Texas: Texas voting rights litigation spotlights Greg Abbott’s role | Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Days before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the scene that played out among the Greater Arlington Missionary Baptist Church’s wooden pews was, in some ways, reminiscent of the civil rights movement from decades before. Civil rights activists and social justice advocates had gathered to plan a protest. They talked about the fight for equity and the importance of standing up for their community. And they discussed the role of a collective voice to draw attention to the grievances laid out by the NAACP’s Arlington branch over the selection of Gov. Greg Abbott as the North Texas MLK parade’s honorary grand marshal. Abbott “has done more to damage and undermine African-American and Latino civil and voter rights” than any modern-day governor, the NAACP-Arlington said. It pointed, in part, to the role of Abbott, a former attorney general, in both defending and advocating for redistricting maps and strict voter ID requirements that have been tangled up in court for years over concerns they discriminate against Texans of color.

Texas: U.S. Supreme Court dismisses Texas Democrats’ partisan gerrymandering appeal | The Texas Tribune

Texas, for now, will not join the list of states fighting in court over the limits of partisan gerrymandering. As it considers cases out of other states over whether extreme practices of partisan gerrymandering can be deemed unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed the efforts of Texas Democrats and other plaintiffs to revive a related legal claim in the ongoing litigation over the state’s political boundaries. The high court’s dismissal comes just days after it agreed to hear a case over whether Texas’ congressional and House district boundaries discriminate against voters of color. In that case, the state appealed a three-judge panel’s ruling against the state that included findings of intentional discrimination by state lawmakers, unconstitutional racial gerrymandering and violations of the Voting Rights Act.

Texas: The Supreme Court takes on two redistricting cases from Texas | The Economist

The Supreme Court rejects about 99% of the 7,000 to 8,000 petitions that reach it each year. But when it comes to cases involving reapportionment—challenges to how states draw lines for congressional or state legislative elections—the justices can’t be quite so choosy. Congress has chipped away at the cases subject to mandatory review by the Supreme Court, but it has kept it for redistricting cases where an election looms and time is of the essence. If skewed electoral maps may need to be redrawn, a special three-judge federal court is convened to hear the case; an appeal goes right to the Supreme Court, bypassing America’s 13 circuit courts. 

Texas: Supreme Court adds Texas election case to those in Wisconsin, Maryland | USA Today

The way state legislatures draw election districts for political gain is coming to dominate the Supreme Court’s docket. The justices agreed Friday to hear two cases challenging congressional and state legislative districts in Texas, adding them to ones already pending from Wisconsin and Maryland. Other cases are brewing in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The Texas lawsuits involve more traditional challenges to the use of race in drawing district lines, something the high court deals with perennially from states with a history of violating the 1968 Voting Rights Act. By contrast, the Wisconsin and Maryland cases allege excessive political gerrymandering — designing districts to benefit one party over the other.

Texas: U.S. Supreme Court will hear Texas redistricting case | Houston Chronicle

Texas’ disputed U.S. and state House maps will come under an election-year review by the U.S. Supreme Court in a nationally-followed case that alleges racial discrimination by the state Legislature. The justices agreed Friday to review a lower-court ruling that took issue with a pair of U.S. House districts and several state House districts. The Republican-drawn maps – hotly disputed by Democrats – have muddled through the courts for three election cycles amid challenges that several of the districts were drawn in a way that diluted voting power for Latino and African American voters.

Texas: U.S. Supreme Court will review Texas redistricting | Austin American-Statesman

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Friday that it will review lower-court rulings that ordered Texas to redraw 11 political districts found to be discriminatory. Texas officials appealed the rulings, which conluded that two congressional districts and nine Texas House districts were improperly drawn along racial lines in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Acting on the Texas appeal, a divided court blocked efforts to redraw the maps in September to allow time to consider whether to grant Texas’ request to overturn the rulings. On Friday, the court announced that it combined the two appeals and will hear oral arguments this spring.

