Texas: Little demand for voter ID cards, but some hit obstacles | Houston Chronicle

Every document Casper Pryor could think of that bore his name was folded in the back pocket of his jeans. But sitting on a curb Thursday, a can of Sprite in hand, Pryor wasn't sure whether those papers and the hour-long bus ride he had taken to get to Holman Street would result in a crucial new piece of ID. An ID that would allow the 33-year-old Houston native to vote. Election identification certificates were designed for the 600,000 to 750,000 voters who lack any of the six officially recognized forms of photo ID needed at the polls, according to estimates developed by the Texas secretary of state and the U.S. Department of Justice. Legislators created the EICs, which are free, in part to quell criticism that enforcing the state's much-litigated ID law amounted to a poll tax that could disenfranchise low-income and minority voters. But as of Thursday, only 371 EICs had been issued across Texas since June 2013. By comparison, Georgia issued 2,182 free voter ID cards during its first year enforcing a voter ID law in 2006, and Mississippi has issued 2,539 in the 10 months its new law has been in place. Both states accept more forms of photo identification at polls than Texas does, so fewer voters there would need to apply for election-specific IDs. In Texas, some would-be voters are hitting roadblocks.

Texas: No Poll Pads for election day | The Kingsville Record

Technology purchased to help speed up the voting process in Kleberg County will not be available on Election Day, officials said this week.
Kleberg County had previously purchased 34 iPads to be used with an application called Poll Pad that did away with the paper sign in process at polling stations. The system was first used during last November’s constitutional election and was successfully used during the Primary Election in March. Election personnel at the polling stations were able to use the tablet’s camera to scan a voter’s driver’s license or voter registration card, and the system automatically matched the voter to a database stored on the device. On Wednesday, Kleberg County Clerk Stephanie Garza said the Poll Pads were used during the first three days of early voting, but she and her staff immediately encountered a problem.

Texas: Messing With Texas Again: Putting It Back Under Federal Supervision | Richard Hasen/TPM

Readers of the entire 147-page opinion issued earlier this month by a federal district court striking down Texas’s strict voter identification law as unconstitutional and a violation of the Voting Rights Act might have been too exhausted to realize that the opinion’s very last sentence may be its most important. The court ended its opinion with a dry statement promising a future hearing on “plaintiffs’ request for relief under Section 3(c) of the Voting Rights Act.” That hearing, however, has the potential to require Texas to get federal approval for any future voting changes for up to the next decade, and to make it much more difficult for the state to pass more restrictive voting rules. It may be much more important than the ruling on the voter ID law itself. From 1975 through 2013, Texas was one of a number of (mostly Southern) states and jurisdictions which were subject to “preclearance” under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. This meant that before Texas could make any changes in its voting rules (such as enacting a voter identification law or passing a new redistricting plan) it had to demonstrate either to the United States Department of Justice or to a three-judge federal court in Washington D.C. that its change was not intended, and would not have the effect, of making minority voters worse off. Texas enacted its voter identification law in 2011, but the Department of Justice believed it was discriminatory, and a three-judge court rejected Texas’s request to implement the law.

Texas: Ginsburg Was Right: Texas’ Extreme Voter ID Law Is Stopping People From Voting | Huffington Post

A Texas voter ID law considered to be one of the most restrictive in the country is doing exactly what Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned it would do: stopping Americans from voting. A disabled woman in Travis County was turned away from voting because she couldn’t afford to pay her parking tickets. An IHOP dishwasher from Mercedes can’t afford the cost of getting a new birth certificate, which he would need to obtain the special photo ID card required for voting. A student at a historically black college in Marshall, who registered some of her fellow students to vote, won't be able to cast a ballot herself because her driver's license isn't from Texas and the state wouldn't accept her student identification card. There are plenty of stories like this coming out of Texas in the early voting period leading up to Election Day. Texas' tough voter ID law, signed by Gov. Rick Perry in 2011, requires voters to show one of seven types of photo identification. Concealed handgun licenses are allowed, but college student IDs are not, nor are driver’s licenses that have been expired for more than sixty days.

