Does Voter ID Promote Inequality in Texas?

by Sarah Liebler

“There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.” ~ Chief Justice John G. Roberts

Most American citizens agree to follow the guidelines of the Constitution. That is, until they want to win an election. In Texas, the Republican-run legislature will stop at nothing until they are guaranteed victory.

On October 18, 2014, the United States Supreme Court upheld a law allowing the state of Texas to impose strict voter ID regulations in the upcoming November elections for federal and state offices. According to the New York Times, Texas has been trying to implement similar laws for over a decade without success. Last year, these restrictive laws were allowed to be imposed, but only in state-wide elections. A PBS article reports that thirty-one states require some sort of identification in order to vote, but this newly passed law limits the acceptable forms of ID to only seven. This law has been recognized by Federal Courts as discriminatory; it excludes approximately 600,000 registered Texas voters, about four and a half percent, due to lack of these selective forms of ID, as stated in the New York Times. Most of the citizens who lack these ID forms are poor, African American, or Hispanic, who generally tend to vote in favor of the Democratic Party. For many of these affected peoples, obtaining ID that allows them to vote is too expensive (birth certificates generally costing $22-25) or deliberately made inconvenient to attain, according to the Los Angeles Times.

From the Republican legislative standpoint, the law was approved exclusively to limit voter fraud. It passed with a 6-3 vote, supported by one Democratic and five Republican Supreme Court justices.  The three dissenting votes belonged to the female, democratic justices. Passage of the law was also opposed by civil rights groups and the Obama administration, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. This source also states that while members of the NAACP and others believe that the new restrictions are “an obstacle course designed to discourage voting,” Texas government authorities argue that they are “a legal and sensible way to protect the integrity of elections”. However, since 2002, there have only been eighteen confirmed cases of voter fraud in Texas, meaning the problem is virtually non-existent, according to experts in the Northeast Ohio Media Group. This raises a question: What is the real motivation behind these laws?

When the facts are considered, the answer is clear.  Regardless of what the initiators of these laws say, the evidence shows voter fraud is not the main issue being dealt with.  Texas has a long history of voter discrimination, including violations of the Voting Rights Act in every redistricting cycle since 1970.  Los Angeles Times reporters have researched and concluded that the state’s Republican leaders feel their hold on power threatened by the growing minority population. In fact, almost all states that have passed voter ID laws have Republican run legislatures, according to PBS news. They also confirm that there is already evidence that ID laws even less extreme than in Texas have decreased voter turnout among African Americans and young people, for whom the required forms of identification were too difficult to obtain.

With the new laws in Texas, people that are now unqualified to vote must make a decision: whether they will make sacrifices in order to maintain suffrage, or whether they will allow the government to take away their first amendment rights.  Even for those who can afford to pay for an acceptable form of ID, they may have to travel hours to the nearest government office that issues such IDs, which are few and far between in a very large state.  Others may have to stretch their budgets in order to vote. Some may decide voting isn’t worth the trouble. This is exactly what the laws are meant to do; eliminate Democratic voters from the system.

Perhaps if there was evidence of a lot of fraud, this measure might be necessary.  But there is very little fraud.  Republican arguments are weak and transparent. An even larger barrier is placed between the law makers and the people who rely heavily on government representation, such as minorities and people in poverty. With laws like this in place, is the government even truly representative of the citizens it is supposed to protect?

Since the foundation of this country, groups have worked hard to spread the guarantees of the first amendment to include all citizens. Throughout United States history, we have seen movements for women’s and African American suffrage that brought about major positive changes toward equality. The voter ID laws seem to be a step backward. Instead of protecting the rights of the American people, our representative legislatures seem to be taking them away from hundreds of thousands of people who have been exercising these rights for years.

This may not seem like a major issue to us, as suburban New Yorkers who are not currently at risk of our rights being taken away. But suppose you were a member of a minority group with low income, living in Texas. You just learned that your supposedly guaranteed say in the government is no longer guaranteed, unless you jump through hoops and stretch your paycheck even thinner to comply with these new laws. This is the situation that six hundred thousand Texans find themselves in today. It is too significant a percentage to be ignored.

There is a way the situation might be corrected without the repeal of the law. If the government chooses to allow further passage of strict voter ID laws, they should make sure that all American citizens are issued a usable form of ID, in a way that is not a burden to them economically.  In this way, the government could protect against the minimal fraud that exists without depriving anyone of their rights, solving disputes on either end. Perhaps this is not what the Republicans want, but it would certainly be the most effective way to eliminate disenfranchisement of American citizens.