Texas: Congressional Maps Are Struck Down for Discrimination | The New York Times

A panel of federal judges in San Antonio has ruled that a handful of Texas congressional districts drawn by the Republican-dominated state Legislature in 2011 discriminated against black and Hispanic voters and violated the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution. The ruling striking down the maps was made late Friday. It is the latest development in a long-running and racially charged redistricting case that locked Democratic lawmakers, minority groups, the Obama administration and the Texas Republican leadership in a legal battle for nearly six years. Democrats and civil-rights lawyers accused the majority-white Texas Republican leadership of drawing district maps in ways that diluted the voting power of Democratic-leaning minority voters, accusations that Republicans denied.

Texas: Bill would make voter fraud claims public information | San Antonio Express-News

The Texas secretary of state’s office has sent 443 allegations of voter fraud to the state attorney general’s office for investigation since 2002. Just don’t ask about them. To the dismay of some state lawmakers, the secretary of state’s office will not release what one Democratic senator called “basic information” on allegations of voter fraud. Just down the road, however, the Attorney General’s office makes much of the information public. Now, an Austin lawmaker has filed a bill to require the secretary of state’s office to divulge additional information about voter fraud allegations. “The idea that you can’t tell the public the number of complaints requires some really contorted logic,” Sen. Kirk Watson said.

Texas: Federal panel rules Texas congressional districts illegal | The Texas Tribune

Some of Texas’ 36 congressional districts violate either the U.S. Constitution or the federal Voting Rights Act, a panel of federal judges ruled Friday. In a long-delayed ruling, the judges ruled 2-1 that the Texas Legislature must redraw the political maps it most recently used for the 2016 elections. Specifically, they pointed to Congressional District 23, which stretches from San Antonio to El Paso, takes in most of the Texas-Mexico border and is represented by Republican Will Hurd of Helotes; Congressional District 27, represented by Blake Farenthold, R-Corpus Christi; and Congressional District 35, a Central Texas district represented by Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin. The 166-page ruling by the San Antonio-based district judges was the latest in a complicated case that dates back to 2011, and comes just two election cycles away from the next U.S. Census — when the state would draw a new map under normal circumstances.

Texas: Conclusion of Pasadena voting rights case could be anticlimactic | Houston Chronicle

The biggest upheaval in Pasadena politics in years has been driven largely by the decisions and actions of one man: Mayor Johnny Isbell. It was Isbell who, immediately after a U.S. Supreme Court decision made it possible, proposed the 2013 charter change creating a City Council election system of six district seats and two at-large seats, replacing an all-district seat system. Isbell said adding at-large positions would provide residents with better representation. It was Isbell who emptied his political account to fund a campaign urging support for the charter change and to oppose a council candidate seen as a potential threat. Isbell was the second named defendant, after the city itself, in a 2014 lawsuit claiming the new council structure intentionally diluted Latino voting strength.

Texas: Was Texas Voter ID Law Biased? Justice Deparment Stays Out of Argument | The New York Times

For several days in 2014 at the federal courthouse here, lawyers argued over whether the Texas Legislature had passed its voter identification law motivated, at least in part, by a desire to deter minorities from voting. Lawyers for the Justice Department said it had, as did lawyers for minority voters and civil rights groups. Lawyers for Texas denied the allegation. More than two years later, in the very same courtroom, the same judge listened to what were largely the same arguments made by many of the same lawyers on Tuesday. But there was one significant exception: The Justice Department stayed out of the fight. On Monday, the Trump administration’s Justice Department withdrew its claim that Texas had enacted the law with a discriminatory intent, reversing a position that had been part of the agency’s yearslong legal battle.

