Voter ID law isn’t racist — it’s there to protect GOP
Lawyers for the state of Texas have seemingly accomplished the impossible week: Convincing a federal panel that disingenuous, party-protectionist, voter disenfranchisement efforts aren’t actually racist.
In a 2-1 vote, three judges for the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said the state’s 2017 revisions to the voter ID law that has so enraged Democrats did not discriminate specifically against indigent minority voters.
The ruling belies conventional wisdom that Republicans will flavor any legislation with a soupçon of racism.
The battle over voter ID legislation resulted in exactly one thing: an expansion of the definition of acceptable forms of identification. No longer do you need a driver’s license to vote. You can bring in a utility bill, a bank statement, a gum wrapper with your name scribbled across Bazooka Joe’s face.
Republicans have gasped for the past seven years that voter ID efforts are meant to secure the polls against voter fraud. Opponents usually counter that there’s very little evidence of voter fraud (in the same manner that there’s little evidence of speeding if the highway patrol isn’t around).
The measure, like redistricting endeavors recently placed before the U.S. Supreme Court, really exists only in service of protecting GOP party rule in Texas. Born from fevered Tom DeLay (remember him?) dreams of a permanent Republican majority, voter ID is less about policy than thwarting the prospect of balanced government.
Historically, the fewer people who vote, the more that conservative candidates prosper.
So any effort to quell the vote helps the current holders of the conservative flame. Carving the state into reliable districts for the party also helps Republicans (who control that process).
That other party has its own methods for ensuring victory, such as “same-day registration,” the electoral equivalent of fast food (quick, easy, thoughtless and leading to regret). They’re also behind many of the get-outand-vote drives peppering each election year.
Democrats held Texas from Reconstruction to the 1990s, the last decade or so of that era maintained by their own gerrymandering.
Suggesting minorities are the most affected by voter ID regulations is just as duplicitous as Republicans trying to cast it as combatting fraud. Poor people, sure. Not all minorities are poor and not all poor are minorities.
And the entire mess could have been averted by putting photos on voter registration cards at the state’s expense.
The Department of Public Safety actually does issue an official Election Identification Certificate. To get one, you have to show, um, government-issued identification.
Modern businesses and institutions have long required photo ID for a multitude of transaction, the most obvious being booze and tobacco. Banks no longer honor checks without ID, much to the consternation of ne’er do wells (not the ones in the state Legislature).
Some speculation: Those who actually go vote would rather their voice not be muted by fraudulent activity. And perhaps requiring ID would stem draconian measures, such as earlier this year in Fort Worth, in which a state judge sentenced a woman to five years in prison for voting while on felony probation. Another woman — a Republican — was sentenced in the same county to eight years for voting while not a citizen.
Those punishments are reminiscent of Italians hanging Mussolini and other fascists from meat hooks in the Piazzale Loreto: A brutish move to serve as warning to others. Or maybe it was excitement at having the rare voter fraud case in court.
But, absent such hyperbolic measures, combatting voter fraud would be honorable, if that were the real motive of the Texas voter ID law. Though defanged through enough compromise to pass muster with the courts, the law may still deter some ineligible folks from slipping into line at the ballot box.