Texas: Both in court and under Trump, Texas Voter ID law faces uncertain future | The Texas Tribune

Five years ago, Texas passed one of the strictest Voter ID laws in the country. The legal fight began immediately and has continued through this day, with critics of the law getting some assistance from the Obama administration’s Justice Department. Now, with Republican Donald Trump set to ascend to the Oval Office, the law’s future is more uncertain than ever. Among the questions up in the air: Whom will Trump nominate to the U.S. Supreme Court seat left vacant by Antonin Scalia’s death, and how will a Trump-led Justice Department operate compared to the current administration? “We’re not going to stand idle when a law is discriminatory,” said Leah Aden, senior counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “The strategy may be different depending on who is in office, but we’ll fight it regardless of who’s in power.”

Texas: Pasadena voting rights case opens in federal court | Houston Chronicle

On the north side of Pasadena, mostly Latino residents live amid broken sidewalks, faulty drainage and pockmarked streets. On the south side of Spencer Highway, where most residents are white, municipal parks are manicured and the streets and sidewalks are better maintained. The disparity in infrastructure is at the heart of a voting rights case that opened in federal court Thursday in which a group of Latino residents is challenging the city’s newly revised system of government, saying it discriminates against minority voters and intentionally dilutes their power. By creating two at-large council seats and eliminating two of the eight district seats, the suit says, the city violated the federal Voting Rights Act, making it harder for Latino-backed candidates to get elected and leading to unfair allocation of resources.

Texas: Pasadena trial to begin amid uncertainty about voting rights under Trump | Houston Chronicle

The Houston City Council in 1979 consisted of eight men – seven Anglos and one African-American – including real estate developers, lawyers and a former major league baseball catcher. All were elected citywide, although five nominally represented geographic districts in which they lived. A year later the council had grown to 14 members, nine of them elected from single-member districts. The revamped body included three African-American men, one Latino man and two women, both Anglo. Some of the members elected under the new system would have a lasting impact on their city. Anthony Hall would serve as chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority board and as a top mayoral aide. Eleanor Tinsley would establish a legacy as a champion of parks and beautification efforts. Ben Reyes would become a leader of local Latino politics before serving time in federal prison for bribery. All of this happened because of lawsuits filed under the federal Voting Rights Act. Next week in a Houston federal courtroom, this landmark law will again be invoked in a challenge to an allegedly discriminatory council system, this time in a suburban city that’s undergone a dramatic demographic transformation.

Texas: Researchers Develop Hard-to-Hack Voting Machine | VoA News

National security experts say hackers backed by foreign governments are trying to influence the U.S. election, and the nation’s voting infrastructure is dangerously vulnerable. Time for an overhaul, they say. But when county officials in Austin, the capital of Texas, wanted to replace their voting equipment in 2012, they didn’t like what they saw. Electronic machines on the market had security problems. Voter-marked paper ballots can leave room for interpretation. So County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir called Rice University computer science professor Dan Wallach, who has been poking holes in voting-machine security for years. He’s testified before Congress on the subject. Now DeBeauvoir wanted him to design a new one. “Wow,” he says. “That doesn’t happen very often.”

Texas: After early voting glitches, officials hope new voter ID rules clear | The Texas Tribune

Two weeks of early voting revealed strains and missteps as Texas tried to comply with a court order reining in its voter ID law. When Election Day dawns, civil rights advocates, along with state and county officials, hope that most wrinkles have been ironed out for the ultimate test. “I think there’s been a needed pressure on the counties, as well as a public awareness,” Marisa Bono, southwest regional counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense Educational Fund (MALDEF), said Friday — Texans’ last day to vote early before Tuesday’s anticipated poll rush. “We’ve certainly had less complaints this week than we did last week.” Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State Carlos Cascos, said her office was also fielding fewer calls from confused or concerned voters, making her optimistic Election Day will go smoothly.

