What are your thoughts on this? Is it discriminatory against minorities? Do you think its on point or is it a frivolous debate that will go away?
Just for myself, when I have gone to vote in years past, I have always carried my voters card and simply because I had it on my person anyways, my drivers license, thus I had no issues going to the polls. But what about those who have no ID?
Does this law become problematic because it singles out those who can't properly ID themselves at the voting booth and therefore could bring up the real possibility that they are not in this country legally?
Read more:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012...#ixzz1pBfIjm5s
The Obama administration has once more gone too far in its "overreach," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Monday, after the Justice Department objected to the state's new voter photo ID law, saying Texas failed to demonstrate that the law is not discriminatory by design against Hispanic voters.
"Texas has a responsibility to ensure elections are fair, beyond reproach and accurately reflect the will of voters. The DOJ has no valid reason for rejecting this important law, which requires nothing more extensive than the type of photo identification necessary to receive a library card or board an airplane. Their denial is yet another example of the Obama administration's continuing and pervasive federal overreach," Perry said.
On Monday, the Justice Dpartment's head of the civil rights division, Tom Perez, sent a a six-page letter to Texas' director of elections saying that Texas has not "sustained its burden" under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to show that the new law will not have a discriminatory effect on minority voters. About 11 percent of Hispanic voters reportedly lack state-issued identification.
Perez wrote that while the state says the new photo ID requirement is to "ensure electoral integrity and deter ineligible voters from voting" the state "did not include evidence of significant in-person voter impersonation not already addressed by the state's existing laws."
Perez added that the number of people lacking any personal ID or driver's license issued by
the state ranges from 603,892 to 795,955, but of that span, 29-38 percent of them are Hispanic.
"According to the state's own data, a Hispanic registered voter is at least 46.5 percent, and potentially 120.0 percent, more likely than a non-Hispanic registered voter to lack this identification," Perez wrote.
"Even using the data most favorable to the state ... that disparity is statistically significant," he said.
But the two data sets, compiled in September 2011 and January 2012 were not an apples-to-apples comparison, said Texas' secretary of state, who noted the department was warned that the two data sets it used to lodge its objection were inconsistent.
"The data they demanded came from matching two separate data sets never designed to be matched, and their agency was warned that matches from these data sets would be misleading," Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade said in a statement.
Andrade said that as a result of the objection, which she called "extremely disappointing," existing law will apply in the May 29 primary election.
"My office will continue working with the Texas Attorney General's Office in seeking to implement the will of the citizens of Texas, as enacted by our duly elected representatives in the Texas Legislature," Andrade said.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, said in a separate statement the Texas law was based on an Indiana law upheld by the Supreme Court. He also questioned what the real objection is to requiring photo ID.
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