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

[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%.