Texas: Report: Texas has closed most polling places since court ruling | The Texas Tribune

Five Texas counties rank among the top 10 nationwide for closing the greatest percentage of their polling places since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, according to a new report released less than a week before Election Day. And taken together, Texas counties have closed more polling places than any other state, the report found. According to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a civil rights advocacy group, since the high court found Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional — ruling that Texas and other states with history of racial discrimination no longer needed federal pre-clearance when changing election laws — Texas counties have closed at least 403 polling places. This will be the first election in 50 years conducted without the full force of the Voting Rights Act. Fisher, Medina, Aransas and Coke and Irion counties ranked the highest in polling place reductions, closing more than half of their voting locations. In terms of total polling places closed, Texas is followed by Arizona, which closed 202 polling places. Louisiana holds third place, with 103 poll closures.

Texas: Someone in Texas lined a Trump sign with razor blades, then left it at a polling place | The Washington Post

Let’s just come out and say it: 2016 has been a slow-burning dumpster fire, and the presidential election is largely responsible. But in the weeks leading up to Nov. 8, the doomsday aura surrounding American politics seems to have most overwhelmed one state in particular — Texas. Some counties there are using paper ballots; voters have blamed electronic glitches on nefarious, and unfounded, ballot-swapping schemes; and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has made unsubstantiated conspiracy theories of voter fraud in Texas a talking point during some of his recent stump speeches. Now, there’s this: Somebody in the Dallas metropolitan area glued razor blades to the bottom of a Trump campaign sign this week and plunged it into the ground outside an early-voting polling place. It was left in front of the official polling site sign, according to a statement obtained by ABC affiliate WFAA-TV, blocking “vote here” directions, so a do-gooder decided to relocate it at about 6:15 a.m. Tuesday.

Texas: Harris County early voters greeted with incomplete ID instructions | Houston Chronicle

A day after election officials were reminded to tell voters they could cast ballots if they do not have photo identification, poll workers across Harris County on Tuesday still were giving incomplete instructions to voters waiting in line. A federal judge ordered the state to dilute Texas’ stringent voter ID law to offer citizens without government-issued identifications – about 600,000 people, many of them minorities – the chance to cast ballots using alternative forms of identification. The judge’s order followed a ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year that Texas’ voter ID law violated federal ballot-box protections for minorities. Under the watered-down provisions – implemented for the November election only – a voter may cast a ballot after signing a declaration explaining the “reasonable impediment” that prevented him from getting a photo ID, such as a lack of transportation, disability or work schedule. The “declaration” voters must present an supporting identifying document, such as a birth certificate, bank statement or utility bill.

Texas: Lawmakers mull paper backups for electronic voting machines | KGBT

Following repeated allegations by Republican Donald Trump that the election may be rigged to ensure a win for Democrat Hillary Clinton, Texas lawmakers are actively considering ways to boost confidence in the state’s elections during next year’s legislative session. Among the ideas drawing interest: adding paper trail backups to thousands of electronic voting machines. The idea was brought up in a tweet Saturday by Gov. Greg Abbott. “That’s a great idea & we are considering it as an election reform measure. Election integrity is essential,” Abbott tweeted in response to a voter who tweeted that he wanted printed proof of how he cast his ballot. Over the last decade, several Texas lawmakers have filed bills to require paper trails on electronic voting machine. The proposals often include adding a printer in a sealed case to the state’s electronic voting machines so voters could check their votes against the receipt. The paper trail could be consulted in the event of a recount.

Texas: Flouting Federal Courts On Voter ID Isn’t Helping Texas’ Legal Defense | TPM

There is, perhaps, never a good time for local elections administrators to be undermining federal court orders, ignoring state officials and providing voters with false information about what is required to cast a ballot. But for poll workers in Texas who have been caught spreading inaccurate information about the state’s voter ID law, the timing is particularly unfortunate, given the legal scrutiny the law already is under and is continuing to the attract. The same civil rights groups and voting advocates who have been engaged in a lengthy legal battle over the law — which has been deemed discriminatory by multiple courts — are now reporting that some county officials are failing to educate voters about the alternatives available to those without the required ID. At least one county faces a lawsuit for posting inaccurate information about the law, while the Texas secretary of state has been alerted to numerous other polling places misinforming votes. The on-the-ground confusion comes as Texas is seeking to have the major ruling against the law — a 5th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals decision that deemed it discriminatory in its effect — overturned by the Supreme Court.

