I am shocked, I tell you. Doubled over, stunned and speechless.
Not.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently busted Texas for its intentionally discriminatory Voter ID law. I guess Justice Scalia is no longer around to dredge up a modicum of legal credibility for blatant bigotry. The Fifth Circuit had do its job, finally. For its crutch for intolerance is dead.
The Texas Republican Party is no doubt in mourning and is scrambling for ways in which to justify its stark discriminatory hatred.
As a result of the 5th Circuit’s ruling, Texas has agreed to educate voters, using taxpayer dollars, to inform citizens about new acceptable forms of ID in order to vote.
But the state refuses to tell voters how they will be educated or how their taxpayer dollars will be spent on a promised campaign to inform voters as to their rights.
In July, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Texas Voter ID law, one of the harshest in the country, as a violation of Voting Rights. Thanks to this unfair and unnecessary law over 600,000 voters were disenfranchised in 2014 because they did not have the proper photo ID.
Texas’ voter identification law violates the U.S. law prohibiting racial discrimination in elections, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed previous rulings that the 2011 voter ID law — which stipulates the types of photo identification election officials can and cannot accept at the polls — does not comply with the Voting Rights Act.
The full court's ruling delivered the strongest blow yet to what is widely viewed as the nation’s strictest voter ID law. Under the law, most citizens (some, like people with disabilities, can be exempt) must show one of a handful of types of identification before their ballots can be counted: a state driver's license or ID card, a concealed handgun license, a U.S. passport, a military ID card, or a U.S citizenship certificate with a photo.
As a result of this ruling, the bigoted Texas Republican Party, knowing it had been caught with its pants down, busted for its unconstitutional disenfranchisement of 600,000 voters in 2014, has agreed to implement a $2.5 million voter ID education effort.
With its fingers crossed, of course.
For the Texas Republican right wing ideologues will withhold the details surrounding its voter ID education endeavor.
Texas is spending $2.5 million to spread the word about changes to its voter ID law before the November election but will not release details about how the money is being used.
More than half of that taxpayer money will go toward an advertising campaign, according to court filings. Yet state officials will not say which markets they intend to target with television and radio spots.
As part of its outreach effort, the state will send "digital tool kits" to an estimated 1,800 organizations across Texas to engage local communities on voter education. State officials will not identify those groups.
And documents related to both have recently been sealed by a federal judge at the request of Attorney General Ken Paxton's office.
Of course the Attorney General, an indicted felon to boot, (but this is lawless Texas, at least if one is rich and powerful), would have the documents sealed.
My guess is there will not be a voter ID education program of substance or quality nor one with substantial outreach. I wouldn’t be surprised if the education undertaking is directed strictly at white people, evangelicals and Baptists in rural areas, the heartland of the Texas GOP base. Areas that have little in common with the large urban areas that dominate the state: Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, Corpus Christi, El Paso.
Of course, one cannot help but smell a rat when Watergate is invoked as a precedent for denying access to documents by the fearful and small minded.
Hell, let’s raise our glasses to the crooked Attorney General Ken Paxton for going to the lowest of the desperate and despicable.
Paxton's office declined comment Friday but argued in court filings that those documents include "proprietary" or "confidential" information provided by public relations giant Burson-Marsteller, which is designing Texas' education campaign. Paxton's legal team cited a 1978 case involving President Richard Nixon, in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that media outlets could not have access to tapes from a Watergate obstruction trial.
A spokesman for the Texas Democratic Party pretty much nails it.
A Texas Democratic Party official criticized the secrecy, saying Texas voters have a right to see what kind of guidance the state is receiving from a company being compensated with taxpayer dollars.
"What are Texas Republicans hiding?" asked Manny Garcia, deputy executive director of the Texas Democratic Party. "Either the state is making a real effort to inform Texas voters about how easy it is to vote or they are using our taxpayer dollars for state-sponsored voter intimidation."
Ah, voter intimidation. This is a well-honed art form for the Texas GOP. But it is a very subtle one. A couple of weeks ago, while listening to Houston Public Radio’s Houston Matters, a political scientist reported on the Texas Legislature and its study of black and white voting patterns several years ago. The Republican dominated Legislature had explored the kinds of IDs used by black and white citizens at the voting polls.
The end result? The bigoted Texas Photo ID Law ensured that most IDs used by African American voters would no longer be acceptable.
The Texas GOP had other ways of disenfranchising minority voters as well. It’s called redistricting.
1. Lawmakers drew some districts that looked like Latino majority districts on paper -- but removed Latinos who voted regularly and replaced them with Latinos who were unlikely to vote.
2. Lawmakers widened the gap between the proportion of the population that is Latino and African Americans and the proportion of districts that are minority-controlled.