Texas: As Texas votes early, voter ID sparks frustration and motivation | MSNBC

Pastor Frederick Douglass Haynes marches across the stage of Friendship Baptist Church, a mega-congregation of 12,000 people here. It’s Oct. 26, the penultimate Sunday before the 2014 midterm elections. “This is Freedom Sunday!” Haynes shouts into a microphone, drawing out each word. The sound system plays “Jesus Walks,” an upbeat anthem by rapper Kanye West that samples “Walk With Me,” a gospel classic. The choir, about 50 teenagers clad in black t-shirts, sways. Haynes has promised a briefing on the church’s new political program, but he doesn’t say much about the candidates. His largest applause lines are about the right to vote itself. “There’s a shameful, sinful attempt to suppress the vote,” he says, criticizing Texas for “one of the most suppressive Voter ID laws in the nation.”

Texas: ‘Born and raised’ Texans forced to prove identities under new voter ID law | The Guardian

Eric Kennie is a Texan. He is as Texan as the yucca plants growing outside his house. So Texan that he has never, in his 45 years, travelled outside the state. In fact, he has never even left his native city of Austin. “No sir, not one day. I was born and raised here, only place I know is Austin.” You might think that more than qualifies Kennie as a citizen of the Lone Star state, entitling him to its most basic rights such as the ability to vote. Not so, according to the state of Texas and its Republican political leadership. On 4 November, when America goes to the polls in the midterm elections, for the first time in his adult life Eric Kennie will not be allowed to participate. Ever since he turned 18 he has made a point of voting in general elections, having been brought up by his African American parents to think that it is important, part of what he calls “doing the right thing”. He remembers the excitement of voting for Barack Obama in 2008 to help elect the country’s first black president, his grandmother crying tears of joy on election night. “My grandfather and uncle, they used to tell me all the time there will be a black president. I never believed it, never in a million years.”

Texas: Rice team sets sights on better voting machine | Phys.org

At the urging of county election officials in Austin, Texas, a group of Rice University engineers and social scientists has pulled together a team of U.S. experts to head off a little-known yet looming crisis facing elections officials nationwide. According to a January report from the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, U.S. elections officials are facing an "impending crisis" as they look to replace the aging voting systems they purchased after Florida's flawed 2000 election. The commission concluded that elections officials "do not have the money to purchase new machines, and legal and market constraints prevent the development of machines they would want even if they had the funds." But a STAR (Secure, Transparent, Auditable and Reliable) voting system is on the horizon.

Texas: Analysis: A Missing Piece in the Voter ID Debate | The Texas Tribune

Republican state officials working to pass a voter photo ID law in 2011 knew that more than 500,000 of the state’s registered voters did not have the credentials needed to cast ballots under the new requirement. But they did not share that information with lawmakers rushing to pass the legislation. Now that the bill is law, in-person voters must present one of seven specified forms of photo identification in order to have their votes counted. A federal judge in Corpus Christi has found the law unconstitutional, but the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the state can leave it in place for the November election while appeals proceed. The details about the number of voters affected emerged during the challenge to the law, and were included in the findings of U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos. During the 2011 legislative struggle to pass the voter ID law, she wrote, Republican lawmakers asked the Texas secretary of state, who runs elections, and the Texas Department of Public Safety, which maintains driver’s license information, for the number of registered voters who did not have state-issued photo identification. The answer: at least a half-million.

Texas: The Court won’t interrupt Texas voter ID law | SCOTUSblog

In a stinging defeat for the Obama administration and a number of civil rights groups in a major test case on voters’ rights, a divided Supreme Court told the state of Texas early Saturday morning that it may enforce its strict voter ID law for this year’s general election, with early voting starting next Monday.  Three Justices dissented from the ruling, which was released a few minutes after 5 a.m. folllowing a seemingly lengthy study. This apparently was the first time since 1982 that the Court has allowed a law restricting voters’ rights to be enforced after a federal court had ruled it to be unconstitutional.  A U.S. District Court judge in Corpus Christi struck down the ID law last week after a nine-day trial, but it now awaits review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which temporarily blocked the trial judge’s ruling. The Justice Department has indicated that the case is likely to return to the Supreme Court after the appeals court rules.  Neither the Fifth Circuit’s action so far nor the Supreme Court’s Saturday order dealt with the issue of the law’s constitutionality.  The ultimate validity of the law, described by Saturday’s dissenters as “the strictest regime in the country,” probably depends upon Supreme Court review. The Saturday order, for which a number of news organizations had kept a vigil through the night in anticipation of its release, did not disclose how six of the Justices had voted.  But, because it would have taken the votes of at least five to have reached the result, it was clear that the order had majority support.   The majority gave no explanation for its action.