Texas: Voting complaints in Texas include confusion over ID requirements | Houston Chronicle

Marked by record turnout, Texas’ first week of early voting has been plagued by widespread confusion about controversial photo ID requirements with cases of people being turned away at the polls, civil rights groups monitoring state activity said Friday. A coalition of civil rights groups manning a hotline says it has received around 325 reports from Texas since early voting started Monday, most of which involved disorder, inaccurate information and intimidation tactics by election officials and poll workers surrounding the state’s voter ID law. Other complaints involved long lines, malfunctioning machines and an armed person in North Texas talking politics to voters in line. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund on Friday filed a lawsuit against Bexar County for having outdated voter ID information, including posters, website materials and a recorded message. The county agreed to a temporary restraining order.

Texas: Amid early voting rush, Texas sees voter ID hiccups | The Texas Tribune

This much is clear after two days of early voting in Texas: Legal wrangling over the state’s voter identification law is stirring confusion at the polls. Amid Texans’ mad dash to polling places this week, the front end of 12 days of voting before Election Day, civil rights groups and some voters are questioning how some county election officials are portraying the state’s voter identification requirements, which a federal judge softened in August. Among the complaints in pockets of Texas: years-old posters inaccurately describing the rules — more than a dozen instances in Bexar County — and poll workers who were reluctant to tell voters that some could cast ballots without photo identification. Though it’s not clear that anyone walked away from the polls because of misinformation or partial information, civil rights advocates called the sporadic reports troubling.

Texas: Trump suggests voter fraud is rampant in Texas – where his party oversees the system | McClatchy DC

Donald Trump is worried about “vote flipping” in Texas, a state where Republicans control every statewide elected office, oversee county elections supervisors and maintain the voter registration system. “A lot of call-ins about vote flipping at the voting booths in Texas,” Trump tweeted. “People are not happy. BIG lines. What is going on?” A Tarrant County woman said her vote switched from Republican to Democrat when she cast her ballot at an electronic voting machine earlier this week, but an investigation determined she did not follow the proper instructions. “Our investigations have indicated that the voter did not follow the directions for straight-party voting when they inadvertently click the ‘enter’ button or turn the wheel, causing the change in votes,” Tarrant County elections administrator Frank Phillips said in a statement. “Further, in each incident where we could actually speak to a voter, they tell us that they discovered the changed vote on the summary screen display. This shows that the machine is working exactly as it should.” Phillips said on Thursday his office investigated six first-hand cases of voters claiming their votes were not tallied correctly since the start of early voting on Monday. None of the investigations showed a machine tallying votes incorrectly.

Texas: Voter ID ad dollars do not go far | Houston Chronicle

Texas is not taking part in a discount offered by broadcasters that could have allowed it to air up to four times more television and radio ads to educate the public about changes to the state’s voter ID law. The Texas Secretary of State’s office has been running a 30-second voter ID television and radio spot in English and Spanish for almost two weeks, and has estimated that it will spend at least $1.3 million on a paid media campaign through Election Day to fulfill a court order. Experts, though, have said the TV and radio spend is not nearly enough to spread a message on airwaves in a state the size of Texas, which has 20 total television markets and two of the most expensive in the country in Houston and the Dallas/Fort Worth area. The Texas Association of Broadcasters, which represents the state’s over-the-air television and radio industry, offers a discount program that guarantees to triple or quadruple the ad buying power of a strapped-for-cash government agency or nonprofit seeking to get out a general education message. However, state broadcasters, who use public airwaves to disseminate their programming, said Texas’ voter outreach program did not qualify for the TAB discount.

Texas: Officials deny complaints of election machine malfunctions in Texas | UPI

Early voters in several Texas counties have taken to social media to complain touch screen voting machines switched their straight party Republican votes to ballots for Hillary Clinton, though election monitors said no instances of faulty machines have been verified. The problem, officials said, was probably user error by voters who are unfamiliar with touch screen technology. The Dallas Morning News reports voters from at least four counties complained on social media the electronic machine that produces their ballot switched their vote from a straight line Republican ticket to a vote for Hillary Clinton. Other down-ballot races were not affected, voters said. Elections officials in all but one of the affected counties said no voters had registered official complaints. In a handful of instances, voters took the ballot to poll workers, saying their ballot reflected something other than what they had intended. In those instances, officials said the poll workers voided the ballot and moved the voter to a different machine where they were able to correct the problem.

