Texas: Judge sets oral arguments to determine if Texas intended to discrminate with voter ID law | San Antonio Express-News

A federal judge has scheduled oral arguments for Jan. 24 to determine if the Texas Legislature approved a voter ID law in 2011 with the intent to discriminate against minorities. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that Texas’ voter ID law had a discriminatory effect, but said a lower court judge overreached in finding that lawmakers had a discriminatory intent in passing the measure. However, the federal appeals court instructed U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos to revisit the issue.

Texas: Ruling clears way for Pasadena voting rights suit to go to trial | Houston Chronicle

A federal judge has denied Pasadena’s request to throw out a lawsuit challenging its controversial city council redistricting plan, which a group of Hispanic and Latino residents alleges dilutes the voting rights of the suburb’s growing minority population. Judge Lee Rosenthal’s ruling Wednesday after a roughly two-hour court hearing means the case continues toward trial, which Rosenthal has tentatively set for November. Wednesday’s session was one of the first significant hearings in the voting rights case, which has received national attention as emblematic of modern-day battles over the issue more than 50 years after the Voting Rights Act was passed.

Texas: State Prosecuted 15 Illegal Voting Cases But None Involved Impersonation | 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 office of the attorney general of Texas 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: Report on Hill County Election Irregularities Released | Texas Scorecard

Election Systems & Software (ES&S) has released a report on its findings related to errors in the Hill County Republican Primary. The report comes amidst an ongoing investigation by Attorney General Ken Paxton into irregularities with the vote totals reported in the election. Last month, Direct Action Texas discovered that the number of reported votes in the Hill County Republican Primary exceeded by more than 1700 the number of voters the county reported had shown up at the polls. ES&S, which supplies electronic voting machines and other election services to Hill County, was asked by the county to investigate the error. ES&S found that early voting ballot cast totals were incorrect by the same amount as the number of absentee ballots cast, and Election Day ballot cast totals were incorrect by the same number of paper ballots that were voted during early voting.

Texas: Federal Judge Strikes Down Texas Law That Violates Voting Rights Act | NBC

In a move that some say affirms the Voting Rights Act (VRA), a Federal judge in Texas has agreed with Asian-American activists who claimed existing Texas election code unfairly kept voters with language needs from choosing the help they want. In a summary decision issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman ordered Texas officials to refrain from engaging in practices that deny voting rights secured by the VRA and gave the plantiffs seven days to offer remedies to the situation. “The judge agreed with us that this Texas election law was an arbitrary restriction on voting rights,” Margaret Fung, executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) told NBC News. “If a voter walked into the poll site and asked for an ‘assistor,’ anyone (except an employer or union rep) could help. But if the voter didn’t say the magic word and asked for an ‘interpreter,’ that interpreter would have to be a registered voter in the same county where he or she was assisting the voter. It just doesn’t make sense, unless one is trying to disenfranchise a certain group of voters.”

Texas: Ex-CIA officer running for president will sue Texas to get on ballot | Dallas Morning News

Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin, an ex-CIA officer and congressional policy wonk who launched his campaign last week to offer “Never Trump” Republicans a conservative option, faces a steep political challenge gaining enough support to affect the November election. And by jumping into the race so late, McMullin will need to clear significant legal hurdles, as well. Filing deadlines for independent candidates in more than half of the states have already passed, and several more deadlines are fast approaching. That will mean going to court — including in Texas, where an independent had to gather nearly 80,000 signatures by May. “Our intention in Texas is to file a legal challenge, and we think that the great people of Texas will agree with us that there shouldn’t be artificial boundaries on the kinds of people that can run for president,” said Joel Searby, the campaign’s chief strategist.

Texas: Judge asks for election-law changes to help voters with language barriers | Houston Chronicle

Voting rights advocates are poised to propose changes to help voters who face language barriers at the polls after a federal judge ruled recently that a provision of Texas law violated the federal Voting Rights Act. The case began when a Williamson County voter of Indian descent, Mallika Das, was barred from letting her son serve as an interpreter at the polls during the fall 2014 election because state law required interpreters be registered in the same county as the voter. Das’s son was registered in neighboring Travis County. District Court Judge Robert Pitman on Friday tossed out that requirement, writing in an order that those provisions of state law “restrict voter choice in a manner inconsistent with the Federal Voting Rights Act.” The law states that voters facing language barriers should largely be able to choose who helps them at the polls.