Texas: High court action on Texas ID law shows mixed record on voting rights | Los Angeles Times

"There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in April. Roberts spoke then for the court’s conservative majority in striking down part of a federal election law so as to allow a wealthy Republican businessman from Alabama to give more money to candidates across the country. The contribution limit restricted the donor’s free speech, Roberts concluded, and the Constitution requires the court to err on the side of safeguarding that cherished 1st Amendment protection. But the right to vote, which is the way most Americans participate in a democracy, has gotten far less protection from the Supreme Court under Roberts. There is no starker example than the high court order early Saturday allowing Texas to enforce a new photo identification law that a federal judge had blocked earlier this month after deciding the law would prevent as many as 5% of the state’s registered voters, or 600,000 people in all, from casting a ballot.

Texas: Supreme Court Allows Texas to Use Strict Voter ID Law in Coming Election | New York Times

The Supreme Court on Saturday allowed Texas to use its strict voter identification law in the November election. The court’s order, issued just after 5 a.m., was unsigned and contained no reasoning. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a six-page dissent saying the court’s action “risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.” Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the dissent. The court’s order was an interim move addressing emergency applications filed Wednesday, and a trial judge’s ruling striking down the law will still be appealed. But the Supreme Court’s action set the ground rules in Texas for the current election. Early voting there starts Monday, which helps explain the court’s rush to issue the order as soon as Justice Ginsburg had finished her dissent. The law, enacted in 2011, requires voters seeking to cast their ballots at the polls to present photo identification like a Texas driver’s or gun license, a military ID or a passport.

Texas: As Courts Debate Voter ID, Election Workers Prepare for Both Outcomes | TWC News

The Travis County's elections division is training 390 early voting workers in preparation for Monday. A major part that training is ensuring everyone is on the same page in regard to the state’s new voter ID law. "Our early voting workers are, for the most part, a very experienced set of workers,” training manager Alexa Buxkemper said. “They do this time and time again. We usually have an 80 percent or higher return rate." Even with experience, contradicting court decisions can be confusing. That's why the key for workers is to get up-to-date information.

Texas: Voter ID case flies up to Supreme Court | McClatchy

The Supreme Court on Wednesday received several last-ditch pleas from opponents of the tough new Texas voter ID law. Acting one day after an appellate court effectively kept the Texas law in place, opponents including the Obama administration filed multiple emergency applications asking the high court to remove the lower court’s stay. “The need to ensure that hundreds of thousands of voters in Texas are able to exercise their right to vote, the need to stamp out intentional racial discrimination, and the need to ensure that elections are administered fairly, efficiently, and equitably, the public interest overwhelmingly favors vacating the stay,” attorneys wrote. The initial emergency application, signed by Houston-based attorney Chad W. Dunn, was submitted to Justice Antonin Scalia, who oversees emergency issues in Texas and other Fifth Circuit states. Scalia has the option of forwarding the application to all nine justices. Scalia gave Texas until 5 p.m. Thursday to respond.

Texas: State stopped issuing voter IDs while pushing to reinstate law | MSNBC

Texas’s strict voter ID law, struck down last week, is now back in place thanks to an appeals court ruling Tuesday. But while the state was pushing to get the law reinstated, it stopped issuing IDs. It said Wednesday morning that it has started again. The on-again-off-again schedule could add to the hurdles and confusion that voters face in obtaining an ID. And it offers a window into the GOP-controlled state’s approach to voting: In a nutshell, critics say, Texas jumped at the chance to stop issuing IDs, even though it was far from clear that a halt was required by law. From the start, voting rights advocates have noted in court and in the media that Texas’s efforts to make the special state IDs it created — known as Election Identification Certificates (EICs) — available to those who need them have been half-hearted at best. Among other things, they’ve charged that the mobile ID offices that the state created for distributing IDs were poorly publicized, and weren’t sent to nearly enough locations. Between June 2012 when the law went back into effect and the end of August, just 279 EICs were issued, the state has said.

