Texas: Few voter-fraud cases would have been prevented by photo ID law, review shows | Dallas Morning News

Attorney General Greg Abbott champions a requirement for voters to show photo identification to prevent ballot fraud. But such a rule would have deterred just a few of the cases his office has prosecuted in the last eight years. Abbott, who’s making his defense of the state’s voter ID law a centerpiece of his campaign for governor, has pursued 66 people on charges of voting irregularities since 2004. Only four cases involved someone illegally casting a ballot at a polling place where a picture ID would have prevented it. In most cases, voter-fraud violations in Texas have involved mail-in ballots. A few involved felons who aren’t allowed to vote. Some involved an election official engaged in illegal behavior. But none of those would have been stopped by the photo ID requirement. Nevertheless, Abbott defends voter ID and says the fact that he hasn’t found many cases of in-person voter fraud doesn’t mean there aren’t any.

Texas: An Elected Judge Speaks Out Against Judicial Elections | Andrew Cohen/The Atlantic

In early June the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, the longtime progressive advocacy group, released the results of a landmark studyon "the effect of campaign contributions on judicial behavior." The statistics confirmed what former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and countless other observers of our legal systems have long contended: Judicial elections impair the fair administration of justice by fostering impermissible appearances of impartiality by judicial candidates and judges. In seeking votes, in acting like politicians, judges invariably lose what they ought to prize most: their perceived credibility as neutral arbiters of cases and controversies. When I read the study, the first person I thought of was Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett, a popular and successfully reelected jurist whose campaign-style website I wrote about last year for The Atlantic. Justice Willett, it seems to me, is the poster-child for the results of the ACS study. Indeed, he should have been on its cover. So I reached out to him, asked him to read the ACS study, and to then answer for me a few questions about his perceptions about judicial elections and the role campaign contributions play in them. About a month ago, he graciously complied in a way that was both candid and frightening.

Texas: Voter ID law a headache for officials | San Antonio Express-News

Chances are the name on your voter registration card doesn't match that on your driver's license, and that could create some headaches come Election Day. A preliminary comparison of the 13.8 million names on the state's voter registration rolls against Texas Department of Public Safety records resulted in a match of only 7 million of those names. The variation between the two documents could be as simple as the addition or dropping of a middle name or initial, but according to the state voter ID law that comes into play for the Nov. 5 election, the name on the voter card has to match exactly with that on the ID card. If a voting official deems the names “substantially similar” a voter is off the hook, sort of. He or she will still be required to sign an affidavit stating he/she is the person named in the two documents. However, if the voting official cannot readily make a connection between names, the voter will have to cast a provisional ballot, which takes longer to fill out and process. The state had recommended local election administrators send out letters to voters advising them their voter cards and IDs need to match, but the postage cost has made that prohibitive. With about 890,000 registered voters in Bexar County, that mailout would have cost more than $400,000.

Texas: The True Cost of Free Voter I.D. in Texas | Texas Election Law Blog

Per Section 521A.001 of the Texas Transportation Code, the Department of Public Safety will provide voter I.D. cards without charge upon application. However, these voter I.D. cards (which cannot be used to satisfy other statutory demands for identification) may only be issued at select DPS offices, and only to individuals who present sufficient legal documentation of their citizenship and identity. Herein lies the rub. As “free” I.D. is presumably intended to accommodate the indigent, we may assume that the greater demand for these I.D. cards would be from those potential voters who don’t have much in the way of resources. So how much would it cost to get a free Texas voter I.D.? For the sake of argument, assume that the potential voter is an indigent patient of the Rusk State Hospital in Rusk, Texas. Such a voter is not representative of the Texas population, but shares some qualities with a group of Texas citizens who are particularly unlikely to participate in elections (namely, the institutionalized, the disabled, the indigent, and the elderly).

Texas: New law may restrict student voting | The Collegian

Students without a state-issued ID may find it difficult to vote this year since school-issued student IDs will not be accepted. After the Supreme Court struck down the provision of the Voting Rights Act requiring some states to get federal preclearance before changing voting laws, the Texas attorney general immediately enforced controversial redistricting maps and strict voter ID laws approved by the legislature. These are the same laws that a panel of federal judges claimed last year would “impose strict and unforgiving burdens on the poor” and are some of the “most stringent in the country.” In 2008, the 18-to-29-year-old demographic made up 16 percent of Texas voters in the presidential election, roughly 1.3 million. A majority of them voted Democratic. Opponents of the legislation claim this is a tactic used by the Republican Party, along with the controversial redistricting maps, to cut into the Democratic vote. Being the gun-loving state that it is, Texas will accept a concealed handgun license at the polls. Other forms of ID that will be accepted are a state-issued driver’s license or ID card issued by the Department of Public Safety, a military ID containing the person’s photograph, a U.S. citizenship certificate, a U.S. passport or Texas elections ID.