Texas: Plaintiffs still fear exposure of voter data even with Trump’s fraud commission dissolved | Dallas Morning News

President Donald Trump’s controversial voter fraud commission was disbanded last week, but plaintiffs in a Texas lawsuit want more assurances about the safety of voter information. The question of what voter data Texas can release to such commissions and what safeguards they must ensure stems from a lawsuit filed in July by the Texas NAACP and the Texas League of Women Voters seeking to block the state from handing over its voter rolls to the federal commission. Texas election law includes provisions that prohibit the information from being used for commercial purposes. If the information was given to the commission, plaintiffs argued, it would be open to public review under a federal law, allowing businesses to sidestep the state law banning its use for commercial purposes. It would also put the data at risk of a breach, plaintiffs said.

Texas: What to expect in Texas’ voting rights court fights in 2018 | The Texas Tribune

As far as court battles go, 2017 was a busy year on the voting rights front in Texas — and 2018 will likely be no different. After years of litigation, Texas and its legal foes — minority and civil rights groups and voters of color — begin the year waiting on the courts to rule on the fate of the state’s embattled political maps and voter identification requirements. Federal judges are also expected to have the final word on whether lawmakers intentionally discriminated against Texans of color in drawing up both measures. There’s no saying whether the cases will be resolved in 2018. But as the sides await a final resolution years after the measures were first enacted, the attention will ultimately fall on whether Texas will be placed back under federal oversight of its election laws.

Texas: Republican Party Drops Lawsuit To Remove Farenthold From Primary Ballot | Texas Public Radio

The Republican Party of Texas dropped its lawsuit to remove embattled Congressman Blake Farenthold’s name from the 2018 primary ballot. Farenthold asked to have his name removed from the primary ballot following ongoing accusations of sexual harassment, but his request came after the state’s deadline to remove himself from the ballot. Chris Gober, an attorney representing the Republican Party of Texas, told an Austin federal judge that they were dropping their lawsuit because the party and the Secretary of State’s office had come to an agreement that the party chairman, James Dickey, is ultimately responsible for submitting the list of candidates running in the 2018 primary election.

Texas: GOP Sues to Keep U.S. Rep. Farenthold Off 2018 Ballot | Governing

The Republican Party of Texas sued the secretary of state Friday to keep U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold off the 2018 ballot after the congressman accused of sexual harassment said he will not seek reelection. Farenthold, R-Corpus Christi, announced his intent to retire two days after the state’s Tuesday deadline to withdraw from the general election primary, creating a legal and potential headache for GOP leaders. “By disallowing Mr. Farenthold’s withdrawal from the primary election, the state is forcing the Republican Party of Texas to be associated with Mr. Farenthold via his appearance on the primary ballot. Neither Rep. Farenthold nor the Republican Party of Texas desires this outcome,” Chris Gober, an attorney for the Texas GOP, said in a federal lawsuit requesting the state be barred from enforcing its withdrawal deadline against the congressman. Gober characterized the cutoff as “unconstitutionally overbroad.”

Texas: State Heads Back To Federal Appeals Court In Long-Winding Voter ID Fight | KUT

State officials and the minority rights groups suing Texas over its strict voter identification restrictions are headed back to court. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments on Tuesday over the state’s recent revisions to its 2011 voter identification law and whether those changes cure legal issues with the original law. The recent changes — which softened previous voter ID requirements considered among the toughest in the nation — were passed in response to court rulings that the 2011 law discriminated against Hispanic and black voters. Since Texas lawmakers passed the 2011 voter ID law, the state and the measure’s foes have faced off several times in court. This time around, they’ll largely focus on Senate Bill 5, a bill the Legislature passed earlier this year after courts found fault with the previous law.

Texas: Federal appeals judges question challenge to revised Texas voter ID law | The Texas Tribune

In Texas’ bid to keep its voter identification law intact, it was its legal foes — lawyers representing voting and civil rights groups and individual voters of color — who faced a tougher line of questioning Tuesday before a federal appellate court. In light of recent revisions to the state’s voter ID law, two judges on the three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals raised questions about claims that lawmakers intentionally discriminated against voters of color when they passed rules on which photo IDs can be presented at the polls. That intentional discrimination claim, which a lower court affirmed this year, is key to the case over the state voter ID restrictions. “If there is nothing that says we are trying to advantage white voters … isn’t that proof that there wasn’t discriminatory intent?” Judge Edith Jones, a Reagan appointee, said of the plaintiffs’ lack of a smoking gun to prove purposeful discrimination by lawmakers, despite thousands of pages of memos and transcripts of debates over the voter ID requirements. “You have nothing,” she later added. “Not one stray word reflecting a racially bias motive appears.”