Texas: State will ask U.S. Supreme Court to keep strict voter ID law in place | Dallas Morning News

Texas will file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court to keep its controversial voter identification law in place, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office said Tuesday. A federal appeals court ruled July 20 that the stringent law discriminates against black and Hispanic voters. The state will soon file an appeal to “protect the integrity of voting in the state,” said Paxton spokesman Marc Rylander. He declined to specify whether Paxton would file an emergency appeal or go through the standard process, which could make it less likely the stringent ID rules will be in place for November’s elections. In July, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the Texas voter ID law violates the federal Voting Rights Act. Rather than strike down the law in its entirety, the judges ordered a lower court to find a temporary solution for disenfranchised voters as quickly as possible. “The primary concern of this court and the district court should be to ensure that SB 14’s discriminatory effect is ameliorated…in time for the November 2016 election,” Judge Catharina Haynes wrote.

Texas: U.S. judge blocks Texas law on election interpreters | Austin American-Statesman

A federal judge Friday blocked Texas from enforcing a state law that limits the availability of interpreters in polling places, ruling that it violates protections guaranteed by the U.S. Voting Rights Act. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman of Austin came in a lawsuit filed on behalf of Mallika Das, who was born in India and who, in October 2014, brought her son into a Round Rock polling station to act as an interpreter because she had limited proficiency in English. Officials at the Williamson County polling station, however, barred Saurabh Das from helping his mother, relying on a state election law that requires interpreters to be registered to vote in the same county as the person they intend to help.

Texas: Federal Judge Approves Plan to Weaken Texas Voter ID Law | The Texas Tribune

A federal judge on Wednesday approved a plan that says it won’t be mandatory for Texans to present an ID in order to vote in the November general election. The sweeping changes OK’d by U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos come a month after a federal appeals court found the state’s voter ID law — which was passed by the Legislature in 2011 and went into effect in 2013 — to be racially discriminatory. Under the agreement reached by Texas officials and groups suing the state, anyone without an ID can sign a declaration stating they are a U.S. citizen and present proof of residence, such as a utility bill, bank statement or paycheck. “Certainly what happened today in court was a victory,” said Jennifer Clark, an attorney at the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice, who represented plaintiffs in the case. “This is the first time in three years voters will cast a regular ballot in November. It’s a huge victory.”

Texas: State must accept wide range of voter ID, judge orders | Austin American-Statesman

Softening a strict Texas voter ID law that had been found to be discriminatory, a federal judge Wednesday ordered the state to accept a wide range of identification for the November general election. Texans without a photo ID will be able to cast ballots by showing bank statements, utility bills and other forms of identification, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos said, accepting without change an agreement over how to handle the Nov. 8 election that had been reached last week by state officials, the U.S. Justice Department and civil rights groups. The change in rules was required after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that the Republican-favored voter ID law, enacted in 2011, discriminated against minority voters.

Texas: Harris County Sued over Disabled Voting Access | The Texas Tribune

Harris County, which includes Houston, has violated the Americans with Disabilities Act because many of its polling places are inaccessible to voters with disabilities, a new lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice alleges. Many polling places in Harris County, which were surveyed by the justice department during elections in 2013 and 2016, have architectural barriers — such as steep ramps and narrow doors — that make them inaccessible to voters who use wheelchairs, according to the lawsuit. The county also failed to accommodate the needs of voters who are blind or have vision impairments, the federal government argues. Voters with disabilities are “being denied the same opportunities as nondisabled voters to vote in person,” according to the lawsuit.

Texas: State agrees to weaken voter ID law | Associated Press

Texas agreed Wednesday to weaken its voter ID law as courts across the U.S., with only months before the November election, are blocking Republican-controlled states from imposing polling place restrictions that critics say target minorities and the poor. The changes must still be approved by a federal judge. But the looser rules have the important blessing of the U.S. Justice Department and minority rights groups, who sued over the 2011 law and said that 600,000 voters would otherwise lack a suitable ID to cast a ballot this fall. Those voters would now be allowed to sign an affidavit to cast a regular full ballot, and their vote would be counted. Texas must also spend at least $2.5 million on voter outreach before November, according to the joint proposal that Texas and opponents of the law submitted to U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos. “The provisions we’ve agreed to now are critical safeguards for voters,” said Houston attorney Chad Dunn, who is one of the lead attorneys in the lawsuit against Texas. “It’s a critical leap forward.” A spokesman for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Texas worked fast to soften the law before Election Day after a federal appeals court last month ruled that the tough ID restrictions – which accepted concealed handgun permits at polling place, but not college student IDs – violated the federal Voting Rights Acts.