Texas: Supreme Court to decide if Texas voter ID law can take effect | Los Angeles Times

The Supreme Court is set to decide whether Texas can enforce its new photo-ID rule in time for this year's midterm election. The case reached the court Wednesday in an emergency appeal. Critics asked justices to block the rule, arguing it discriminates against minorities. Last week, a federal judge decided that the rule could prevent as many as 600,000 registered voters from casting a ballot and that Texas lawmakers who approved the law intended to make it harder for blacks and Latinos to vote. Texas Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott, who is running for governor, quickly appealed. On Tuesday, the 5th Circuit Court in New Orleans lifted the judge's order and said the photo-ID law can be enforced in this year's election for the first time. It "is virtually unheard of," civil rights advocates complained, to permit a state to enforce a new election law "in a case where purposeful racial discrimination has been found in a final judgment after a full trial."

Texas: Appeals court reinstates voter ID law; foes vow to go to Supreme Court | Star-Telegram

A federal appeals court on Tuesday evening reinstated Texas’ controversial voter identification law, striking down a lower court’s ruling that blocked it on grounds it would have “an impermissible discriminatory effect” on Hispanics and African-Americans and is unconstitutional. The three-judge panel of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed a ruling just five days earlier by U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi on grounds that it “substantially disturbs the election process of the state of Texas just nine days before early voting begins.”

Texas: Appeals court reinstates Texas voter ID law | Associated Press

A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated Texas' tough voter ID law for the November election, which the U.S. Justice Department had condemned as the state's latest means of suppressing minority voter turnout. The ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocks last week's ruling by U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos in Corpus Christi, who determined the law unconstitutional and similar to a poll tax designed to dissuade minorities from voting. The 5th Circuit did not rule on the merits of the law; instead, it determined it's too late to change the rules for the upcoming election. Early voting starts Oct. 20. The law remains under appeal. For now, the ruling is a key victory for Republican-backed photo ID measures that have swept across the U.S. in recent years. The Texas law, considered the toughest of its kind in the nation, requires that an estimated 13.6 million registered Texas voters will need one of seven kinds of photo identification to cast a ballot.

Texas: Supreme Court ruling could thwart Texas’ appeal in voter ID case | Dallas Morning News

An unexpected U.S. Supreme Court order setting aside a voter ID law in Wisconsin could spell trouble for Texas as it tries to appeal a federal judge’s ruling striking down Texas’ own photo-identification requirement. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott was taking steps Friday to appeal the decision overturning the Texas law. But some election law experts pointed to the Supreme Court’s order blocking implementation of Wisconsin’s similar voter ID requirements before the Nov. 4 election. The high court, 6-3, handed down an emergency order in the Wisconsin case over the objections of the panel’s three biggest conservatives — Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The majority, including Chief Justice John Roberts, provided no explanation in the order. Because the Texas and Wisconsin laws are similar — with Texas’ law considered the strictest in the nation — Abbott’s appeal could run into a roadblock even if he is initially successful with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That is where he will lodge his appeal of Thursday’s decision by U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi.

Texas: Appeals court poised to act quickly in Texas voter ID case | Austin American-Statesman

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Saturday told the U.S. Department of Justice and other plaintiffs suing to overturn Texas’ voter identification law that they have a day to respond to an emergency motion by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. Abbott’s filing Friday with the federal appeals court — made up of mostly conservative judges — asked for expedited consideration to undo a ruling by a lower court last week that struck down the state’s voter ID law. U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi had agreed with the plaintiffs when she ruled Thursday that the Texas voter ID law, one of the strictest in the country, was unconstitutional. Ramos’ opinion didn’t include a final judgment, prompting Abbott to ask for guidance.