Texas: How Secure Is Electronic Voting In Texas? | Houston Public Media

Joan Cunningham grew up in Canada and remembers watching people vote the old fashioned way: Fill out a paper ballot, drop it in a box. She understands electronic voting machines can be more efficient. “But my professional life was spent as an epidemiologist. I used, and still do, computers a lot for everything I do. And I have some practical insights into the things that can go wrong, data that can get corrupted or changed or lost,” Cunningham says. She wonders how vote recording errors and even fraud, can be prevented when such machines generate no paper records for backup. Pamela Smith says Cunningham’s concerns are legitimate. Smith is president of Verified Voting, a nonprofit, non-partisan group that examines the role of technology in elections. “People sometimes think software is infallible,” Smith says, “but in fact it’s programmed by humans, and humans are not infallible. So you can have errors in programming. There have been actual errors in programming in past elections that have been uncovered by doing audits and recounts.”

Texas: Officials prepare for uncertainty, confusion as early voting begins Monday | Houston Chronicle

Harris County politicos are bracing for uncertainty with Monday’s start to early balloting, as many voters remain confused about Texas’ voter identification requirements and Donald Trump continues to warn – without proof – of a “rigged election.” … Amid the tumult, local Democrats eager to keep tabs on balloting have rushed to train as poll watchers. “Why are the Democrats gearing up? Well it’s because the Republican presidential nominee is saying he’s not going to abide by the results. He’s saying the election is rigged,” said Harris County Democratic Party Chair Lane Lewis, projecting that roughly 180 people will complete one of the party’s poll watching courses. The Democratic Party certified just 20-30 poll watchers for the 2012 general election, Lewis said.

Texas: Worries of ‘rigged election’ shouldn’t change voting security in Texas polling places, officials say | Dallas Morning News

The Texas elections office isn’t calling for increases in voter security throughout the state, despite widespread concern over Donald Trump’s claims of a “rigged election.” Secretary of State spokeswoman Alicia Pearce said the office isn’t advising precincts to ramp up security past the usual protocol because Texas’ voting system doesn’t lend itself easily to organized voter fraud.
The Texas elections office isn’t calling for increases in voter security throughout the state, despite widespread concern over Donald Trump’s claims of a “rigged election.” Secretary of State spokeswoman Alicia Pearce said the office isn’t advising precincts to ramp up security past the usual protocol because Texas’ voting system doesn’t lend itself easily to organized voter fraud. “It is incredibly decentralized. That’s 254 entities across the state using a variety of voting equipment,” Pearce said. “That sort of decentralization coupled with our cross-checks would make predetermining election night results nearly impossible.” The Republican presidential nominee set off a flurry of anxiety among voters this week with his comments. His running mate, Mike Pence, explained that they were in reference to biased coverage, but Trump tweeted Sunday that he was also speaking about fraud in polling locations.

Texas: Voter fraud being investigated by state in Tarrant County | The Star-Telegram

Less than a month before the Nov. 8 election, allegations of voter fraud in Tarrant County are under investigation by the state, prompting concern that the timing may intimidate some voters — and possibly lay groundwork for the Legislature to enact more restrictions on voting next year. The complaints focus on mail-in ballots, which allow people to vote from their homes without any ID or verification of identity. Supporters have long said mail-in balloting is crucial for overseas residents, the military and senior citizens. Critics maintain that such voting is ripe for abuse and raises concerns about “vote harvesting,” in which people could fill out and return other people’s ballots. Some say the investigation is politically motivated; others say it’s addressing a practice that has been a problem for years. “The Republicans have been looking for a blockbuster case to demonstrate that voter fraud isn’t just a series of small mistakes,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “If some of these allegations turn out to be true, they may finally have their white whale.

Texas: Odd voting law on interpreters scuttled before November election | The Texas Tribune

Mallika Das, a U.S. citizen who was born in India, walked into a Williamson County polling place in 2014 eager to cast her ballot. Because she was not proficient in English and had found it difficult to vote in the past, Das brought her son, Saurabh, to help her. They both spoke Bengali, an Asian dialect. But when Saurabh told poll workers he was there to interpret the English ballot for his mother, the duo ran into an unexpected requirement. By law, a poll official determined, Saurabh could not serve as an interpreter for his mother because he was not registered to vote in the county. Saurabh was registered to vote in neighboring Travis County.