Texas: Voter-ID Laws in Jeopardy as Texas Agrees to Ease Its Rules | Bloomberg

Voter-identification laws are suddenly in peril. In agreeing Wednesday to relax its voter-ID requirements for the November election, Texas showed how far the legal climate has shifted with respect to the wave of state laws enacted over the last decade. The accord came less than two weeks after a federal appeals court said Texas’s ID law was racially discriminatory. Only two years ago, a divided Supreme Court let the Texas law take effect for the 2014 election. That was before Justice Antonin Scalia’s death left the high court without a reliable majority to uphold ID laws. It was also before opponents in some lawsuits had a chance to marshal their evidence against the measures. With evidence in hand, courts also blocked voting restrictions of various types in North Carolina, Wisconsin, North Dakota and Ohio over the past two weeks.

Texas: Harris County Sued over Disabled Voting Access | The Texas Tribune

Harris County, which includes Houston, has violated the Americans with Disabilities Act because many of its polling places are inaccessible to voters with disabilities, a new lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice alleges. Many polling places in Harris County, which were surveyed by the justice department during elections in 2013 and 2016, have architectural barriers — such as steep ramps and narrow doors — that make them inaccessible to voters who use wheelchairs, according to the lawsuit. The county also failed to accommodate the needs of voters who are blind or have vision impairments, the federal government argues. Voters with disabilities are “being denied the same opportunities as nondisabled voters to vote in person,” according to the lawsuit. Harris County officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.

Texas: Voters Take Hit While Judges Ponder Election Laws | The Texas Tribune

The evidence is piling up: If the law allows Texas and other states to discriminate, they will discriminate. Photo voter ID laws, which require voters to offer photographic proof that they are who they say they are, have been flopping in federal courts across the country. The Texas law took a blow from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and was sent back to the trial court to put something better in place in time for the November elections. The court said the Texas law had a racially discriminatory effect. Importantly, it asked the trial court to decide whether that had been the state’s intent. Parts of Wisconsin’s voter ID law were knocked down by a federal judge who said the state was disenfranchising voters because of its “preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud.” The state is appealing that decision.

Texas: What’s the Fix for Texas’ Voter ID Law? “Time is short” to implement a replacement | The Austin Chronicle

Voter ID in Texas violates the Voting Rights Act, and the state must develop new rules before the November election. That was the definitive statement in a majority opinion, nine to six, issued by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals last week. But don’t put your driver’s license away quite yet. While the court has ruled that the current state rules are in the wrong, no one knows what the replacement rules will look like. Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said, “We don’t know very much. The takeaway is that we don’t know what to do.” The core issue was the strict photo ID requirements passed in 2011’s Senate Bill 14, which have been facing legal challenges for half a decade. In 2012, the Justice Department blocked implementation of the rules, and then the state lost its first major defense in 2014, when U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos found that the law did indeed suppress minority voters. The majority opinion of the 5th Circuit’s 15-member appeals bench upheld the core ruling of the lower court, and instructed it to create interim rules in time for the November 8 general election.

Texas: State Adjusts Rules for Special Election After Federal Court Rejects Voter ID Law | KUT

Last week, a federal appeals court ruled Texas’ voter ID law makes it harder for minorities to vote. The state was told it could no longer enforce the law as is. Early voting in the first election since that ruling is now underway, so that special election in Bexar County is following a new set of rules. Voters started heading to the polls yesterday in a special election for House District 120, the race to replace state Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, who retired this year, and the timing of the voter ID ruling had lawyers scrambling. “We were informed of the election I think on Friday morning. And we finished our negotiations at two o’clock in the morning Saturday morning,” said Ezra Rosenberg with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and a member of the legal team that represented a group of Texas voters fighting the state’s law.

Texas: Judge in Texas voter ID case agrees to allow affidavits at polls to cast ballots in San Antonio runoff | San Antonio Express-News

Texas’ strict voter ID law will be weakened to allow voters lacking required photo identification to cast ballots in a San Antonio special election by signing an affidavit, a federal judge ordered. U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos in Corpus Christi has agreed to an affidavit option for voters facing a “reasonable impediment” to obtaining one of seven photo IDs accepted under state law. Ramos’ order is tailored specifically to the runoff election for the House District 120 seat vacated by former state Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, but it marks the first time the state’s voter ID law will be implemented in a watered-down manner. The law has been used since 2013.