Texas: Court filings dispute timing of lifting Texas’ voter ID law | Houston Chronicle

Advocates and opponents of Texas' voter ID law faced off in documents Sunday over whether the now-unconstitutional requirement should be lifted as early as next week, with both sides arguing that their timeline would better prevent confusion at the polls. In a filing made public Sunday, the state of Texas wrote that declaring the law void only a week before early voting begins will seep confusion into this year's election cycle. The state is asking for an emergency delay, or a stay, in the U.S. District Court's order until after Nov. 4 while Greg Abbott, the attorney general and Republican nominee for governor, appeals the lower court's ruling. The plaintiffs, who won Thursday when the district judge in Corpus Christi said the law constituted a modern-day "poll tax" and discriminated against minority voters, replied in their own filing Sunday that the courts could not allow a law deemed unconstitutional to govern an election, even if that meant changing election law at the last minute.

Texas: Federal judge strikes down Texas law requiring voter ID at polls | Reuters

A federal judge on Thursday struck down a Texas law requiring voters to show identification at polls, saying it placed an unconstitutional burden on voters and discriminated against minorities. In a ruling that follows a two-week trial in Corpus Christi of a lawsuit challenging the law, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos also found that it amounted to an unconstitutional poll tax. "The court holds that SB 14 creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote, has an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans and was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose," Ramos wrote in a 147-page ruling.

Texas: Voter ID Law Ruled Biased Against Blacks, Latinos | Bloomberg

Texas can’t enforce what would be the strictest voter photo-identification law in the U.S. after a judge ruled its purported goal of preventing voter fraud doesn’t outweigh the discriminatory effect on poor blacks and Latinos. U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos in Corpus Christi, a 2011 appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, threw out the measure, agreeing with the Justice Department and minority-rights activists that evidence of in-person fraud was negligible and that the law was imposed with an “unconstitutional discriminatory purpose. The draconian voting requirements imposed by SB 14 will disproportionately impact low-income Texans because they are less likely to own or need one of the seven qualified IDs to navigate their lives,” Ramos wrote in yesterday’s ruling.

Texas: Is the voter ID case on a fast-track to the Supreme Court? | Austin American-Statesman

Texas’ voter identification law, which was the focus of a federal trial that concluded Monday in Corpus Christi, could be on a fast-track to the U.S. Supreme Court before Election Day in November. U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, a Democrat who was appointed to the post in 2011 by President Barack Obama, is expected to strike down the law, according to election law experts. The state would then appeal to the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The plaintiffs, which include the U.S. Department of Justice, likely would lose that round and could ask for emergency relief from the Supreme Court — all possibly within the next six weeks. It’s a scenario laid out by Richard Hasen, a professor at the law school at the University of California at Irvine, who has been closely following the Texas case.

Texas: Criminal Appeals Court Judge Files Suit Over Voter ID | The Texas Tribune

While a federal judge in Corpus Christi mulls whether the state's requirement to show photo ID to cast a ballot violates the federal Voting Rights Act, a judge on the highest criminal appeals court in Texas is taking another approach: He's suing the state over its relatively new voter ID law. Judge Lawrence "Larry" Meyers' lawsuit, filed in Dallas County, claims the voting law enacted last year violates the Texas Constitution because it attempts to "prevent" voter fraud, something he says the state's governing charter never intended.  Meyers' lawsuit states that "the Texas Constitution gives the Texas Legislature power solely to 'detect and punish' election fraud when it has already occurred." In an interview on Wednesday, Meyers said the Constitution says nothing about preventing election fraud.  "It's legally unconstitutional and it's an affront to every voter in the state of Texas," Meyers said.

