has yet to find a case.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/09/1400559/-SoS-Kobach-R-KS-Begins-Quest-To-Prosecute-Voter-Fraud-Hopes-Kansans-Help-Him-Find-It#
http://www.thenation.com/article/voter-fraud-witch-hunt-kansas/
I wonder how may he will try to prosecute only to have the cases dismissed by the court or the defendant acquitted.
Kansas is broke. They are facing a teacher shortage because many teachers resigned and went to Missouri where teachers are paid more and get more respect.
Texas AG faces three counts of felony securities fraud and is now facing contempt of court for violating a court order about same sex marriage. http://www.statesman.com/news/news/in-new-legal-woe-paxton-faces-contempt-of-court/nnDWN/
Can Jackley be next in line for contempt? Life is geyying better as wingnuts get the takedown.
Doonesbury resurrected a big old crow named Jim soon after these Republican/Koch voter suppression laws began to surface. I haven’t seen him for awhile. Of course new Doonesbury comics only appear on Sundays.
Doonesbury’s Jim Crow wears a fedora set at a jaunty angle, smokes a big phallic cigar, smirks like GWB, and looooooves him some voter suppression!
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/tag/jim-crow-laws/
They should have to post a sign at the polls and media notices noting the fact one doesn’t need an ID. I’ve never shown my ID. The second year they told me I couldn’t vote and I said: okay, and turned to leave. I didn’t make it to the door before they thought better of it. I was going to call the Auditor’s office when I got home. Since then, they have argued that my beliefs are silly and wrong, and are visibly shaken by my refusal, but the first year of the law, the Argus reported there were operatives from Texas who were calling Native sounding names in the Sioux Falls phone book and telling people that law enforcement was checking ID’s at the polls. I am hoping for an election with nothing I care about so I can refuse the affidavit to see what they do. When I fill them out, I write at the top: “Voter ID is racist and classist”.
We do have voter fraud and it is the Diebold machines that do the counting.
Barry, they did that to you? Wow! Do you think that was just ignorance on the election workers’ part?
Signs and media notices would be a good idea. So would firing Diebold.
Barry is absolutely right about the source of substantial voter fraud:
“We do have voter fraud and it is the Diebold machines that do the counting.”
Yup, that’s it Mike. Thanks.
Mr. Freed would never vote twice but how do we know others might not, even if it’s just a little old lady from Spearfish with no ill will but who is confused and goes to two different polling places? Do the poll workers have to compare the Afi David’s to a pre-signed voter registration card? That seems like it would really bog down the process bad. Bog it deep, indeed. I think maybe a finger-print system like they have on the fancy new computers or phones would work as good as a signature. Somebody could forge a signature but if they came in with a severed finger the poll workers would catch on.
Voter fraud is based on intent.Some little,old lady with memory problems can be excused for voting twice and it is easily determined that she did not intend to deceive.
This guy from Wisconsin intended to deceive and got caught.
http://www.salon.com/2014/06/24/gops_voter_fraud_humiliation_turns_out_wisconsins_worst_case_is_a_republican/
All South Dakotans that are eligible to vote should automatically be registered with an opt-out available.
Republicans don’t like people to vote and we should be making voting easier, not harder.
Mail-in ballots work very well, are very non-discriminatory and strangle voter suppression. Voters may still vote at the polls, if they so choose or at early voting centers.
I have worked in many areas of this state, from west of the river, to the great northeast, the most hidden areas of Sioux Falls, small towns in between, and areas in and around some of the reservations. I have worked to help the homeless, the working poor, transients, those barely keeping a roof over their heads, the victimized, and those falling down the socio-economic ladder. I love what I do and I wish I could do more. My point in all of this: consistently, with very minor exceptions, above 90% of the clients that I have worked with all have state issued identification of some kind. Victimization of human beings comes in many forms. One of the ways people are victimized is to be grouped as socio-disadvantaged or politically disenfranchised and used to advance the status or cause of someone else. Please remember that all these people that you purport to help are above all else, an individual and they deserve to be recognized as such and not to be grouped together for your own political benefit.
No problem, Thomas. And we will fight for the voting rights of that less than 10% to ensure that their lack of ID isn’t an unnecessary barrier to their exercise of their Constitutional rights.
A Rice/U.Houston study finds that the Texas voter ID law deterred people with legit IDs from voting, just because of confusion over the law. Unfortunately, Democrats and other opponents of the law shared responsibility for that confusion: opponents hollered about the strict new law but then didn’t do enough to cut through the confusion and educate voters to know what ID worked. The study found that the voters who sat out because they thought they lacked proper ID would have voted overwhelmingly for the Democrat in the last U.S. House race.
Dems, oppose voter ID laws, but when such laws arise, educate!
An acquaintance in line behind me asked what “all of that” was about. I told him what I thought and he scoffed. I asked him how he would like to pay $300 for his driver’s license so he could vote. It is difficult to imagine if one is not in the situation, but that is the economic impact of buying a $30 license for someone surviving on Social Security alone, or for someone earning a few thousand dollars per year on a Reservation. Voting in an election where the dominant party counts the votes out of sight* is not worth the sacrifice.
*In the last election, Pennington County had mechanical irregularities that were never addressed or certified in public.
What Cory said is true:
Democrats oppose voter ID laws.
My addendum:
Republicans oppose voters.