3. Texas removed economic centers and district offices from African-American and Latino districts, while giving white Republicans perks.
4. Divide and conquer: Texas "cracked" minority voters out of one district into three.
5. Texas passed a voter-ID law with requirements that would make it disproportionately difficult for African Americans and Latinos to vote.
The Texas GOP is on a crusade to make voting difficult for minorities because of the state’s shifting demographics. The xenophobic racists are obviously running scared. Meanwhile, there’s a taco truck in every neighborhood in Houston. Houston loves taco trucks!
Minority groups have outnumbered whites in Texas since roughly 2004, and 55.2 percent of the state's residents are now minorities, according to Census figures. As of 2011, the state's legislature was more than two-thirds white.
Fortunately the state has been busted for item 5. But this doesn't mean the Texas GOP will make it any easier for minorities to vote. Au contraire, I can already imagine the tricks, confusion and misinformation campaigns ahead. I can already hear the right wing radio hate talkers. While political hacks, cloaked in religious clergy robes, rant from their tax-free and self serving pulpits.
For I serve as a volunteer for the Harris Co. (Houston area) Democratic Party Headquarters. I work the phones on election days. I know what to expect.
A voter will show up at a poll in which one has voted for the past decade. The voter will sign in, receive an access code and proceed to the voting machine. Once one signs in one may not recognize the names on the ballot. Because all are Republican candidates. The poll is a Republican only poll. There is likely no signage indicating such. A savvy voter (this happened to me years ago) will speak to an election judge and ask for the ballot to be voided. One would inquire as to where the Democratic poll is or call the County’s Party.
On the other hand, a confused or low information voter will vote anyway and wonder why their candidates did not appear on the ballot. A precinct chair for a particular district told me this is a typical scenario when poll locations change at the last minute.
Republicans run the Harris County Clerks Office.
This is a true travesty in a mostly blue global melting pot.
Flyers may appear in home mailboxes with misleading information. No one will know who sent them. “Republicans vote on Tuesday. Democrats vote on Wednesday.” Or there will be whisper campaigns to the effect “if you are late on child support payments or have outstanding traffic tickets, you will be arrested at the poll.”
Many senior citizens who are eligible to vote by mail refuse to do so. For they are convinced the Republican run Harris County Clerks Office will feed their ballots into a shredding machine or will be placed in a dumpster. I am not kidding. Voters in Harris Co. have every right to be cynical.
As in the case of propositions and amendments on the ballot, the language for voter ID education will likely be as tortured, convoluted and as confusing. Voting yes could mean no. Voting no could mean yes. Fortunately the League of Women’s Voter’s and the states’ big newspapers’ editorial boards will translate the gibberish.
But not everyone subscribes to one’s hometown newspaper and not all translate the twisted language.
Or, some voters are far too busy, working two and three jobs, trying to make ends meet while raising children in a right wing state that brutally punishes the working poor. Unfortunately the working poor are too busy to know whose policies are making their lives unsustainable.
The Republican Party wins by marginalizing small percentages of voters. Though 600,000 disenfranchised voters seems rather huge to me.
Texas should be a blue state. A blue state run by progressive, liberal Democrats with big government programs that boost and enrich our economy. Oil and gas, as we know it, is dead, at least for now. Thank God. Maybe green energy will replace the toxic poison.
Indeed, Texas should be a blue state, but one has to read Harper Lee’s novel Go Set A Watchman, to fully appreciate the institutionalized and pervasive racism, as practiced in the South.
The depiction of Atticus in “Watchman” makes for disturbing reading, and for “Mockingbird” fans, it’s especially disorienting. Scout is shocked to find, during her trip home, that her beloved father, who taught her everything she knows about fairness and compassion, has been affiliating with raving anti-integration, anti-black crazies, and the reader shares her horror and confusion. How could the saintly Atticus — described early in the book in much the same terms as he is in “Mockingbird” — suddenly emerge as a bigot? Suggestions about changing times and the polarizing effects of the civil rights movement seem insufficient when it comes to explaining such a radical change, and the reader, like Scout, cannot help feeling baffled and distressed.
I didn’t want to read the book but I forced myself to do so. Because after years of living in Houston I failed to fully appreciate the implicit racism that is tightly woven into the state’s fabric. Having worked for a small academic institution for years, it was easy to live in a bubble. Most of us there are from somewhere else. Many of us are progressives, liberals and moderate Democrats. We live in nearby neighborhoods that are moderate and reasonable. When I retired a few years ago I stepped outside of the bubble.
Texas has a long way to go. As one of our fellow Houston Kossacks said at one of our monthly luncheons “Texas is still a Confederate state.”
And yet large urban areas like Houston offer hope for change in the future. The more tolerant and open minded millennials will help us get there.