Texas: Appeals court to weigh ‘discriminatory’ voter id law | Austin Statesman-American

Lawyers for Texas return to court Tuesday to try to save the state’s voter ID law, and there is more at stake beyond requiring photo identification at the polls. Republicans in the Legislature stand accused of blatant racism in enacting the 2011 law, and there is more at stake beyond requiring photo identification at the polls. Republicans in the Legislature stand accused of blatant racism in enacting the 2011 law, and unless that finding by a federal judge is reversed, Texas could be forced to get federal approval for changes to its election laws based on its history of voter discrimination. The next step in the long-fought case takes place Tuesday morning with oral arguments before a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. 

Texas: State appears to concede voting rights case on language interpreter law | The Texas Tribune

Texas has spent years defending its voting laws in court, regularly appealing rulings that found state lawmakers violated the rights of their voters. So when a federal appellate court in August ruled against the state’s restrictions on language interpreters at the ballot box, it was easy to assume an appeal would follow. But more than three months later, Texas appears to be conceding the case. “We have not heard anything from Texas,” said Jerry Vattamala, director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund’s democracy program, who is representing the plaintiffs in the case. “It appears that they are not appealing.” At issue in the case was an obscure provision of the Texas Election Code that required interpreters helping someone cast a ballot to also be registered to vote in the same county in which they are providing help.

Texas: What Happened When One Texas County Tried To Build A Cheap, Open-Source Election System | Texas Public Radio

Travis County, home to Austin, has been working to build a better voting system – one that satisfies the need to maintain security and accessibility for voters. Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir, the chief election official, has been a part of developing the system, called STAR Vote, which would have replaced the current Hart InterCivic eSlate system that has been in use since 2001. That system cost roughly $7 million, and has seen several security augmentations over the years. DeBeauvoir was making considerable progress on STAR Vote until a few weeks ago, when it looked like the plan was starting to lose steam. The Austin Monitor headline read “STAR Vote collapses.” DeBeauvoir had worked with academics to develop the new system, but when it came time to seek bids to build it, DeBeauvoir says she didn’t receive any Requests for Proposal that filled the bill.

Texas: Some Texans will have a different way to vote — but only in the Nov. 7 election | Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Texans living in nursing homes will have a new way to vote in this November’s election. But then that method will go away. Texas lawmakers earlier this year passed a bill that requires, when five or more absentee ballots are requested by residents at facilities such as nursing homes, election judges for both parties to deliver the ballots — and oversee the voting on them — during the early voting period. “We post a notice of the day we are going to come,” said Stephen Vickers, Tarrant County’s elections administrator. “Then we have to send out a team of judges and ballots. They do the process there so they don’t have to mail it.” The goal of this law, House Bill 658, was to make sure no one influences these Texans’ votes. But election officials complained that this is a massive unfunded mandate.

Texas: Challenge to voter ID law should be over, Attorney General argues | Houston Chronicle

The fight over the state’s embattled voter ID laws should be over, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued in a new court document filed late Tuesday. Paxton, as expected, filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals calling for the judges to end a challenge to the state’s new voter ID law for good. In his 101-page document, the Republican argued that because the state has already added new exceptions to the law to allow people who have a reasonable-impediment to getting an ID to still vote, the case should be officially concluded. “This case should be over,” Paxton’s brief states.

Texas: Paxton officially requests review of redistricting ruling | San Antonio Express-News

As expected, Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday officially asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court’s ruling that invalidated two of Texas’ 36 congressional districts. “The lower court’s decision to invalidate parts of the maps it drew and adopted is inexplicable and indefensible,” Paxton said in a statement. “We’re eager for the high court to take up the case.” The U.S. Supreme Court already temporarily suspended a San Antonio court ruling that found congressional districts 27 and 35 were drawn with discriminatory intent. It also froze a separate ruling from the three-judge federal panel requiring the state redraw nine of its legislative districts because of “intentional discrimination” by race.

