We all know that the red states love to complain about voter fraud. The GOP gets off on ranting and raving about all those illegal voters sneaking in to cast votes in local elections.
Why, even our current President spent his first few weeks in office complaining about those busloads of illegal voters who cost him the popular vote.
So when the super red, redder than any apple, red as a cherry, state of Texas passed a voter identification law, they claimed it was because there was so much, you know, voter fraud.
The law, passed back in 2011, was challenged pretty quickly. Long recognized as one of the toughest voter ID laws in the country, it was opposed by the Texas N.A.A.C.P. and the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus. In their suit against the state, both groups claimed that the law was intended to repress voting in minority populations.
Myrna Lopez, one of the lawyers representing the groups opposed to the law, said:
“Texas passed the most restrictive photo ID law in the country — a law the legislators knew would hurt minority voting rights, without any evidence justifying it, and they broke all sorts of legislative rules and norms to do it.”
Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas first ruled on the law in 2014. At that time she said that it was far too discriminatory, and that there was no valid reason for it to be in place.
In other words, the Judge saw right through that fake voter fraud claim and called out the law as the racist, anti immigrant, anti democratic farce that it is.
Naturally, the state appealed, and the judge was ordered to reconsider. The state claimed that she had relied too heavily on Texas’ past history of discriminatory voting practices. They told her to reconsider.
Well, she did. She reconsidered, she looked at the law and she looked at the reality of voting in the state of Texas.
And she repeated her view that the law was discriminatory and had no validity. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud (Mr. President).
So the Texas voter ID law is all but repealed. It has no legal standing.
How refreshing and encouraging to see that a judge in on of the country’s most conservative states has retained her sense of judicial independence and won’t give in to the hysteria of the right.
Featured image via YouTube screengrab.
