Sunday, March 8, 2015

Selma and Texas' Discriminatory Voter I.D. Law

by Michael Handley

Thousands gathered with President Obama this weekend at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of Selma’s “Bloody Sunday” march on March 7, 1965.

They gathered to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a brutal police assault on civil rights demonstrators that spurred the passage of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965. In 1963, only 156 of 15,000 eligible black voters in Selma, Alabama, were registered to vote.

The federal government filed four lawsuits against Alabama county registrars between 1963 and 1965, but the number of black registered voters only increased from 156 to 383 during that time. The federal government couldn’t keep up with the pace and intensity of voter suppression with existing laws.

The Voting Rights Act,  signed by President Johnson in August 1965, ended the blight of voting discrimination in places like Selma by eliminating the literacy tests and poll taxes that prevented so many people from voting. (VRA)

The Selma of yesteryear is reminiscent of the current situation in Texas, where one of the nation's most restrictive voter photo ID laws remains enforce.  This restrictive and discriminatory law has been twice blocked by federal courts finding it to be a discriminatory poll tax, but it has been twice revived by the Supreme Court. The law remains enforce today, but the struggle for voting rights continues.  Read on...

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Charting 2014 Collin County Turnout

by Michael Handley

Over all, the national turnout was 36.3 percent; only the 1942 federal election had a lower participation rate at 33.9 percent. The reasons are likely voter apathy and negative perceptions of both political parties. Republicans ran a single-theme negative campaign against President Obama, and Democrats were unwilling to campaign on how much the national economy has improved or to point out significant achievements of Democratic policies over the six years of Obama's presidency.

Neither party gave voters an affirmative reason to show up at the polls so Millennials didn't bother to votesingle women were a little less pro-Democratic than usual, and the racial divide among voters remains stark. One number stands out above all others: 64 percent of older white men voted Republican. It's the "widest GOP advantage in this group in data since 1984," according to ABC News.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Historically Low 2014 Voter Turnout - Why?

General election voter turnout for the 2014 midterms was the lowest it's been in any election cycle since World War II, according to the United States Election Project. Just 36.4 percent of the voting-eligible population cast ballots on November 4, 2014.

The last time voter turnout was so low during a midterm cycle was in 1942, when only 33.9 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. Like many, I'm asking the question - why did only 36.4 percent of potential voters bother to vote in the 2014 midterm election? Obviously, those voters didn't have a good enough reason to take the trouble to vote.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Texas' Voter I.D. Law Found Discriminatory

After a two-week trial hearing conducted in September 2014, U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos struck down Texas' voter photo I.D. law with a 147-page opinion issued on October 9, 2014.

Judge Ramos found the law had been adopted “with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose,” created “an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote” and amounted to a poll tax.  Two days later, and less than two weeks before the start of early voting for the November 2014 gubernatorial election, Judge Ramos entered an injunction blocking the law.

Greg Abbott, the state attorney general for Texas and then Republican candidate for governor, immediately filed an emergency motion to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit asking that appellate court to stay Judge Ramos' final judgment pending appeal and asked for expedited consideration. The Fifth Circuit Court did stay Judge Ramos’s injunction saying, "We must consider this injunction in light of the Supreme Court’s hesitancy to allow such eleventh-hour judicial changes to election laws.

Plaintiffs in the District Court case immediately appealed the Fifth Circuit Court's decision with the Supreme Court. The brief filed with the Supreme Court said confusion at the polls was unlikely under Judge Ramos’s injunction. “Expanding the list of acceptable IDs will not disenfranchise any voter,” the brief said, “since the forms of ID acceptable under the old voter ID system include all forms of photo ID specified by” the 2011 law.

The Supreme Court upheld the appellate court's emergency stay against Judge Ramos’s injunction, allowing Texas to use its strict voter identification law in the November 2014 election.  Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a six-page  dissent to the court’s order saying the court’s action “risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.” Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the dissent.  Justice Ginsburg wrote, the law “may prevent more than 600,000 registered Texas voters (about 4.5 percent of all registered voters) from voting in person for lack of compliant identification. A sharply disproportionate percentage of those voters are African-American or Hispanic.” Justice Ginsburg added that, “racial discrimination in elections in Texas is no mere historical artifact.”

The "emergency stay" blocking Judge Ramos' action to strike down Texas' photo voter ID law will remain in place while the State of Texas appeals Ramos' ruling to the Fifth Circuit Court - and ultimately the Supreme Court - for a final determine.