Harsh Texas Voter ID Law 'Immediately' Takes Effect After Voting Rights Act Ruling

[Galraedia]

Source: Huffington Post

WASHINGTON -- Texas will "immediately" enact a voter ID law that a panel of federal judges ruled last year would impose “strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor," a top state official said Tuesday. The decision to go forward with a measure that those federal judges called “the most stringent in the country" comes after the Supreme Court ruled that a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional.

“With today’s decision, the State’s voter ID law will take effect immediately," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said in a statement. "Redistricting maps passed by the Legislature may also take effect without approval from the federal government.”

In blocking those redistricting maps last year, a separate panel of federal judges ruled that the government "provided more evidence of discriminatory intent than we have space, or need, to address" in their opinion. Attorney General Eric Holder cited the Texas redistricting case in his statement criticizing the Supreme Court's ruling.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed into law the voter ID measure and redistricting maps in question. Abbott took to Twitter to celebrate the death of the Voting Rights Act provision:



Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/texas-voter-id-law_n_3497724.html?utm_hp_ref=politic

[Ash_F]

1. That's bad. Elections are in November. /nt

[Iliyah]

2. The red redistricting is illegal

but that never stopped GOPers before.

[SoapBox]

3. Sickening...

[Tobin S.]

4. Republicans will probably be in a solid majority in Texas for a very long time

And yet the establishment there still feels the need to gerrymander and suppress voters.

[Mr. David]

5. Not if there is indictments from the DoJ

for violations of the VRA that hasn't been struck down. Texas and Mississippi just went too far and they will be slapped back by the USSC.

Plus it guarantees the destruction of the Republican Party by 2014.

[Triana]

6. NC had been waiting for the USSC's ruling before shoving their Voter ID through too.

Now they say they will waste no time in doing so.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

7. So much for the myth of "outreach".

[nxylas]

8. Relax, racism is over

There's no need for the Voting Rights Act now that the Jim Crow South is a thing of the past (© All Pundits, 2013).