Texas: State Election Officials Say Voter ID Change Ads Should Be Airing ‘Any Day Now’ | KUT

Texans across the state will soon be inundated with TV and radio ads ahead of this year’s presidential election. However, the ads won’t be from candidates running for office, but from the state of Texas. The state-funded ads are intended to inform voters of the recent court-ordered changes to Texas’ voter ID law. When Texas lost a legal battle over its voter ID law earlier this year, they were given a couple of instructions. They had to change the law and make it easier for people to vote this November. They also had to let Texas voters know what changed, and they have to spend $2.5 million doing that. Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson with the Texas Secretary of State’s office, says TV and radio ads have just been shipped to markets for all 254 counties in the state – and they should be airing “any day now.” “It does take time from once it leaves the studio to actually get up on air, but they were approved and could be running as soon as today,” she says.

Texas: Election security: Officials say Texas voter databases haven’t been hacked | The Star-Telegram

Texas election systems are safe from hackers — so far. As more than 20 other states grapple with hackers targeting their voter registration systems, Texas election officials say this state’s electoral system has not been breached. “We haven’t found anything,” Texas Secretary of State Carlos Cascos told the Star-Telegram. “We don’t have any information … that we have been threatened or that there has been an attempted threat to hack into our systems. “We’ve got protocols in place, safety valves in place, to alert us to something like that.” Federal officials are offering few details or specifics about why voting systems across the country are being hacked. They do, however, say that the target has been voter databases, not actual voting systems. FBI Director James Comey said, “There’s no doubt that some bad actors have been poking around.” And he stressed that the FBI is trying to determine “what mischief is Russia up to in connection with our election.”

Texas: The Texas Voter ID Fight Keeps Getting Weirder | Bloomberg

Texas officials have spent years in court fighting to keep their state’s controversial 2011 voter-ID law alive. The law, one of the toughest in the U.S., requires Texans to show some form of government-issued identification at their polling place. Under a court-approved August compromise with the Department of Justice, Texas must allow voters who show up without a driver’s license or other photo ID to sign a sworn affidavit stating that they’d encountered an impediment to obtaining the required documents before Election Day. On Sept. 20, the federal district judge who oversaw the August agreement denied a plea from the NAACP, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and Dallas and Hidalgo counties claiming Harris County clerk Stan Stanart and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton were effectively intimidating voters by publicly suggesting that people who filed affidavits could be criminally prosecuted if it turned out they’d been issued driver’s licenses or other IDs in the past. “If you sign that affidavit and you lie about not being able to get a photo ID, you can be prosecuted for perjury,” Paxton told Fox News on Aug. 18. The judge’s ruling was a victory for Stanart, an active member of the state Republican Party whose campaign website touts him as “the proven conservative leader.” Harris County, which covers Houston, is the biggest in Texas and third-largest in the U.S., with a population the size of Kentucky. Early voting in Texas starts on Oct. 24.

Texas: Liberty County community, commissioners mixed on electronic voting | Dayton News

Liberty County commissioners met in a workshop Sept. 20 to ask questions and to listen to the public regarding a new electronic voting system and tackle the issue of voting centers. They received an earful from both sides of the issue, but resolved nothing. While no voting or decisions could be made by the commissioners during the meeting, there wasn’t even a consensus with one exception — the county doesn’t have the money in its current financial situation to purchase the equipment anyway. So why consider equipment the county can’t afford? The wave to refresh aging voting systems is crossing the state and the country since most are reaching the 11-year-old mark. For Liberty County to wait until it is possibly mandated by the state to convert to all electronic could be costly as current pricing would be elevated because of supply and demand in the market.

Texas: Judge Orders Texas Officials To Reprint Misleading Voter Education Materials | News One

A federal Judge in Texas has ruled the state violated an agreement it made in July to soften its voter ID law, one of the strictest in the country and as a result, will have to reprint their voter education materials. In July, a court ruled that the Texas voter ID law discriminated against Blacks and Hispanics who were less likely than Whites to have government-issued photo ID’s. Texas officials agreed to ease the photo ID restrictions allowing other forms of identification to be used, but the phrasing in their voting guidelines did not make that clear. According to the agreement made in July voters would be allowed to cast their ballots with a signed affidavit and a paycheck, bank statement, utility bill or other government document that included their name.

