It’s Not Like Texas Can’t Be Trusted Or Anything …
I would trust a two year old with a set of felt tip markers alone in a room of priceless art before I would trust Texas Republicans with elections. At least the two year old doesn’t know they’re harming anything, but Texas Republican know damn well they’d put a bullet between Thomas Jefferson’s eyes before they’d want a fair election.
It appears that the Department of Justice is aware of that, too. Accordingly, they sued Texas yesterday over Voter ID and they also asked the court to authorize appointment of federal election observers in Texas. You know, like some third world state banana oilfield republic.
So, our goofy Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is the kind of guy who can read but not to the end of the sentence, issues a frothing reply. You can just picture little spittle things running down the sides of his mouth while writing this —
“Just days after the U.S. Department of Justice arrested a Texas woman for illegally voting five times in the same election, the Obama administration is suing to stop Texas’ commonsense voter ID law. The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that voter ID laws do not suppress legal votes, but do help prevent illegal votes. Voter IDs have nothing to do with race and they are free to anyone who needs one. Eric Holder’s outrageous claim that voter ID is a racist plot to disenfranchise minority voters is gutter politics and is offensive to the overwhelming majority of Texans of all races who support this ballot integrity measure.
You know, I’d be doing a fire dance around the beating drums, too, if any of that were true. It ain’t.
The case involved absentee ballot fraud and the Attorney General’s silly little voter ID law would do nothing about it.
According to the indictment against Solis, she voted in the names of Samuel Pedraza, Francisco Pedraza, Cynthia Pedraza, Dannie Vargas and Issic Guerra in that primary runoff by absentee ballot.
Holy two year old with felt tip markers. You do not have to show a voter ID to vote by absentee ballot. See what I mean about Gregg Abbott not being able to read to the end of a sentence? His vicious law would do diddle squat to stop this.
And as far as picture ID’s being free, that’s true. They are free as long as you have $21 for a certified birth certificate and all day to stand in line at the DMV.
And this isn’t just about minority voters. My sweet Momma doesn’t drive nowadays and she doesn’t have a certified copy of her birth certificate. There she is, a member of The Greatest Generation who has never missed voting a day in her life, even when there was a poll tax in Texas, and she has to order a birth certificate, pay $21 and have me take her to the DVM and stand in line. Momma doesn’t want to vote by mail. Momma has earned the right to vote in person because it’s important to her.
The Department of Justice is defending Momma’s right to vote in person in her neighborhood as she has done every election in her sweet life.
Thank you God and the Department of Justice.
Thanks to Kyle for the heads up.
Yeah, I screamed about this last year. There is nothing wrong with the ID I have been using for years to vote in my precinct but the state keeps wasting time and money to send me new “official” voter ID that now shows an entirely new polling place that won’t work for a lot of people. Thats a new trick to suppress the vote. I’ve been voting in the elementary school cafeteria for over 40 years. You bet its damn tight on presidential election days but we make it. Parking is kind of a puzzlement but there are plenty of side streets and we don’t do neighborhood parking permits around here. The side streets are wide open for parking. Plus, an awful lot of people walk to the polls around here. There is going to be a percentage of them who are pissed off at voting what they view as a betting parlor. Its the K of C bingo parlor on the highway. Another percentage won’t like who the K of C is associated with. Getting into and out of their massive parking lot against highway traffic could create carnage even with police direction. This particular highway is historic and is the oldest one around here and now carries 300% more traffic than ever before what with all the development. If I could trust that my absentee ballot would actually be counted, I would do it that way. Count me disgusted!
1Many of us have been hoping that the DOJ would take on these restrictive laws, especially after Voting rights law was gutted by the supremes. Here in PA, another judge worth his salt has stayed it for 2014, but we have fingers crossed he will strike it down completely.
2The real purpose of these laws is absolutely transparent and a shameful strategy on the part of a shameless Repug party.
Is he complaining that the DOJ is doing his job for him? How many cases of voter fraud has the state prosecuted since he was elected?