Texas: Appeals court calls Texas voter ID law discriminatory, orders changes | Dallas Morning News

Texas’ voter identification law violates federal laws prohibiting electoral discrimination and must be amended before the November election, an appeals court ruled Wednesday. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the heart of the 2011 state law, widely viewed as one of the nation’s strictest requirements, ruling that it violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The ruling does not nullify the entirety of the law, so voters will still need to show identification at the polls in November. But a lower court will need to create some form of interim relief until it can develop a more comprehensive solution for those who face obstacles to obtaining an ID. “The record shows that drafters and proponents of SB 14 were aware of the likely disproportionate effect of the law on minorities, and that they nonetheless passed the bill without adopting a number of proposed ameliorative measures that might have lessened this impact,” Judge Catharina Haynes wrote in the ruling.

Texas: Fixing Voter ID Law Ruled to Be Discriminatory Will Be Tricky Task | The New York Times

Ever since Texas’ strict voter identification law was passed in 2011, Democratic lawmakers and minority groups had focused on how to get it struck down. This week, after a federal appeals court ruled that the law discriminated against minorities, there is a new, equally vexing question: how to fix it. The appellate court’s decision kept the law in place but instructed a lower court judge to come up with procedures to minimize the law’s effect on those who do not have an approved form of government-issued photo ID or who face hurdles in easily obtaining one, many of whom are black or Hispanic. North Carolina, South Carolina and other states that have passed voter ID requirements have had similar court battles over how, and whether, to loosen their rules to accommodate poor and minority voters. One option is allowing voter-registration cards to be used as ID. Those cards are mailed to voters and do not have a photograph, and might be more readily available to an impoverished voter than a government-issued photo ID. Another option is expanding the list of acceptable IDs to include student IDs or government-employee IDs. And yet another possible solution involves having the state exempt the poor from having to show a photo ID to vote, an exception modeled on Indiana’s voter ID law.

Texas: Voter ID Ruling Offers Stinging Rebuke to Law’s Backers | NBC

Wednesday’s ruling by a federal appeals court against Texas’s voter ID law looks likely to lower a massive barrier to voting that had threatened to disenfranchise large numbers of the state’s minority voters. The ruling also offers a stinging rebuke to state lawmakers and officials who enacted and defended the law. And its cogent dismantling of many of the key claims advanced by backers of strict ID laws — all the more remarkable coming from a conservative-leaning court — could have implications beyond the Lone Star State. Still, exactly what happens next — and what it all means for voters this November — remains somewhat up in the air.

Texas: Judge issues blueprint for fixes in Texas’ voter ID law | Houston Chronicle

Texas will have to engage in a “meaningful” education campaign about its beleaguered voter ID law and some people lacking required photo identification may be allowed to once again use voter registration cards to cast ballots in the November election, a federal judge said Thursday. In a two-page order, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos in Corpus Christi provided the first blueprint for potential fixes for Texas’ voter ID measure – one day after a federal appeals court said the law violates federal protections against discrimination at the ballot box. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, largely considered one of the most conservative courts in the country, dealt Texas Republicans a big hit in ruling that the law violates a key section of the Voting Rights Act. The court sent the case back to Ramos, who ruled last year the law flouts federal protections for blacks and Hispanics. She was ordered to make changes before the presidential election to ensure it no longer unfairly harms poor and minority Texas residents.

Texas: Appeals court says Texas voter-ID law discriminates against minorities | The Washington Post

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Texas’s strict voter-ID law discriminates against minority voters, and it ordered a lower court to come up with a fix for the law in time for the November elections. The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, one of the most conservative in the country, declined to strike down the law completely but said provisions must be made to allow those who lack the specific ID the law requires to be able to cast a vote. Nine of the 15 appellate judges who heard the case generally upheld a district court’s finding that 600,000 people, disproportionately minorities, lack the specific kind of identification required — a driver’s license, military ID, passport or weapons permit, among them — and that it would be difficult for many to secure it. African American, Hispanic and poor voters were most likely to be affected, the court found. “It would be untenable to permit a law with a discriminatory effect to remain in operation” for the coming election, wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Catharina Haynes for the majority, made of up five judges nominated by Democratic presidents and four nominated by Republicans.