Texas: Voter ID law back in court after Justice Department pulls out | San Antonio Express-News

Lawyers for the state of Texas argued during a court hearing in Corpus Christi on Tuesday that the Legislature did not act with discriminatory intent when it passed a voter ID law that has since been struck down, but they also told a judge that lawmakers will make fixes to it in the current Legislative session. Critics, however, said the proposed changes, if passed in newly introduced legislation, are irrelevant to the discriminatory purpose behind the 2011 law’s passage. Plaintiffs that include civil rights groups asked U.S. District Judge Mary Nelva Gonzales Ramos to hold the state accountable. The groups argue that the Texas law has the potential to keep 600,000 voters, mostly African-Americans and Hispanics, away from the polls. They point, for example, to a provision that allows Texas voters to use hunting licenses as identification, but not student identification cards.

Texas: Justice Dept. Drops a Key Objection to a Texas Voter ID Law | The New York Times

The Justice Department on Monday dropped a crucial objection to Texas’ strict voter-identification law, signaling a significant change from the Obama administration on voting-rights issues. The Republican-led Texas Legislature passed one of the toughest voter ID laws in the country in 2011, requiring voters to show a driver’s license, passport or other government-issued photo ID before casting a ballot. The Obama administration’s Justice Department sued Texas to block the law in 2013 and scored a major victory last year after a federal appeals court ruled that the law needed to be softened because it discriminated against minority voters who lacked the required IDs. Opponents of the law said Republican lawmakers selected IDs that were most advantageous for Republican-leaning white voters and discarded IDs that were beneficial to Democratic-leaning minority voters. For example, legislators included licenses to carry concealed handguns, which are predominantly carried by whites, and excluded government employee IDs and public university IDs, which are more likely to be used by blacks, Hispanics and Democratic-leaning younger voters. But the Justice Department under President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a judge on Monday that it was withdrawing its claim that Texas enacted the law with a discriminatory intent.

Texas: Trump administration drops Texas voter ID claim | Houston Chronicle

The Trump administration is abandoning the government’s six-year-old claim that Texas’ voter ID law was intended to discriminate against Hispanics and other minorities, signaling a new course in one of the signature voting rights cases brought by former President Barack Obama. The about-face came on the eve of Tuesday’s scheduled hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos in Corpus Christi. It also came a week after the U.S. Justice Department and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had asked for a delay in the case because the state legislature is considering changes to the law, which the federal courts already have found to have a discriminatory impact. In court filings Monday, the Justice Department again cited new efforts in the Texas Legislature to “rectify any alleged infirmities” with the 2011 voter identification law, including a “reasonable impediment or indigency exception.” A U.S. Justice Department spokesman said the government would remain a party to a broader discrimination lawsuit brought by a number of legal and civil rights groups.

Texas: Judge denies request to delay lawsuit against Texas voter ID | Associated Press

A long-running lawsuit over Texas’ contentious voter ID law will move forward in federal court, even as the Republican-controlled Legislature considers how best to modify it. A federal judge on Friday denied a request from the U.S. Justice Department and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to delay the case. The Trump administration joined with Texas to ask that next week’s hearing be postponed until June when the Texas Legislature’s session finishes.

Texas: One-man votes form districts that give developers millions in taxing power | Dallas Morning News

One man, said to be living in a trailer on 600 acres of Collin County farm land, cast the single vote this month to give a developer taxing power. The developer, who needed $63 million to build a subdivision, put the trailer there. The voter, who has a home miles away in McKinney, began renting the trailer shortly before the election. Meanwhile in Dallas, another one-man election this month decided whether a developer would get taxing power to finance a $700 million office-retail project. The person casting the ballot was the 24-year-old son of a vice president at the developer’s company. The company owned the home where he was, at least on paper, living. You can probably guess how that turned out. The two elections, if you can really call them that, remind me of a 2001 News investigation that I wrote with Brooks Egerton called “Government by Developer.” We found that developers across North Texas were quietly winning hundreds of millions of dollars in taxing power from voters and elected officials to whom they provided homes, jobs or other benefits. The power came through governmental taxing districts created in elections required by Texas law. Developers bought raw land for their projects, drew proposed district boundaries to exclude existing residents and then moved the only voters into rent-free mobile homes. The elections had as few as one voter and no more than 10. The voters were sometimes employees of the developer.

