http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/18/politics/texas-voter-id-law/index.html
Supreme Court Approves New Texas Voter Law
Two days before early voting starts in Texas, the Supreme Court ruled that the state could keep the new voter law they've decided to enforce. According to this law, citizens must show state-issued identification in order to vote at the polls. At first glance, this seems pretty simple. The only problem? As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg points out in her (7 page!) dissent to the decision, about 600,000 citizens of Texas don't have state-issued identification. Further, a large majority of these citizens are African-American or Hispanic, which, at least in my mind and the minds of the three dissenting judges, sets off an alarm pointing back to the old Jim Crow laws that the Civil Rights movement abolished in the 60's. For this election, at least, the voters of Texas will have to show ID to get into the polls, but with further argument and review, the Republican government of Texas may change their plans.
In my opinion, this kind of thing is the reason Texas may soon become a state of Democrats, if they aren't more careful to listen to the overwhelming presence of minorities.
While the majority of the people without any state-issued identification may be African-American or Latino, is it really fair to relate this law to the Jim Crow laws? I don't think so. For one, they are making no real attempt to segregate races, simply requesting identification. Plenty of other states do this, and while Texas' law may be particularly strict, that is probably justifiable given their proximity to the border. I feel it is acceptable to make it harder to register to vote when so many people may be legally ineligible. For the 600,000 unqualified legal citizens, is it really fair to blame the state for their not having ID? Texas is even making it easy, providing greatly discounted birth certificates to facilitate voting. The Texan government does not seem to be attempting anything racist; rather, it is simply attempting to enhance the certainty of the legitimacy of their electoral results. Is that so wrong?
ReplyDelete-Liam Brookhart