Texas: How the Texas redistricting lawsuit outlived a voter who sued | The Texas Tribune

Juanita Wallace was among many voters of color who sued the state over its redistricting plans in 2011, accusing lawmakers of redrawing its political boundaries in a way that diluted the power of black and Latino Texans. Six years later, several elections have played out using embattled state House and congressional maps, even though federal judges so far ruled that Texas leaders intentionally discriminated in approving the boundaries. And the maps will probably stay in place for the 2018 elections as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs the state’s latest appeal. Wallace — a longtime educator, civil rights advocate and former head of the Dallas NAACP — won’t be around to see the result. She died of cancer last year at age 70.

Texas: Appeals court declines request to speed voter ID resolution | Austin American-Statesman

A federal appeals court Tuesday declined to have all 14 judges participate in the appeal over the Texas voter ID law — a decision that will keep the issue unresolved heading into the 2018 elections, one judge said. Civil rights groups, Democrats and minority voters who challenged the voter ID law as discriminatory had asked for the entire court to hear the appeal as a way to speed the case toward resolution. The 10-4 ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, means the appeal will be heard by the customary three-judge panel. Writing in dissent, Justice Jerry Smith noted that the losing side will probably ask the entire court to review the panel’s decision in what is known as “en banc” consideration — a path the 5th Circuit Court took at an earlier stage of the case that, if taken again, would make it “impossible for a decision to be issued before some, if not all, of the 2018 elections are history,” he said.

Texas: Travis County Ditches STAR-Vote’s Innovative Voting System | The Austin Chronicle

Election security, especially when it comes to electronic voting, is not just a matter of trust. Following last year’s elections, and reports that Russian intelligence agencies probed and tested U.S. election systems, it’s now also a matter of national security. Yet last week, Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir told county commissioners that she was canceling an initiative to give local voters a revolutionarily and trustworthy system because no firm would step up to design and implement the software and infrastructure it would require. That system is called STAR-Vote: an open-source electronic voting machine with the kind of verifiable and independently auditable paper trail that transparency groups have for years demanded. Prior to 2001, Travis County shipped every single paper ballot from every polling station in the county to a central location, then put them through an optical scanner – a process that Rice University professor and STAR-Vote team leader Dan Wallach called “a logistical nightmare.” In 2001, the county became one of the first in Texas to adopt the Hart InterCivic eSlate system, picking it over the biggest competitor, the Diebold TSx. That’s proven a wise choice in hindsight; the TSx later faced accusations of being disturbingly easy to hack.

Texas: Judge Blocks Texas Secretary Of State From Giving Voter Information To Trump Commission | KUT

A Texas district judge has issued a temporary restraining order preventing Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos from handing voter information to President Donald Trump’s voter fraud investigation commission. The order, which came out Tuesday, adds Texas to a growing list of states not complying with the president’s investigation into the 2016 elections, which Trump says suffered from large-scale voter fraud. Judge Tim Sulak of the Austin-based 353rd Texas Civil District Court issued the order in response to a lawsuit filed July 20 by the League of Women Voters of Texas, its former president Ruthann Geer and the Texas NAACP against Pablos and Keith Ingram, the Texas Elections Division director in the the secretary of state’s office. The lawsuit seeks to stop the state from handing over voter data from the state’s computerized voter registration files to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The suit argues that doing so would reveal voters’ personal information, “which may be used to solicit, harass, or otherwise infringe upon the privacy of Texas voters.” The secretary of state’s office didn’t immediately return a request for comment for this article.

Texas: Pasadena to remain under federal oversight of election laws | The Texas Tribune

In a crucial victory for Hispanic voters in the Houston suburb of Pasadena, the city will remain under federal oversight for any changes to its voting laws until 2023 — the only setup of its kind in Texas. The Pasadena City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved Mayor Jeff Wagner’s proposal to settle a voting rights lawsuit over how it redrew its council districts in 2013, agreeing to pay out about $1 million in legal fees. Approval of that settlement will also dissolve the city’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that Pasadena ran afoul of the federal Voting Rights Act and intentionally discriminated against Hispanic voters in reconfiguring how council members are elected. The local voting rights squabble had caught the attention of voting rights advocates and legal observers nationwide as some looked to it as a possible test case of whether the Voting Rights Act still serves as a safeguard for voters of color.