Texas: Flawed voting in Texas likely the result of confusion — not fraud, official says | San Antonio Express-News

After confusion over whether several hundred Texans voted improperly in the November election, local election officials say that the ballots in question likely were cast by eligible voters who got caught up in the chaotic scramble to implement a court order loosening the state’s strict voter identification law. The law, adopted in 2011 by the GOP-controlled Legislature and mired in a yearslong court battle, requires voters to show one of seven forms of government-issued photo ID. After federal courts found the law to be discriminatory, a judge in August ordered Texas officials to soften its requirements for the Nov. 8 election by allowing registered voters without one of the required photo IDs to cast ballots if they signed affidavits swearing that they had a “reasonable impediment” to obtaining ID and showed other documentation, such as a birth certificate, utility bill, bank statement or government pay stub.

Texas: Plaintiffs oppose Texas and Justice Department effort to delay hearing on Photo ID law | Asian American Press

Groups and individuals suing Texas over its strict photo ID law filed a brief in U.S. District Court Thursday in opposition to a joint request by the state and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), who asked to delay a hearing to determine whether the law was enacted with a discriminatory intent. The state and DOJ said in their request that a bill had been filed in the Texas Legislature which, if passed, would amend the existing strict law. Courts have held four times that the current law discriminates against African Americans and Latinos. In opposing the request, plaintiffs argue that the contents of the new legislation are speculative at this point, and that the bill has not yet been passed. Even if passed into law, the bill “has no bearing on whether SB 14, enacted in 2011, was passed with unlawful discriminatory purpose,” they wrote. The intent hearing was ordered by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last summer when it ruled that the Texas law had a discriminatory effect.

Texas: State Attorney General, Trump administration seek to delay voter ID hearing | PBS

The U.S. Justice Department joined Texas’ attorney general Wednesday in asking a federal court to delay a hearing on the state’s voter ID law, the latest signal that the federal government might drop its opposition to the law now that Donald Trump is president. In the joint filing, the Justice Department and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked to delay next Tuesday’s hearing until summer because the Texas Legislature is considering changes to the existing law, which a federal court has found to be discriminatory. Barack Obama’s Justice Department had joined the lawsuit contesting it.

Texas: Senate unveils new voter ID legislation to fix flaws | Houston Chronicle

A new attempt to enact voter identification rules to comply with court decisions that ruled a current law discriminates against minority voters were unveiled Thursday by Republican legislative leaders. Senate Bill 5 filed by state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, would allow Texans a way to vote if they they cannot “reasonably” obtain one of seven forms of ID currently required at the polls. Ineligible voters who used the option to cast ballots would face stiff penalties under the measure, expected to stir new controversy from Hispanic and minority advocates as GOP leaders try to fix the exiting law.

Texas: Federal Judge Sanctions Texas In Voter Registration Lawsuit | San Marcos Corridor News

A federal judge has ordered sanctions against the state of Texas for blowing past deadlines and ignoring a court order to hand over thousands of pages of documents in a lawsuit challenging its voter registration practices. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office’s “months-long delay” in producing the documents “has been disruptive, time consuming, cost consuming” and has burdened plaintiffs in the lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia of San Antonio wrote in an order signed Thursday. Garcia ordered the state to pay some of the plaintiffs’ legal fees, including those tied to the sanctions request. The Texas Civil Rights Project last March sued on behalf of four Texans who allege the Department of Public Safety denied them the opportunity to cast a ballot — and violated federal law — by failing to update their voter registration records online.