3Here’s some more information on the issue and has an actual copy of the indictment:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10204#more-10204
There has to be a genetic or pathological reason why all this repooplicans cannot deal with facts as they are available. Years ago, several Republican friends asked me if I had ever watched Glenn Beck? They told me that I needed to so that I could learn the truth about our President and our government. So I did; watched twice and being a history buff since a child I quickly discovered that Beck was a lying sumbitch. Beck’s name sounded familiar so I looked him up and lo and behold, he was a nut case of a DJ in Arizona who had been in trouble for some of the things he did on the radio. Now he’s a multi-millionaire. Speaks little for his followers!
4My State will adopt paper ballots with optical scanners by the 2016 elections. They’re getting rid of the Diebold electronic machines because they take too long for a person to vote and they do not print a paper receipt. You have to trust Diebold for the accuracy of the vote tally on a machine that has been shown to be easy to hack.
5A paper ballot can be printed/filled out at home and brought to the poll to be scanned. Or filled out at the polling place behind a cardboard screen, rather than a multiple thousand dollar machine, and then scanned. The paper ballot is saved in case there needs to be a recount.
If your State has electronic machines that do not print a paper receipt of your vote, you may have your vote registered for the ‘other candidate’ because there is no way to verify how your vote was recorded. Trusting the machine’s manufacturer is not an option in today’s world.
Seems to be a lot more attempts at “voter suppression” in Texas, than “voter fraud”. Well…… except for that Republican guy down there in Ft. Bend who voted in two or three states.
They want to EXCLUDE STUDENT I. D.’S. How many students, going to school in Texas, some from out of state, have the time or money to send off for a certified copy of their birth certificate? A hospital copy, which is what most families will have, is unacceptable. You have to pay the fee to obtain the “certified” one from the Health Department in the city where you were born. Then you may have to drive a couple hundred miles to the nearest DPS office, where they snap a picture, give you a written receipt, and eventually mail you your photo I.D.
I can see why I get so many mailers from candidates running for office, suggesting that I vote by mail. However, I too, like to go over to the Park, and cast my ballot in person, and say “hi” to folks I don’t see very often.
It shouldn’t be made hard for anybody who is eligible. When Democrats vote, Republicans lose. Fact of life.
6I happened to be in a now mandatory training class yesterday with 3 other Democrats at the Elections Office in Taylor County to become a Volunteer Deputy Registrar (VDR… sounds kinda like a venereal disease, huh)… when the news alert came over a friend’s iphone about the lawsuit. We were going thru the Voter ID Law handout at that moment. We all laughed, the elections employee threw her hands up in the air. She had just made a big point that the Voter ID Law was to be enforced now that the SCOTUS and Atty Gen Abbott, yada yada. Her remark was, “OH, just like last election, all over again… everything tied up in court, and once again we don’t know whether or not we can even have Primaries in a few months, or where, because of the court rulings on the districts, now this photo ID thing again.”
She was already a little defensive, because we had all poked holes in the procedure for registering voters. You do not have to ask for proof of citizenship, photo ID, ANYTHING to enroll a voter. You don’t need proof that a convicted felon has completed all their time, parole, whatever. You just sign them up. THEN…. You don’t need a voter ID to vote by mail. She swears the drivers license folks are ready to put folks seeking a certified election ID thru the lines ahead of the drivers license folks waiting in line…and going down to the health department to request a certified birth certificate doesn’t take long and only costs $15. All that checking internally is done by computer between the drivers license folks and the election commission folks… we had her all flustered.
She particularly balked at the question about various churches taking busloads of their congregations down to the DMV to get put thru the lines quickly for their certified voter ID’s…And no, she knows of no voter ID fraud in Taylor County since she’s worked there, almost 20 years.
She looked like a deer in the headlights when I told her that Battleground Texas was coming to Abilene in early November to conduct voter registration training.
7I like the name of the lawsuit. U.S.A. v State of Texas.
Although I am a native Texan I am going to have to go with USA on this one.
U…S…A…!!!! U…S…A!!!!!