Texas: Pasadena to pay $1 million to settle voting rights lawsuit | Houston Chronicle

Pasadena Mayor Jeff Wagner on Friday asked the City Council to settle a voting rights lawsuit that led to national portrayals of the Houston suburb as an example of efforts to suppress Latino voting rights. The proposed settlement with Latino residents who sued the city in 2014 over a new City Council district system calls for the city to pay $900,000 for the plaintiffs’ legal fees and $197,341 for court costs. The item will be on Tuesday’s City Council agenda. “While I strongly believe that the city did not violate the Voting Rights Act or adopt a discriminatory election system,” Wagner said in a statement, “I think it’s in the best interest of the city to get this suit behind us.”

Texas: Proposals for new Travis County election system rejected | KXAN

The Travis County Commissioners court rejected all proposals to build its custom-designed voting system that was supposed to improve security, turning it toward more traditional methods of finding a replacement for its current system. Officials made this decision after proposals to build STAR-Vote did not meet the requirements to create a complete system that fulfills all of the county’s needs. A request for proposals went out late last year, with vendors submitting their ideas early this year. Since 2012, Travis County and the county clerk invested more than $330,000 in time and resources to evaluate election computer security and compare various voting systems. Ultimately, it decided to try to invent its own.

Texas: Lawmakers change voting in nursing homes — for one election, by accident | The Texas Tribune

Elderly Texans living in nursing homes and other residential care facilities will test a new system of voting during the state’s constitutional election in November. But the law triggering that new system will vanish from the books shortly after voting wraps up — because the Legislature passed a bill that may have needed an extra round of proofreading. Local election administrators are now preparing to implement the overhaul for a single election before it’s scrapped. State law allows Texans with disabilities, those who are at least 65 years old or those who plan to be out of their home county during voting to request a mail-in ballot. Under House Bill 658, when residential care facilities request five or more absentee ballots, counties are required to send election judges — representing both major political parties — to deliver the ballots during early voting and oversee voting at those homes, providing assistance if necessary. Residents will vote this way rather than mailing in their ballots, and registered voters who hadn’t requested ballots can vote on-site. 

Texas: Report: Few high schools in Texas comply with voter registration law | Austin American-Statesman

No private high schools and just 14 percent of public high schools in Texas requested voter registration forms for their students from the Secretary of State, according to a report released Wednesday by the Texas Civil Rights Project. The organization as well as the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law found that 198 out of 1,428 public high schools requested the forms. In total, the organizations said, six percent of high schools in Texas requested forms. Schools can receive the forms from other organizations, such as the county, but the Texas Civil Rights Project argued during a press conference Wednesday that the state’s low youth voter registration and turnout rates prove that’s not effective even if that’s the case.

Texas: Supreme Court puts redrawing of Texas political maps on hold | The Texas Tribune

The U.S. Supreme Court has dealt a serious setback to those hoping Texas would see new congressional and House district maps ahead of the 2018 elections. In separate orders issued Tuesday, the high court blocked two lower court rulings that invalidated parts of those maps where lawmakers were found to have discriminated against voters of color. The justices’ 5-4 decisions stay the rulings — which would have required new maps — as they take up an appeal from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan dissented from the majority opinion. The development could upend efforts to get a new map in place ahead of the 2018 elections. After years of legal wrangling, Texans and the minority rights groups suing over the maps were finally set to hash out new maps in court last week, but those hearings were canceled as the Supreme Court asked for responses from the minority rights groups to the state’s emergency request for the high court to intervene. 

Texas: Court losses in voting cases could affect 2018 elections | San Antonio Express-News

With two federal courts again blasting Texas for “intentional discrimination” against blacks and Hispanics in drawing political boundaries, concern is mounting that voter rights litigation could upend the state’s 2018 elections calendar. State officials insisted Friday that they expect to stop the court challenges on appeal and reverse Texas’ losing streak on the voting rights lawsuits; legal experts predicted that Texas could end up back under federal supervision of its elections rules if the appeals fail. In short, the court fight is shaping up as a political game of chicken, with significant consequences no matter how it turns out. “In both of the cases where there are new decisions, the courts have ruled that Texas has purposefully maintained ‘intentional discrimination’ in the way it drew its maps,” said Michael Li, an expert on Texas redistricting who is senior counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.