Texas: Republicans pitch new voter ID law | The Texas Tribune

Top Texas Republicans unveiled legislation Tuesday that would overhaul the state’s voter identification rules, an effort to comply with court rulings that have found that the current law discriminates against minority groups. Filed by Sen. Joan Huffman, Senate Bill 5 would add options for Texans who say they cannot “reasonably” obtain one of seven forms of ID currently required at the polls. It would also create harsh criminal penalties for those who falsely claim they need to choose from the expanded list of options. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has granted the bill “priority” status, carving it a faster route through the Legislature. Nineteen other senators have signed onto the bill, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — who is still defending the current ID law in court — applauded the legislation Tuesday.

Texas: Woman fights harsh voter fraud sentence: ‘I just wanted them to hear my voice’ | The Guardian

Rosa Ortega does not deny she made a mistake. What she finds hard to accept is that her error should merit eight years in prison, almost certain deportation to a country she barely knows, separation from her children and notoriety in rightwing circles. “Send me back to Mexico. Get it over with,” she said in an interview with the Guardian on Friday, sitting behind a glass partition in the Tarrant County corrections centre in downtown Fort Worth, Texas. “I’m done, this is already too much, it’s too much and I’m just sitting there, sitting there, sitting there, and I don’t even sleep, I don’t sleep, I don’t do nothing here. On my mind, from day to night, is my kids.” Ortega was brought to the US from Mexico as a baby and lived legally in Texas as a permanent resident. While her green card entitled her to many of the same privileges as an American citizen, it did not confer the right to vote – yet vote she did, repeatedly, in elections in the Dallas area.

Texas: Hundreds of Texans may have voted improperly | Associated Press

Texas election officials have acknowledged that hundreds of people were allowed to bypass the state’s toughest-in-the-nation voter ID law and improperly cast ballots in the November presidential election by signing a sworn statement instead of showing a photo ID. The chief election officers in two of the state’s largest counties are now considering whether to refer cases to local prosecutors for potential perjury charges or violations of election law. Officials in many other areas say they will simply let the mistakes go, citing widespread confusion among poll workers and voters. The Texas law requires voters to show one of seven approved forms of identification to cast ballots. It was softened in August to allow people without a driver’s license or other photo ID to sign an affidavit declaring that they have an impediment to obtaining required identification. Even after the affidavits were introduced, voters who possess an acceptable photo ID were still required to show it at the polls.

Texas: Analysis: Rising Criticism Threatens One-Punch Voting In Texas | San Marcos Corridor News

Partisan efficiency experts might love the time-saving charms of straight-ticket voting, but a number of the state’s top elected officials are ready to outlaw the practice. Straight-ticket, or one-punch, voting allows people to cast a ballot for all of one party’s candidates with one pull of the lever, stroke of the pencil or click of the voting button. Its requires partisan faith on the part of a voter, an expression of trust in a party’s primary voters, a conviction that the chosen candidates — no matter who they are, what they’ve done and whether they are qualified — are better than candidates offered by the opposition party. And it makes the coattails of the people at the top of the ballot very, very influential. Just ask a judge. “I will say only a word about judicial selection, but it is a word of warning,” Texas Supreme Chief Justice Nathan Hecht said this week in his State of the Judiciary speech. “In November, many good judges lost solely because voters in their districts preferred a presidential candidate in the other party.”

Texas: Pasadena won’t fight voting rights order; elections will proceed as planned | Houston Chronicle

The city of Pasadena will not fight an appellate court ruling over its election system, a decision that will allow the upcoming May council elections to proceed with eight-single member district seats, according to the lead attorney for the city in the closely watched voting rights case. The elections will proceed under the district format and will not using six neighborhood council and two at-large seats, a system a district judge ruled was discriminatory against Latino voters. The city, through its attorneys, sought a stay of Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal’s order, but the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of appeals upheld the order.

