On November 4th,weapon owners in Texas will be able to hit the polls using their concealed handgun licenses as voter identification — however, college students using college-issued IDs won’t have the same leisure. On September 2nd, a lawsuit filed by Texas students challenging a relatively new voter ID law in the state went to trial in US District Court. The plaintiffs in this case, including both students and organizations such as The Texas League of Young Voters, believe the law was created to disenfranchise young voters. The law, which also comes at the crux of one of the most hotly contested gubernatorial races in the country and could disproportionately damage turnout for Democrat Governor candidate Wendy Davis, threatens to overturn many of the advances made for minority voting groups in Texas since the Civil Rights Movement.
The voter ID law is amongst a series of similar legislation that has swept southern states following the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that overturned the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). Since the decision, several states including Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia have passed restrictive voter ID measures. In Texas, Governor Rick Perry has justified the law by maintaining that it’s just one more barrier against voter fraud. States that have passed similar laws, such as North Carolina, have justified the exclusion of student IDs by stating that such IDs fail to show an address and therefore cannot verify residence. Critics, however, hold that such laws don’t protect against voter fraud but rather make voting harder: “It doesn’t make any sense to exclude student IDs on the basis of an address,” said Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, “It leads us to think the only reason why they’re excluding student IDs is that they don’t want students to vote.” Even if the new law protects from voter fraud it further disincentives voting for students and youth who are already far less politically engaged than other age groups.
Polling conducted by the Pew Research Center prior to the 2012 presidential election found that only 61 percent of young voters ages 18-29 reported being highly engaged in the election, as opposed to 79 percent of voters between 30-49, 85 percent of voters between 50-64 and 86 percent of those aged 65 and older. Young voter engagement was down from 75 percent during the 2008 presidential election. Youth also had the lowest voter registration of all age groups in the 2012 elections, with just half of those ages 18-29 registered to vote. In light of declining turnout, voter laws such as those in Texas only further harm the already suffering participation of young voters.
As Ari Berman reported for The Nation, between 600,000 and 800,000 Texas voters may become ineligible to vote in the upcoming midterm elections as a direct result of the new law. This group includes many students with no alternate form of ‘valid’ identification. According to a 2011 national report by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, only 65 percent of 18 year-olds have licenses. Attorney General Gregg Abbot has defended the law by citing evidence such as a 2013 McClatchy-Marist poll that found that 84 percent of registered voters supported voter ID laws. While a 2012 Washington Post poll of 2,047 randomly selected adults affirmed broad popular support for voter ID laws, the Post poll found that a whopping 51 percent of the respondents had either heard not much or nothing at all about voter ID laws. “From a public awareness standpoint, it’s pretty low awareness,” said Jon Cohen, The Post’s director of polling. “We’re talking about under half of all American adults who have even heard something [about] this raging controversy.”
These statistics point to the fact that many of the Americans that Abbot cites as supporting his voter ID policy are both unaware that a nationwide debate over these laws is taking place and uninformed about what the law’s consequences. Doubly, this means that many of those in support of such laws are oblivious to their detriments on the fundamental democratic process of voting. Consequently, Abbot’s primary argument rests on what may appear as the legitimate fear of voter fraud, despite the News21 analysis stating that the rate of voter fraud is “infinitesimal” and that in-person voter impersonation on Election Day is “virtually nonexistent. Abbot’s justifications for the law lie not only on polls showing some popular support with little understanding for the consequences of the law, but on questionable claims that voter fraud is a rampant problem.Although the law on its own complicates the voting process for students, when matched with the difficult process of acquiring an appropriate ID in Texas, it works to even further disenfranchise voters. In order to obtain the type of government-issued ID needed to vote, voters must often pay at least $22 for a birth certificate proving their identity before travelling to one of the state’s sparsely located DMVs. There are no DMVs in 81 of 254 counties, and some voters are forced to travel 250 miles to the nearest location. What’s more, minority groups such as the poor, students, African Americans, and Hispanics are proven to be less likely to own state-mandated identification. Counties in Texas with significant Hispanic populations are less likely to have a DMV office where an ID can be obtained, while Hispanic residents in these counties are twice as likely as whites to not have the specified voter ID. Texas has created a nominally free state ID for these types of voters, but one-third of Texas’ 254 counties do not have Department of Public Safety stations that can provide such cards, and voters must still pay for a birth certificate to obtain the ID. Only 279 new voting IDs have been issued since the law took effect last summer, leaving about 600,000 or more voters without proper voter identification
The passage of this strict voter ID law, alongside that of similar laws in other southern states, was made possible by the Supreme Court’s June 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that Section 4 of the VRA was unconstitutional. Passed during the Civil Rights movement, the VRA was an attempt to curtail discriminatory election laws that often prevented minority voters from participating in elections. To such ends, Section 4 of the VRA was created as a “Coverage Formula” that outlined entire states or counties to be covered under a system of “pre-clearance.” Under this system, the states/counties within the Coverage Formula were forced to receive federal approval for any change to their election laws. Section 4 included Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. Although Section 5 of the VRA details the pre-clearance process, it was effectively rendered obsolete when the Court struck down Section 4. Chief Justice John Roberts stated in the majority opinion that, “The Voting Rights Act imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.” Unfortunately, what has occurred since the decision would constitute a current need, as restrictive voting laws that disenfranchise voters have been predominantly created in the states previously covered by Section 4.