Texas: Deadline Approaches for Texas Voter ID Law, But It Likely Won’t End the Legal Battle | KUT

The deadline for a federal appeals court to rule on the state’s controversial voter ID law is fast approaching. The U.S. Supreme Court gave the court until July 20 to make a decision about whether the law violates federal civil rights law. But, no matter what happens, this likely isn’t the end of this legal battle. First of all, the fact that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals even has a deadline on this is the first indicator that this case is pretty unique. “Rarely does a circuit court get told by the Supreme Court to decide something by a particular date,” says Joseph Fishkin, a professor at UT Austin’s School of Law. He says there’s a lot that’s novel about this case.

Texas: State’s Tab Defending Voter ID $3.5 Million So Far | The Texas Tribune

More than five years after Republicans fast-tracked legislation limiting the forms of ID accepted to vote in Texas elections, state taxpayers are still picking up the tab for defending the nation’s strictest voter identification law in court. The state has spent more than $3.5 million defending the law in the five separate lawsuits it has spawned, records obtained from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office show. Whether that spending is a “shameful waste” or the cost of fending off the federal government depends on whom you ask. Paxton’s legal team is battling the U.S. Department of Justice, minority groups and other opponents who argue — thus far successfully — that Senate Bill 14, passed in 2011, discriminates against minorities, elderly and poor Texans most likely to lack acceptable government-issued IDs.

Texas: Lawsuit claims Hidalgo County voting machines ‘either faulty or tampered with’ | KGBT

Voting machines in western Hidalgo County were “either faulty or tampered with” to rig the Democratic Party primary runoff election, according to a lawsuit filed Monday. Bail bondsman Arnaldo Corpus — who challenged Justice of the Peace Precinct 3 Place 2 Marcos Ochoa in the primary — filed the lawsuit. Ochoa won 54 percent of 6,625 ballots cast, defeating Corpus, according to results published by the Hidalgo County Elections Department. Corpus, though, claims the Elections Department count isn’t correct.

Texas: Voter ID battle explained: hearing in appeals court just the latest battle | Houston Chronicle

The Texas Attorney General was in federal court Tuesday to defend the state’s controversial voter ID law, which courts have twice tried to strike down. Both times it has persisted. So what is all this hullaballoo about, and why does Texas think it needs to fight so hard to required voters to show state approved ID at the polls? According to Gov. Greg Abbott in March, it’s because “the fact is, voter fraud is rampant” in Texas. But that doesn’t appear to be true all. PolitiFact rated Abbott’s claim “pants on fire,” finding just four documented cases of in-person voter fraud between 2000 and 2014, during which time 72 million ballots were cast in Texas. He and other proponents of the law argue that the burden it requires–showing one of seven forms of state-approved documents in order to vote–should be easily met by any Texan.

Texas: State defends its voter ID law before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals | The Star-Telegram

A top lawyer for Texas fiercely defended the state’s strictest-in-the-nation voter identification law Tuesday in a high-profile case that could ultimately determine at what point states that assert that they are protecting the integrity of elections cross over into disenfranchisement. Standing before all 15 judges of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller argued that judges were wrong to conclude in two previous rulings that the Texas Legislature discriminated against minority and low-income voters in passing a 2011 law that stipulates which types of photo identification election officials can and cannot accept at the polls. If those rulings are left as written, “all voting laws could be in jeopardy,” Keller said before a packed courtroom that included his boss, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Lawyers representing the Justice Department, minority groups and other plaintiffs disagreed, asking the judges to affirm what a lower court — and a three-judge panel in this same courthouse — previously concluded: that Senate Bill 14 has a “discriminatory effect” on Hispanic, African-American and other would-be voters in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Only a handful of judges asked questions at length Tuesday, making it difficult to judge where the majority stands. But the 5th Circuit is considered among the nation’s most conservative, with 10 of its judges having been appointed by Republican presidents.

Texas: Five Years Later, Voter ID Suit Still Moving Forward | The Texas Tribune

Texas’ five-year-old voter identification law — among the nation’s strictest — will face a fresh round of probing Tuesday in a long-winding lawsuit that may ultimately end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. The 15-judge U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans will hear arguments from both Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller and attorneys for opponents of the law, which include minority and voting rights groups. The case asks whether the state discriminated against Hispanics, African-Americans and low-income Texans in passing the law, which stipulates which types of photo identification election officials can and cannot accept at the polls.