Texas: Illegal voter ‘can’t believe’ she got 8 years in prison | The Star-Telegram

Rosa Maria Ortega voted for Republican Ken Paxton for Texas attorney general in 2014. Now, as she sits behind a plate glass window Monday with heavy eyes and wearing a tan Tarrant County Jail jumpsuit, she’s crushed that Paxton and others can celebrate her incarceration as sending a message about illegal voting. Ortega, 37, a permanent resident who arrived in Texas as an infant and has four children, all U.S. citizens, was charged with two counts of illegal voting for voting illegally in elections in 2012 and 2014. On Thursday, a Tarrant County jury handed down a sentence of eight years in prison and a $5,000 fine for each count. After serving her sentence, she will likely face deportation. She believes she is wrongly being used as an example of voter fraud. “I thought I was doing something right for my country. When they gave me the sentence they just broke my heart, and they didn’t just break my heart, but I already knew my family was going to be broken, my kids especially,” Ortega said Monday during an interview at the jail, where she will remain for about a month until being transported to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice facility. “To me, it’s like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe this. I just can’t.’ ”

Texas: Murder, rapes have led to lighter sentences in Tarrant County than voter fraud | The Star-Telegram

The eight-year prison sentence given to a Grand Prairie woman for voting illegally has been touted by politicians as a case that sent a message. “In Texas you will pay a price” for voter fraud, tweeted Gov. Greg Abbott. “This case shows how serious Texas is about keeping its elections secure,” state Attorney General Ken Paxton said. But critics argue that Rosa Maria Ortega’s punishment, which was decided by a jury and drew national attention, was too harsh. “Illegal voting should be sanctioned but not like a violent felony,” The Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial Monday. Sam Jordan, spokeswoman for the Tarrant County district attorney’s office, said the eight-year sentence was the jury’s decision. “Our prosecutors — one from the attorney general’s office and one from our office — made no punishment recommendation,” Jordan said. “We said do what you think is right. We didn’t ask specifically for penitentiary time.”

Texas: Voter ID law would have prevented 16,400 from voting in November | Austin American-Statesman

At least 16,400 Texans who voted in the November election wouldn’t have been able to cast ballots if the state’s voter identification law had been in full effect, state voting records show. Adopted in 2011 by a Republican-dominated Legislature, the law requiring voters to show one of seven forms of photo identification has been mired in a years-long legal battle, with opponents arguing that it disenfranchises groups that are less likely to carry identification, such as young people, elderly people and racial minorities. Proponents of the law have argued that the measure is necessary to protect the integrity of the vote. In July, a federal appeals court ruled that the law was discriminatory, and a month later U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos ordered the state to soften the ID requirements for the Nov. 8 election, greatly expanding the types of documentation voters could show to prove their identity. Voters using one of the newly approved documents had to sign statements explaining why they couldn’t obtain one of the seven types of ID originally required by the law.

Texas: Trump voter fraud claim was ‘800lb gorilla in jury box’ at Texas trial | The Guardian

A lawyer has said Donald Trump’s debunked claims of election rigging influenced the outcome of his client’s voter fraud trial, calling the US president’s comments “the 800lb gorilla” in the jury box. Rosa María Ortega, 37, a Mexican national, was jailed for eight years in Fort Worth, Texas, after being convicted of two felony counts of illegal voting over allegations that she improperly cast a ballot five times between 2005 and 2014. Her attorney, Clark Birdsall, said on Friday that Ortega was a permanent resident who was brought to the US as a baby and mistakenly thought she was eligible to vote. He said she voted Republican, including for the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, whose office helped prosecute her. Her sentence was tough: voter fraud convictions, which are rare, often result in probation. As a convicted felon, Ortega is likely to be deported after serving her sentence. Tarrant County prosecutors said jurors made clear they valued voting rights, but Birdsall said he believed Ortega would have fared better in a county with fewer “pro-Trump” attitudes.

