Monday, July 09, 2012

Texas Voter Suppression Law Trial Starts Today

Texas' voter ID suppression law will go on trial starting today in front a a three judge panel in Washington DC.  

It pits our Republifool attorney general Greg Abbott making another bogus 'states rights' argument against the Department of Justice and a phalanx of groups seeking to enforce Section V of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Since my birth state has an odious history of suppressing the voting rights of non-white people, they find themselves under Section V of the Voting Rights Act.  

Section V requires any changes in election law or that affect voting procedures to be precleared by the DOJ and it was under that provision of the VRA that the Texas Voter ID suppression law was blocked by the DOJ from implementation in March.  

That prompted Abbott to file a suit attempting to convince a three judge panel to uphold this jacked up law.  The sniping you heard Sen John Cornyn (R-TX) direct at Attorney General Eric Holder and demand he resign during that Senate hearing a few weeks ago was in relation to this Texas voter suppression case.

The three judge panel that will hear this case for this projected five day trial is made up of  GW Bush appointee (2002) Rosemary Collyer, Clinton appointee (1994) David Tatel and Obama appointee (2010) Robert Wilkins. 

Collyer was also one of the judges comprising the three judge panel that threw out the partisan GOP Texas congressional redistricting maps a few months ago after a three week trial 

Abbot will argue the GOP party line that this law is only designed to address 'voter fraud', but we non-white Texans know these ALEC sponsored laws are designed to do noting else but suppress non-white voter turnout. 

"The state's argument has this notion of widespread fraud, when what we know from the evidence is that so far, for 2008 and 2010, there were 13 million votes cast across the state and of those 13 million, there's been one indictment for voter fraud," said Texas state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, the chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, one of the groups joining the Justice Department.

May this law go down in a painful death later this week.


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