They would want you to have a state ID to vote. If you’re a citizen, why is this hard to accomplish? How does it violate minorities?
There are two questions here, the one you seem to think you’re asking, and the one you’re actually asking. The question you seem to think you’re asking is how a voter ID requirement is unfair to minorities. That’s a complicated question, and is best suited for GD.
The question you’re actually asking, though, is how it violates the Voting Rights Act, and that’s a simple question. One of the provisions of the Voting Rights Act was that certain states, with a history of racist voting policies, had to seek Federal approval before implementing any change to their voting procedures. Texas has the history which makes it subject to this provision, requiring ID is a change to their voting procedures, and they didn’t seek federal approval first.
[QUOTE=US Constitution, Amendment XXIV]
The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
[/QUOTE]
Since you have to pay a fee to the state government in order to acquire any form of ID that the law deems acceptable, and since you may additionally have to pay a fee to the state/local government to acquire copies of the supporting documents necessary to acquire one, requiring ID to vote is a poll tax and thus unconstitutional.
Now, for the complicated and nuanced part:
The last time anybody checked (which the DoJ did), there were a few million registered voters without suitable ID, who were predominantly some combination of old, poor, and minority. Among Texans not registered but eligible to vote, the same thing held (primarily old, poor, and minority).
In Texas’ case, there is no direct fee for an ID suitable for elections. But there are fees associated with obtaining the suitable documentation to get an election ID.
What the DoJ previously also found was that getting to a DPS office to obtain a suitable ID or documentation was also slanted against the poor (who are primarily minorities). If you don’t have a car but are fortunate enough to live in a city, getting to a DPS office can be more than a minimal chore. In the absolute best case, it’s a half day commitment to catch the right buses (if you’re in a city) and at least an hour’s wait (often and usually more) at the DPS itself, which is only open during regular business hours M-F. If you don’t live in a city, there’s not often public transport and it can often be an hours long car ride anyway. So, the people most affected (again, predominantly poor minorities) would often be choosing between getting paid at work and getting an ID by missing work.
The DoJ is claiming that the law targets minorities through the demographics - by making it harder for the class of people most negatively affected to obtain suitable ID in the first place.
Texas offers free election ID cards just for this reason. If you already have a birth certificate you can get an acceptable ID at no cost. If you don’t have your birth certificate you do have to pay $22 for a certified copy.
Honestly, it is hard to imagine how anyone could function in today’s society with no form of ID.
As I mentioned in the previous post, the DoJ is objecting to the fact that the process of obtaining the free election IDs isn’t strictly free if you don’t already have the documentation and even if you have it, the process of getting to a DPS office is not trivial or cost-free for poor, predominantly minority citizens.
Perhaps, but it’s also hard to believe a state would mandate everybody has an ID, especially a state like Texas that’s normally against a “Papers, Please” culture, except for voting.
And they didn’t need to. Shelby County v. Holder.
Of course, in Crawford v. Marion County, the Supreme Court said that those type of “one-removed” burdens were constitutional.
Note also that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as amended in 1982, says that a law is discriminatory if it has a discriminatory effect, as opposed to a discriminatory intent. In other words, there can be nothing but pure-hearted motives behind a given piece of voting law, but if it has the effect of making it harder for one race/gender/protected class to vote than another, it’s verboten.
Sure, but the one-removed burden is not the direct argument presented by the DoJ but something in support of their actual argument that the effect of the law is discriminatory, which is the gist of the point MikeS brought up.
If you can’t be bothered to have the very minimal, most basic way of identifying who you are, then you don’t deserve to vote for people who are going to have an impact on my life. Honestly, I think that people who can’t be assed at some point every two years to get a basic photo ID card probably aren’t going to be assed to get out and vote ANYWAY, but just the fact that you have a pulse isn’t sufficient that your opinion should count. Of course, some people don’t even think you need that much to be able to vote, as we all know.
You want to vote? Then make the same basic, minimal effort we ALL have to make in order to do so. If it’s an onerous burden to spend $22 or whatever, how about the DNC offer to pay for people’s ID cards for them as part of their get-out-the-vote drives? Put your liberal money where your mouth is - hell, it’d be a LEGAL way of buying votes - can’t beat that!
There, I said it.
Somewhat Jeffersonian, in that any landowner should be able to provide character witnesses, but completely not in line with modern sensibilities.
Any politician who makes such a statement is going to have a bad time.
I understand and accept the Government requiring (and/or charging a fee/ tax for) auto insurance and auto registration because we drive primarily on public roads. If the State or Federal Government were to require a picture /computer strip-chip ID, it should be freely provided. If they require a Social Security card or Birth Certificate to collect benefits or to vote, those documents should be provided free of charge. Who pays for it? We do, from whatever taxes are tapped for the purpose.
If you insist residents have certain documents in order to function as residents, those documents must be provided by the Government for free, or not required at all.
I never said that they did need to. I said that what they were doing was in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Something can be in violation of a law and yet legal, if the relevant law (or portion thereof) has been overturned by the courts.
And many people, if they made the same basic, minimal effort you or I had to make, would find themselves on the bus a quarter of the way to the ID office before turning around and going back to work. You can’t require everyone to make the same basic minimal effort until you ensure that it is, in fact, the same effort.
It’s not always easy even when you have lots of documentation. A 96-year-old woman in Tennessee was denied a photo voter ID because she only had her lease, rent receipt, birth certificate, and voter ID card. She was long retired, didn’t drive, her housing complex photo ID or SS card had been enough up until then, and the denial was because they wanted legal proof of her name change via marriage and she didn’t have a copy of her marriage license.
That woman was born during a time when it wasn’t legal for her to vote, had voted faithfully for years, been gainfully employed for over 50 years, and it’s just a little bit galling that she and others are being forced to jump through such hoops to get a photo ID merely to continue exercising a right that they or others who had gone before them had fought to secure.
Getting the necessary docs for a state ID is a nightmare for large numbers of people.
Women in particular are hard hit due to the need to document every marriage and divorce. Sometimes it is just not possible to adequately track down all the paperwork.
So many thousands of people are deprived of their right to vote (and drive, etc.) while barely a handful of fraudulent voters are caught.
Logic says this is a Bad Idea. So, if logic isn’t the reason for doing this, what is? (Note that the head of the PA GOP as well as the bill’s sponsor have been quite explicit about this.)
Even if it makes little practical difference, I think there’s a big idealogical leap from “everyone should be able to do X with little trouble” to “it is mandatory that you do X or you cannot vote”. I think that’s a line that should be vigilantly guarded. If you are a citizen and over 18, you have the right to vote. We should be wary of adding qualifiers - no matter how small - to that fact.
I agree - so everyone should have to prove they’re a citizen and over 18 - is that so huge a burden?
It depends on your circumstances. If you have a copy of your birth certificate already (because your parents kept it, or you needed it for another purpose or what have you) and can visit the issuing office on your lunch break because you have a cushy job that allows you some extra time if needed and you have a car to ensure quick transportation to the office then it may not be a burden. If you need to get a copy of your birth certificate and it is going to cause you to have to skip lunches for a week to afford it and you will need to take at least a half day off of work to travel to the issuing office then I’d say that constitutes a bit of a burden.
That’s a pretty low threshold for a “cushy job”.