Many of these newly disenfranchised voters also happen to make up important Democratic voting blocs. In Texas, 46 percent of Hispanics identify as Democrats as opposed to 27 percent that identify as Republican or Republican-leaning. And although there were no exit polls conducted for the 2012 elections in Texas, the 2008 exit poll data shows that 98 percent of African Americans voted blue that year. Furthermore, 60 percent of young voters cast ballots for Obama in 2012.
Through its seemingly disproportionate impact on Democratic voters, the law will certainly impact one of the most hotly contested gubernatorial races in the country this year. Democrat Wendy Davis is facing Abbot, Texas attorney general and a key player in instituting and defending the law. Davis herself faced complications voting in the 2013 off-year elections because her maiden name appeared on her ID and thus didn’t match the voter registration list. Many women will likely face the same problem at their polling place, adding to the suppression of Davis’s supporters. Despite the fact that according to a UT/Texas Tribune Poll Davis only has 32 percent support from women in Texas, women remain an important part of her voting bloc.
The upcoming election won’t be the first in which Davis has dealt with election laws that disproportionately threaten her over her opponent. In 2011, just before her 2012 campaign for state senate, Texas Republicans attempted to use control of redistricting to win back Davis’ seat and increase their majority. According to Zachary Roth of MSNBC, “The GOP plan radically changed the demographic makeup of Davis’ district…Blacks and Hispanics were placed in separate districts from each other and were outnumbered by the white conservative majority, which tends to vote Republican.” Luckily for Davis, the VRA coverage was still in place in 2012, and federal courts struck down the redistricting plan. Davis was reelected by nearly an identical margin to her 2008 victory. This year, the same Voter Rights Act protection will not be available to Davis — Davis will face the full threat of the new law.
At this point, Davis needs all the help she can get. An August poll by Rasmussen Reports shows that Abbot is currently 8 points up in the race. And while Davis still has a chance in the election, the disenfranchisement of much of her voting bloc puts her at a severe, if not insurmountable, disadvantage. The voter ID law that Abbot vehemently defends is one that only increases his chances of success. Abbot may believe in voter fraud, but the data on the problem of voter fraud does not support his claim.Given that there has been only one successful conviction for voter impersonation in Texas since 2000, the need for more voter identification restrictions is marginal at best. Meanwhile, when looking at the impacts of the VRA, one thing is certain: The law worked to stop disenfranchisement in the polling place. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, “Since 1982, approximately 2400 discriminatory voting changes had been blocked by more than 750 Section 5 objections. Without Section 5 these voting changes could have been challenged only through case-by-case litigation, a system that would have resulted in years of discriminatory treatment of minority voters pending the outcome of those litigations.” Abbot may point to fraud, but the data seems to point another way: Towards the disenfranchisement of primarily Democratic voting blocs.
Texas’ students aren’t the only ones suing in response to the law. In August of last year, the US Justice Department filed a lawsuit of its own. The trial began at the end of last month, but a decision is not expected before the midterm elections. According to Attorney General Eric Holder, “This action marks another step forward in the Justice Department’s continuing effort to protect the voting rights of all eligible Americans.” Holder warned that such voting laws “hindered access to ballot boxes” for many Americans.
The hundreds of thousands of Texas voters without an acceptable form of ID have few options other than patiently waiting for decisions in these lawsuits. If the students or Department of Justice is successful, the law will once again be blocked as it was under the VRA. If the lawsuits prove fruitless, these voters may be stripped of their most essential democratic rights. Unfortunately, because of the overturn of the VRA, even if the lawsuits are successful, Texas legislators will still have the ability to pass other voting laws similar to this one, forcing more lawsuits and potentially leading to more elections where voters will be unable to voice their opinion. As is occurring around the country, this Texas ID law, veiled under the pretext of defending elections from a historically minor threat, seems to be more about undermining the democratic process than about fixing it.