If You’re Poor and You Live in Texas, Your Right to Vote Has Been Taken Away

[kpete]

The 24th Amendment to the Constitution:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The poll tax, and by extension Voter ID, is absolutely unconstitutional.

Let’s take a look at the Texas Voter ID law (poll tax), since the attorney general there zealously enacted his state’s Voter ID law before the ink was dry on the Shelby County v Holder decision.

In order to vote, citizens of Texas will have to present a photo ID or else they won’t be able to vote. The ID has to be one of the following:

-Texas driver license—unexpired or expired less than 60 days
-Texas identification card—unexpired or expired less than 60 days
-Texas concealed handgun license—unexpired or expired less than 60 days
-U.S. passport—unexpired or expired less than 60 days
-U.S. military identification with photo
-U.S. citizenship certificate with photo

Any of the above forms of identification will literally cost money to attain, and now you must attain an ID in order to vote. Therefore a Republican state law demands that you pay to vote.


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the rest:
http://thedailybanter.com/2013/06/if-youre-poor-and-you-live-in-texas-your-right-to-vote-has-been-taken-away/

[HockeyMom]

1. Wouldn't that then be a Poll Tax

since in order to get any of these ID's you will have to pay money?

[PoliticAverse]

6. The Supreme Court has already found that unless an ID card is free it constitutes a poll tax. n/t

[HardTimes99]

2. Thanks for posting. A very important issue that needs to be kept front and

center in the public eye.

Blatantly discriminatory along class lines (and across racial lines also). They would not be able to get away with this shit were MLK, Jr. still alive. He'd be sponsoring massive sit-ins at polling places and rendering the entire electoral process unmanageable.

[unblock]

3. there's a simple compromise -- free, government-issued ids

this would still achieve the republican goal of disenfranchisement by creating a challenging barrier, e.g., make the free id available only in one government building in one corner of the state, forcing many to travel a great distance (think el paso, texas) or else pay to get one of the above-listed ids. so at least they're nominally offering a free id.

the point is that it's still a poll tax if there's a meaningful expense to overcoming the barrier to voting, which of course is their entire goal.

but the extreme, vicious partisanship of the republicans is such that they can't even make this token gesture -- every option explicitly costs money.

[winterpark]

8. Don't forget most state govt offices are only open during weekdays and someone may

have to take time off work with no pay to go stand in line for them. So it still costs that way as well.

[Jim Lane]

9. Right, plus the inconvenience of where the offices are

IIRC at least one state (maybe Wisconsin?) combined an ID requirement with the closing of a number of the Motor Vehicle offices where the free ID could be obtained. On its face, an ID requirement doesn't violate the Twenty-fourth Amendment if the ID is free, but if the government has only a few offices dispensing free ID's, a federal court might possibly say that such mere technical compliance isn't enough.

My further recollection is that the closing disproportionately affected the areas more likely to vote Democratic, but I'm not sure about that. For example, suppose the rule is that there's one office in each county. In every state I know about, that would mean that each office serving blue areas would have many more people near it, and probably much longer lines, than the offices serving red counties.

[ananda]

4. Uh oh. This sounds like a poll tax.

That should be SO unconstitutional!

[gvstn]

5. The salient points about the cost of ID

Please click trough to the article for more.

First, you have to appear in person at a Texas driver’s license center, known as the TxDPS (Texas Department of Public Safety), to get either a driver’s license, a state ID or an EIC.

If you work, you’ll have to take time off, so you’ll incur lost wages. That’s a poll tax. You’ll have to travel to the TxDPS office somehow, and since you don’t have a driver’s license already, you’ll have to pay a fee to take the bus or a cab. That’s a poll tax. If you get a ride from a friend, the cost of the gas? Poll tax. Let’s say you’re like many of us and you’ve lost your birth certificate, which is required for getting a either a driver’s license, a Texas identification card, a passport or an EIC. It’ll cost you $22 to order a new copy in Texas. That’s a poll tax. Any of these forms of identification will cost you money. Hell, even in the rootin-tootin-shoot-em-up-cowboy state of Texas, a concealed handgun license costs $140. That’s a poll tax.

Worse yet, the Houston Press reported that 70 counties in Texas don’t have TxDPS offices. If you live in one of those counties, and you choose to get a driver’s license, a state ID or an EIC, your time away from work and your commute will take even longer. That’s a higher poll tax than counties with a TxDPS office.

You have to remember Tx is a big state, a TxDPS office may be 60 or more miles away from a perspective voter. Someone living paycheck to paycheck not only has to pay to get the necessary documents for ID but pay to get to an office (That is not some $2.15 in bus fare like in D.C.). Even $20 may be a very big barrier to many many people.

If the state of Tx wants to question voter validity it should be on them to pay employees to visit voters to verify they live at that address not force the proof on voters. If someone intentionally falsifies their voter registration then they should be prosecuted which is enough deterrent to 99% of the populace. I suspect any voter fraud that actually happens is connected to the other 1% or perhaps not the other but the more probable OWS 1%.

[Gothmog]

7. The Missouri State Supreme Court ruled that a very similar law was a poll tax

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 http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=16462019301480907426