Texas: Illegal Voting Gets Texas Woman 8 Years in Prison, and Certain Deportation | The New York Times

Despite repeated statements by Republican political leaders that American elections are rife with illegal voting, credible reports of fraud have been hard to find and convictions rarer still. That may help explain the unusually heavy penalty imposed on Rosa Maria Ortega, 37, a permanent resident and a mother of four who lives outside Dallas. On Thursday, a Fort Worth judge sentenced her to eight years in prison — and almost certainly deportation later — after she voted illegally in elections in 2012 and 2014. The sentence for Ms. Ortega, who was brought to this country by her mother as an infant, “shows how serious Texas is about keeping its elections secure,” Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said in a statement. Her lawyer called it an egregious overreaction, made to score political points, against someone who wrongly believed she was eligible to vote. “She has a sixth-grade education. She didn’t know she wasn’t legal,” said Ms. Ortega’s lawyer, Clark Birdsall, who once oversaw voter fraud prosecutions in neighboring Dallas County. “She can own property; she can serve in the military; she can get a job; she can pay taxes. But she can’t vote, and she didn’t know that.”

Texas: Citizens United lawyer targets Texas campaign finance laws | Associated Press

A case involving political “dark money” and the founder of an organization tied to President Donald Trump’s accusations of voter fraud could lead to a crush of anonymous cash infiltrating elections in the country’s second-largest state, a Democratic lawyer warned the Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday. The nine Republican justices on Texas’ highest civil court heard arguments involving the legality of the state’s ban on corporate contributions, disclosure requirements for political action committees and the question of when a politically active nonprofit should have to disclose its donors like a traditional PAC. Some believe that the case ultimately could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court and potentially reshape campaign finance regulations nationwide.

Texas: Appeals court upholds judge’s order in Pasadena voting rights suit | Houston Chronicle

The Pasadena election system that a judge ruled violated the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against Hispanics cannot be used in the upcoming May council elections, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling by a lower court judge ordering the city to revert to a 2011 system using all single-member districts for the May 6 elections, when the entire city council and the mayor’s seat are on the ballot. The expedited ruling – which came just two weeks before the deadline for candidates to file for office – is a blow to the city and its longtime mayor in a case being closely watched by voting rights advocates nationwide.

Texas: Trump could change Texas voter-ID law by reshaping 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals | McClatchy

During Barack Obama’s second term as president, Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn allowed vacancies on Texas’ federal appeals court to fester, but now that President Donald Trump is in charge they might move quickly to morph the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals into a breeding ground for conservative-leaning decisions. “The one thing Trump said he wanted Ted Cruz’s advice on was judges,” said Kelly Shackleford of the First Liberty Institute, a conservative legal defense organization that talked with Trump about judicial appointments. “You’ve got Cornyn, who was a (Texas state) Supreme Court justice, so you’ve got people who are really known for their expertise.” The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which comprises all of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, is generally considered one of the more conservative federal courts in the country, but it struck down Texas’ controversial voter-ID law last July. That might soon change with Trump in office.

Texas: Appeals court panel weighs Pasadena elections in voting rights case | Houston Chronicle

With May elections hanging in the balance, lawyers made their case before a three-judge appeals court panel in Houston Wednesday in an historic voting rights case that will determine how Pasadena elects its city council. The lawyers’ rapid-fire, back-and-forth discussion with the robed trio of judges perched above them drifted from esoteric — how do you properly measure voting power? — to downright gritty — was Pasadena’s mayor motivated by mounting racial tension when he brought a pistol to a city council meeting? The City of Pasadena asked for the expedited hearing before the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a narrow issue – the structure of Pasadena’s City Council districts for the upcoming election.

Texas: House Speaker Straus calls for end to straight-ticket voting | Houston Chronicle

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus on Wednesday called on his fellow lawmakers to end straight-ticket voting. Straus, R-San Antonio, issued the call in a news release following a speech in which Texas State Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht said Texas should end the option for judicial elections. “I agree with Chief Justice Hecht that we should end straight ticket voting in judicial elections, but we shouldn’t stop there,” said Straus, noting that 40 other states do not have the option in any elections.