Go America
8Since I am new here to the State of Texas….I have a question about voter ID. I do have a new Texas drivers license and made sure I asked to be registered to vote at DMV. Will my new license ( with it’s lovely pic…shudder…:) pass muster or do I have to have another form of pic ID? I never had to show ID in Cal but had been voting at the same place the poll workers all knew me.
9I’m concerned about the birth certificate thing. How many women have changed their names when they marry? I’d bet money this will be something that WILL come up and will keep women from voting.
10Welcome, Caroline, and just bring your Concealed Handgun Permit and you’ll sail right through. (kidding…sort of)
I don’t know what’s going on with our DPS, though. When my daughter had to renew her license, she had to go get a new photo and all, and they said they had no record of her having been born in the US. She lives in the county where I gave birth to her, has never married or changed her name, and has never even lived in another state. So she had to go pay to get a certified copy of her birth certificate. It’s a racket, that’s what it is.
11Oh, I forgot. Glyn, the DPS has the right to ask for a birth certificate. I didn’t know they required a CERTIFIED birth certificate. I hope the USA whops the daylights out of Texas. If Texas wins, it’s all clear for all the other states who want to do the same thing.
12It costs $22 for a birth certificate in Texas.
I was please to see that Marc Vessey added a cause of action seeking to declare the Texas voter id law void as a poll tax https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxeOfQQnUr_gRVRLM0NWUmxjdVU/edit?usp=sharing The only way to get the “free” id in Texas is to pay $22 for a birth certificate. Weinschenk v. State, 203 SW 3d 201 – Mo: Supreme Court 2006- The Missouri state Supreme Court held that a voter id law that required a birth certificate to vote was a poll tax
13Of course the Texas Health Department will only issue birth certificates for people born in Texas. If you moved there from somewhere else, you’ll have to order them online and it will cost you upwards of $50.
14Isn’t the Texas Voter ID law just another example of an overreaching big state government trying to control and micromanage the way a free and independent people vote? They must have a specific kind of ID (as approved of by the state) which requires a government work force to provide copies of birth certificates to make ID cards. Then, extra people at the polls to determine if a voter has all of their papers in order. This sounds like the exact kind of big government, big brother oversight that Republicans claim to be against. Isn’t it?
15All these folks claim that NONE of this – ID laws, consolidated precincts, shortened voting calendar and hours – is in any way an infringement on voters’ rights.
They also like to point out that you must jump through all these hoops to drive, so what’s the big deal?
Well, let’s see what the jackboot looks like on the other cloven hoof:
How about we close 2/3 of the gun stores and require anyone who wanted to buy a gun to register on a national list available to all law enforcement and, in fact, available to ANYone via FOIA, and then only buy a gun in person, on a specified day, in a specified place, after first having your license and ID validated by people from both political parties?
As for driving:
-all car sales tracked
-ownership of every car registered
-must pass test before getting driving privileges
-must renew license
-must pay license plate fees annually
-illegal to use a car while under the influence
-driving privileges suspended for offenses
-cars taken away for offenses
-special rules for minors under 21
-no one under 16 can use
-ALL law enforcement has access to database of ALL vehicle registrations (again!)
What say we have the same level of regulation for something designed to kill people on purpose as we do for something that mostly kills people on accident?
16Why can’t the U.S. have a reliable election that the people trust? Can’t we stop demonizing the other party and actually formulate and publicize how to do an election that has reliable, although sometimes distasteful, results? Too many people bullying and spinning and no one interested in the full truth and solution, only the political advantage. Both sides are guilty. Undocumented immigration is necessitating proof of citizenship even by those of us whose family ancestors were documented centuries ago. How do you propose to make that proof convenient and evenly applied for voting eligibility purposes?
17LB with all due respect “both sides” is a load of fertilizer. “Undocumented uimmigration” is not the problem, there are not hordes of non-citizens illegally voting and changing the outcomes of elections.
What IS changing the outcome of elections is the sunset of the angry white men as the dominant political force in this country. Five states, are now minority majority. The entire US population under age 5 is now, as of this year, minority majority. In 13 years they will begin voting. In my lifetime, the entire population will be minority/majority.
