| Key Point: A Republican Supreme Court backs a Republican-pushed law that has no evidenciary justification for its enactment; meanwhile, in Texas, a Republican Attorney General pursues minority and elderly Democratic voters for laws that may not even constitute illegal activity while the same Republican Attorney General ignores documented instances of Republican voter fraud on a much larger scale. Court Opinion
AP Article Today, in a 6-3 decision, the United State's Supreme Court upheld an Indiana state law that requires voters to provide photo identification. Texas' Fight Against Republican Voter Intimidation In Texas, voter ID laws have been pushed repeatedly -- as they have been across the country -- by Republicans. Here's what Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has been working on, courtesy of the Lone Star Project: Abbott’s task force has indicted only 13 individuals, involving fewer than 50 ballots, which represents less than one of every 100,000 ballots typically cast in Texas. Virtually all of those prosecuted are African American or Hispanic senior citizens with Democratic voting history.
The indictments do not involve massive, or even organized, voter fraud. 10 of Abbott’s 13 indictments of do not even allege that a voter was defrauded. In these ten instances, Abbott prosecuted individuals who appear to have done little more than mistakenly help senior citizens by delivering already completed and sealed ballots to the post office or elections administration office. So the Texas Attorney General is fine going after minorities and senior citizens, almost all of whom are Democrat. But that's not the half of it --- he won't investigate serious, legitimate instances of Republican voter fraud: In 2005, two election judges, both Republicans, and a 10-year-old boy handed out over 100 ballots, Hebert testified, without checking any voter registration cards or IDs. The ballots were filled out and turned in, he said, quoting from several Dallas District Attorney memos that suggested there was a strong basis for prosecuting the judges for not following procedures and counting "over 100 more ballots" that there were "signatures on the roster."...
"Here we are nearly three years later and Attorney General Abbott's office has done virtually nothing," Hebert told Texas legislators. Even the Republican Chair of the House Elections Committee, Rep. Leo Berman (R - Tyler) -- one of the staunchest defenders of voter ID laws -- wants the AG to look into it. U.S. Supreme Court Admits "No Evidence" of Voter Fraud So that's the Texas picture -- But what did the Supreme Court ruling actually say? Well, I read through the ruling, and here's the basics of the argument: "A state law’s burden on a political party, an individual voter, or a discrete class of voters must be justified by relevant and legitimate state interests “sufficiently weighty to justify the limitation.” (Emphasis added). So there must be state interests to justify the law. Is there any? Well, according to the Supreme Court: While the record contains no evidence that the fraud SEA 483 addresses—in-person voter mpersonation at polling places—has actually occurred in Indiana, such fraud has occurred in other parts of the country... So the state's interest argument is based on the idea that there is a larger, national interest, and Indiana -- as a player in our nation -- can pass a voter ID law, even if there's no evidence of fraudulent voting in Indiana (per the Court's opinion, not mine). And according to the Daily Kos post that originally pointed me to this, the "national interest" argument made in the ruling is based on the 19th Century Boss Tweed elections. I'm not even joking -- go read the post! The state's interest argument is, well, an argument. Not a particularly strong one, but it's there and it's the Supreme Court ruling. But Texas elected officials, at least some of whom like to make their decisions based on FACTS, shouldn't be swayed by a state law for which there was no state need. |