Texas: Federal judge takes on Texas voter ID law at heart of discrimination debate | The Guardian

The fate of Texas’ tough voter ID law moved into the hands of a federal judge this week, following a trial that the US Justice Department said exposed another chapter in the state’s troubling history of discrimination in elections. State attorneys defending the law signed by Republican Governor Rick Perry in 2011 urged the judge to follow other courts by upholding photo identification requirements. The most recent such case came this month when a federal appeals panel reinstated Wisconsin’s law in time for Election Day. Whether Texas will also get a ruling before then is unclear. US district judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos ended the two-week trial in Corpus Christi on Monday without signaling when she’ll make a decision, meaning that as of now, an estimated 13.6 million registered Texas voters will need a photo ID to cast a ballot in November.

Texas: Plaintiffs Claim Bias During Closing Argument Against Texas Voter ID Law | New York Times

A law requiring Texas voters to show government-issued identification before casting a ballot is the latest example of the state’s long history of discrimination against minorities and puts unjustified burdens on the right to vote for more than half a million Texans, lawyers challenging the law told a federal judge here on Monday. The Justice Department, joined by several black and Hispanic voters, elected officials and advocacy groups, sued Texas in federal court over the state’s voter-identification law, asking a judge to overturn it and arguing that it discriminates against minority voters. Texas officials said the law was necessary to prevent voter fraud and have denied that it discriminates, arguing that the five elections Texas has held using the law’s requirements had yielded few reports of people being unable to produce the types of ID needed to vote.

Texas: Fate of Texas’ tough voter ID law in judge’s hands | Associated Press

The fate of Texas’ tough voter ID law moved into the hands of a federal judge Monday, following a trial that the U.S. Justice Department said exposed another chapter in the state’s troubling history of discrimination in elections. State attorneys defending the law signed by Republican Gov. Rick Perry in 2011 urged the judge to follow other courts by upholding photo identification requirements. The most recent such case came this month when a federal appeals panel reinstated Wisconsin’s law in time for Election Day. Whether Texas will also get a ruling before then is unclear. U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos ended the two-week trial in Corpus Christi without signaling when she’ll make a decision, meaning that as of now, an estimated 13.6 million registered Texas voters will need a photo ID to cast a ballot in November.

Texas: Justice Department, state clash over Texas voter ID law | San Antonio Express-News

Lawyers for the U.S Department of Justice and minority groups once again made the case that Texas' controversial Voter ID law improperly discriminates against Latino and African American voters during closing arguments in federal court Monday. Attorneys for the Texas attorney general will present closing arguments later Monday. The closing arguments are scheduled to last three hours and are expected to end later Monday. The state has argued the law is constitutional, popular and essential to combat voter fraud. However, cases of in-person voter fraud, which a law like this would help prevent, are rare. Plaintiffs' attorneys have argued that the voter fraud concerns are simply a rouse to impose new requirements that make it harder for minority voters to cast their ballots. The Voter ID law is a “serious problem in search of a solution,” said Richard Dellheim, an attorney with the Justice Department. “That problem is that it violates the Voting Rights Act.”

Texas: Wichita County Commissioners Approve New Election Equipment | Texoma

Wichita County Commissioners are saying yes to the purchase of new election equipment, and for a high price. The commissioners voted to spend $1 million dollars on the equipment, which will include 210 new voting machines. This comes after county officials learned last month the new election equipment system would operate on more current Windows operating systems. While it comes at a high price, commissioners feel the county needs that equipment before election season. Wichita County has used it's current election equipment, by the company Election Systems and Software for 10 years. This system operates on Windows XP and Microsoft no longer provides security updates for that operating system, which is why commissioners have decided the county needs a change. "The security could be compromised. It's not as secure, there's not security patches being put into it. And it's on the internet, so we had had some vulnerability to it, and it didn't work very well for us," Judge Woody Gossom says.

Texas: Abbott defends Texas voter ID law | Houston Chronicle

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott insisted on Thursday that the state's voter ID law has not adversely affected turnout, a day before testimony in a federal court case challenging the legislation is slated to end. "There is absolutely zero proof, zero proof, that there is any suppression of the vote whatsoever because of voter ID laws," Abbott, the favorite to win November's gubernatorial race, told the Houston Chronicle's editorial board. The 2011 law, which took effect the following year, requires voters to show one of seven kinds of photo ID in order to vote, with or without a voter registration card. It was initially blocked after a federal court ruled that it discriminated against minorities.