This scares the bejeezuss outta the Right. Some of them recognize it and are trying to win some of those voters with policy change (eg immigration) some of them are trying to win them with BS (eg the messaging strategy of “Groundswell”) and some of them are trying to King Canute it by making it harder and harder for America’s future majority to get a ballot.
Story after story, study after study, have proven that the so-called “fraud” these rules are instituted to “protect” against is a vanishingly small occurence – in fact, is a red herring – while having the “incidental” effect of making it harder for the poor (especially the working poor) and the elderly to comply.
When I was a REPUBLICAN election judge in Very Republican County, Illinois, we used to have a polling place inside a retirement community on the south side of town (not near my precinct, or even in my township) After while, as the party got more wingy, and when Dubya was messin’ with Social Security, suddenly that precinct got moved to a church basement 2 miles away.
Before that it was a tightly-contested precinct. After that the GOP did quite well there.
One last statistic to prove the point. Democratic Congressional candidates received a million more votes than Republicans did last year, and yet the GOTP still holds the House – and America – hostage to their way-out whims.
Ask yourself when, in the history of history, has that ever happened with liberals in the driver seat?
So “but me no buts” on the false equivalence meme. This ain’t Meet the Press. This is real life, where we don’t give a pound of manure equal time with a pound of feathers, just because it weighs the same.
18To daChipster: I am right along next to you on both your comments above!!! I’ve been using the same argument on the gun issue for several years against gun-nuts..including members of my family. Our argument is too logical my friend… and theirs are not based on reason.
19Take $21 for Birth certificate if available electronically (depending on just how old someone is and which county…) plus other forms of ID like Social Security card (if you can find that thing).
Free heck! Cost about $67 for FIL! Way to treat 84 year old disabled vet with real health issues and lmited income.
Thanks Sen Fraser, Gov Perry and wanna be Gov Abbot!
20It’s getting more obvious all the time that we’re going to have to have NATIONAL voting standards and rules.
By the way, did anyone else catch this on NPR yesterday? I thought this was pretty humerous:
“Senator John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, said he was very offended by the notion that, quote, ‘the lame duck Obama administration would try to turn his state blue.'”
And here’s some facts:
“…in earlier legal wrangling in this case, a special three-judge court based here in Washington, D.C. found that the Texas law was the most strict in the entire country in a slate of voter ID laws that have come up through Republican state houses across the nation. And the special court found the law had a discriminatory impact on minorities, in part because it was so hard to get to a place in the vast state of Texas through public transportation, sometimes 200, 250 miles in order to go and pay a fee and get a voter ID.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=214574139&ft=1&f=1003
21@daChipster, Bravo and amen!
22Was the woman who voted five times a Republican? 🙂
23I bet we could get election monitors from Cuba.
24Before you stand in that line, make sure you have her marriage license as well as the birth certificate. We female, lady, women people of a certain age, tend to have taken our husband’s last name and it is not the same as the one on our birth certificate. There is probably a fee for duplicate marriage licenses too.
25In my county in Oklahoma they have been changing polling places from schools to other places, in my precinct to a church. I think this is a safety issue for schools.
At least we still use paper ballots which are counted as they go into the machine, and I’ve ben told, will for the forseeable future. I may not like the way an election goes here, but at least I know it’s counted correctly.
26If you DON’T have a TX unexpired drivers license, and you want a Voter ID card in TX, you can present one of basically 3 IDs to get one (these are “primary IDs”): (1) a TX unexpired drivers license (What?? I already said I DON’T have one); (2) an unexpired US passport; (3) an unexpired US military ID card.
(There are few other docs you can give instead, but they all have to do with folks who weren’t born citizens in this country and have INS docs showing they’re citizens, but that’s not the usual group looking all of a sudden for IDs proving they’re American.)
