(This image is from the website of the Brennan Center for Justice.)The Texas Voter ID law has already been declared to be an unconstitutional violation of minority rights once by a federal court. While the law does let voters get a picture ID for free at a Texas Department of Public Safety Driver's License Office, the fact is that there are many counties in the state that do not have such an office (see above map). And many of those counties are in areas where much of the state's Hispanic population lives. As the court ruled, this provided a hardship for Hispanic voters to get the proper ID to vote (even though they are citizens, and have a right to vote).
Unfortunately, after the law was struck down, the Supreme Court tossed out part of the Voting Rights Act -- and that called the original court decision into question. Now Texas could have tweaked the Voter ID law, creating an easy way to get the necessary ID in every Texas county (which probably would have made the law constitutional), but it chose not to do that. Instead, they just put the original law back in place.
That's because the intent of that law, written by Republicans, was never to prevent voter fraud (which is virtually nonexistent) but to suppress the votes of those likely to vote Democratic (especially Hispanics). It is their way to stem the demographic tide coming to Texas (where Hispanics will become the majority population in the state).
Democrats immediately filed another court case, noting that the law had been declared unconstitutional once, and remains so. There is a good chance that federal courts will again find the law to be discriminatory, but the question is -- when will that court decision come, before or after the 2014 election? Democrats wanted the case heard before that election, while the Republicans, led by Attorney General Greg Abbott (who just happens to be running for governor in 2014), wanted the case heard after the election (which would leave their effort to suppress votes in place for that election).
Round one of this fight has gone to the Democrats. Federal District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos has set the date for the trial at September 2nd of 2014. This means there is a very good chance that the discriminatory law will be tossed out before the 2014 election in November (and there won't be enough time to pass another Voter ID law, which would pass constitutional muster, before the election). This is a victory for citizen voting rights, and a defeat for GOP voter suppression.