Texas: Attorney General To Ask Supreme Court To Rule On Voter ID Law | CBS

The nation’s highest court may soon decide the fate of the controversial voter ID law here in Texas. State Attorney General Ken Paxton will ask them to take up the case. Paxton will make the request to find out once and for all whether the state’s voter id laws are legal. Republican State Senator Don Huffines of Dallas applauds Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s decision to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the state’s voter ID law. “I think it’s a great decision.” says Senator Don Huffines. Huffines says he’s confident the nation’s highest court will overturn lower court rulings that the 2011 law is discriminatory against minorities. “We’ve had voter ID in Texas for several years now, and we’ve conducted several major statewide elections under the law, and we have no history of anyone being disenfranchised.”

Texas: Judge Orders Texas to Rewrite Voter ID Education Materials | The Texas Tribune

A federal judge has ordered Texas to issue new voter education materials, siding with those who accused state officials of misleading voters about identification requirements for the November elections. U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos on Tuesday ordered changes to certain press releases, posters placed at polling locations and materials on state websites related to voting in the Nov. 8 elections. She is also requiring that “all materials related to the education of voters, poll workers, and election officials that have not yet been published shall reflect the language” of a prior court order allowing those who arrive at the polls without one of seven forms of photo identification required under state law to cast a ballot. Ramos’ order came after the federal government and other groups challenging the state’s photo ID law — ruled discriminatory by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit — accused Texas of circulating “inaccurate or misleading information” about a temporary fix she ordered for the upcoming election.

Texas: Federal Judge Says Texas Election Officials Need to Follow Voter ID Court Order | KUT

A federal judge sided again today with plaintiffs in the long legal battle over Texas’ voter ID law. This time, the U.S. Department of Justice joined the group of Texas voters challenging the state’s law, arguing Texas election officials were misleading voters about court-ordered changes to the law. According to lawyers in the case, during a hearing for that motion today, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos ordered state officials to do a better job of communicating the changes she ordered several weeks ago. Chad Dunn, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the voter ID case, says he doesn’t understand why the state deviated from language both sides had previously agreed upon. “But, the communications going forward are going to accurately reflect what the court ordered as an interim remedy, and voters are going to have the correct information,” he says.

Texas: Controversial voter ID law can’t stop mail-in ballot fraud | The Washington Post/News21

Until the day she was arrested, 53-year-old Vicenta Verino spent years canvassing poor, elderly and mostly Latino neighborhoods, harvesting mail-in ballots for candidates who paid her to bring in votes. Her crime: unlawful assistance of a voter, an offense that would not have been prevented by the state’s voter ID law. Texas officials claim that the law is needed to prevent fraud, but only 15 cases have been prosecuted by the Texas attorney general’s office between the 2012 primary election and July of this year, according to a News21 review of more than 360 allegations the office received in that time. Eleven of those 15 are cases are similar to Verino’s, in which “politiqueras” — people hired by local candidates in predominantly Latino communities — collect and mail ballots for mostly elderly local voters. Texas election laws restrict who can have assistance while voting by mail and require a signature on the ballot from the person who assisted the voter. “We used to work street by street seeing people, talking about the candidates, and those times, it kind of used to help the people,” Verino said, now two years after her arrest for voter fraud.

Texas: Meet the man at the center of the battle over the Texas voter ID law | Austin American Statesman

Texas Secretary of State Carlos Cascos entered the Karnes County Courthouse one morning last week with the usual spring in his step to tell an attentive audience of about 30 local officials and interested parties about the state’s voter ID law, struck down by a federal judge as unduly restrictive and discriminatory. Any of seven photo IDs will work, he begins, reiterating the parameters of the original law, by way of introducing court-ordered changes. “Where the change is now is that if someone is unable to obtain one of those seven IDs, that’s OK — they can come in and they need to file a declaration saying that they’ve been impeded or there’s a reasonable impediment as to why they’ve been unable to obtain one of the seven approved IDs,” he says. Only then should poll workers accept other forms of identification to vote, such as a birth certificate, voter registration card, pay check, utility bill, bank statement or government document, he explains. “It’s really not that complex,” Cascos says, in a presentation he gives several times a week.