If you don’t have any of those 3 “primary IDs”, you need to present 2 (Note: TWO) of the following 3 IDs (these are “secondary IDs”): (1) an original or certified copy of a birth certificate (plus your original or certified copy of marriage license or divorce decree showing your name change if you got married since you were born and it changed your name to your husband’s name); (2) a form from the US Secretary of State if you were a US citizen but born in a foreign country; (3) an original or certified form from a US court showing your name and date of birth if you’ve had a name or gender change (gone from man to a woman or vice versa).
I don’t know who would possibly have 2 of the 3 — if I am still a female and was when I was born (that’s ID#3), and I have a birth certificate (that was ID#1), I wouldn’t have a certificate of birth abroad (that’s ID#2) — so basically skip this list since nobody will have 2 of 3.
So now, since you don’t have 2 of 3 from the above list, you need to present 1 from that list of 3 above and 2 from the list of “supporting IDs”. There are 32 possible “supporting IDs” that include your SS card, your concealed handgun license, your income tax from this year, your voter registration card (finally!!), your school report card from this year, and if you are or were in jail — your TX or Fed inmate ID or parole card.
After all that, you still have to prove you’ve lived in TX for more than 30 days. Without a driver’s license, you have to follow all stuff you need in the lists above, PLUS ALSO provide (1) a copy of your mortage or lease with your name on it (so my dear aunt who lives with me can’t use this one); (2) & (3) your auto title or car payment stubs (again, if you don’t have a drivers license, you sure don’t own a car or are making payments on it); or (4) pay stubs from your job for the past 90 days (hope you’re not unemployed, retired, a housewife, etc.)
And Republicans don’t think there’s voter suppression in Texas?
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/driverlicense/identificationrequirements.htm
27What a crock. I’m 5th Generation Tx…. family listed on Daughters of Republic of Tx website under “our ancestors”. Got my first Tx driver’s license at the ripe old age of 14, along with my first car. When I went down to get my new Tx Driver’s License, I had a license from Baja California Sur and Colorado. My passport had a typo on it, mis-spelling my middle name… which is my family name, not my damned maiden name, so the birth cert didn’t match. Been married twice, once in the Caribbean. Well, we’ve been married almost 20 years, and I was single 20 years before that, after my divorce. Yeah.. I’ve got that divorce decree documenting all that name change, and paper trail.. you bet.. and you bet Denver can produce a copy of that old divorce decree and name change affidavit out of its archives in the basement somewhere, and not on computer anywhere. They died laughing when I asked.
Had my laptop stolen in Cabo, identity stolen… still cleaning up crap on the credit report that isn’t mine. Have the IRS sniping at me for not reporting almost $50K in income from my employment with a meat packing facility in Iowa, while I was living in Cabo. That’s a tough daily commute. Butchering cattle would ruin my manicure. Just all a crock. Too hard. This whole thing is exhausting.
Give me a beach, some very dark sipping tequila, and tell me what year it is occasionally. Or tell Gilligan to come pick me up, take me to his island. If the Skipper isn’t around any longer, that’s fine. My husband goes by the nickname Skip, because he raced the Admiral’s sailboat on Lake Michigan during Vietnam, and never left the Naval Training Station there for 2 years, while in the Navy. He even looks a little like The Skipper now adays from the old Gilligan’s Island tv series. hahahahaha
This is exhausting. Crazy.
28“Now many of our Christians have what I call the ‘goo-goo syndrome.’ Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” —Paul Weyrich, 1980
Paul Weyrich co-founded The Heritage Foundation in 1979.
The Rethugs own a Supreme Court that happily assists them with their voter suppression efforts.
29daChipster–My sentiments exactly on the laws we need for gun ownership except for one thing (and the only one I can think of that might make Big Business want to get involved, which is the only way anything can happen these days):
–Operators must carry liability insurance
If all guns had to be covered by liability, the insurance racket could collect plenty of bucks (because all those “safe” gun owners would still have to pay in, just as all “safe” drivers do), and they should love that.
And when your neighbor’s 5-year-old blows off your kid’s head with the gun he pulled out of the nightstand, you might get more out of it than, “Oh, I’m sorry, but he’s just a kid, see?”
But we’ve got to start hollering for insurance on those things…
30