Texas: State Set To Enforce New Voter ID Law Next Week | CBS Houston

Unless a federal judge intervenes, the South Texas city of Edinburg could be the first to enforce a new voter ID law next week, and lawyers will likely use the special election to gather evidence to strengthen lawsuits to block it in the future. While the U.S. Justice Department and several civil rights groups have filed federal lawsuits to block the requirement that voters produce a state-issued photo ID, no one as of Friday had asked for a restraining order to stop enforcement of the law. That means it will be in effect when early voting in the city’s special election begins Wednesday. Allowing Texas to enforce the law could be part of a larger legal strategy to defeat it in the long run. Texas has been the center of the fight over voting laws after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that Congress must update how it enforces the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Texas is the only state in the last three years where a federal judge has ruled the Legislature intentionally discriminated against minorities.

Texas: DOJ to Texas: Voter Suppression Will Not Stand | The Nation

In one week last August, federal courts found that Texas’ voter ID law and redistricting maps were discriminatory and violated the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court’s recent decision invalidating Section 4 of the VRA, which previously covered Texas, tragically wiped away those rulings. Now the Department of Justice is once again stepping in to fight for voting rights in the Lone Star State. The DOJ announced today that it is objecting to Texas’ voter ID law under Section 2 of the VRA and will also seek to join a similar lawsuit against the state’s redistricting maps. Last month, DOJ asked a court in Texas to force the state to approve its voting changes with the federal government for a period of time under another provision of the VRA, Section 3, based on a finding of intentional discrimination in the restricting case. The federal courts found last year that Texas’ new maps for Congress and the state house were “enacted with discriminatory purpose.”

Texas: Voter ID Debate Heats Up as Dallas County Joins Fight | The Texas Tribune

A fight against the state's contentious voter ID laws escalated this week when Dallas County became the first Texas county to claim that the requirements would disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters. In a 3-2 vote on Tuesday, the Dallas County Commissioners Court voted to join U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, in a lawsuit urging a federal district court to issue an injunction against the voter ID law. The law requires voters to present one of seven forms of state or federal identification or a so-called election identification certificate, which can be obtained from the state's Department of Public Safety. On Wednesday in an appearance on MSNBC, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins applauded the commissioners' decision. Jenkins said 220,000 of 1.1 million total registered voters in Dallas County indicated they did not have the required forms of ID to vote. "Dallas County just could not sit idly by while the state's Republican leaders disenfranchised African-American and Latino voters," Jenkins said, adding that Hispanics are 46 percent more likely to lack the required form of ID to vote, according to the U.S. attorney general.

Texas: Dallas County taxpayers will fund both sides of voter ID fight | The Dallas Morning News

No matter what Dallas County residents think about Texas’ controversial voter identification law, their tax dollars are being used to help fund the fight for it. And against it. Dallas County commissioners narrowly agreed Tuesday to join a lawsuit against Gov. Rick Perry over his intentions to implement the law requiring voters to show ID at the polls. The 3-2 vote at the Commissioners Court meeting means Dallas County taxpayers are helping fund the federal and county fights against the law, as well as the state’s battles to defend it. “It’s a dangerous precedent to be committing the Dallas County treasury for purely partisan politics,” said Mike Cantrell, the lone Republican county commissioner. Democratic Commissioner Elba Garcia bucked the party line and joined Cantrell in voting against joining the lawsuit. Democratic County Judge Clay Jenkins and Commissioners Theresa Daniel and John Wiley Price voted to do so. Their support allows District Attorney Craig Watkins, also a Democrat, to hire law firm Brazil & Dunn to help the county intervene in the existing lawsuit. U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, and seven others sued Perry in June.

Texas: Abbott goes on voter ID offensive | San Antonio Express-News

Attorney General Greg Abbott on Monday took aim at a civil rights lawyer who — according to a news story — advised folks in South Texas to ignore the state’s voter ID law when casting ballots in an upcoming local election. In an August 13 Rio Grande Guardian story, Jose Garza, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, is quoted saying he thinks Texas’ voter ID law is unconstitutional, and that he “needs practical examples of registered voters being denied the right to vote. The photo ID legislation may be the law of the land in Texas but I believe it is unconstitutional. The only way you can challenge it is to find people who have been denied the right to vote because they did not comply with this specific term,” Garza said, according to the story. Keep in mind: Abbott declared voter ID will “take effect immediately” after the U.S. Supreme Court in June suspended the section of the Voting Rights Act that forced Texas to get a federal OK before implementing changes to election law (Attorney General Eric Holder said in July he will ask a court to require Texas to receive preclearance from the Justice Department for voting laws because of a history of discrimination).

Texas: Dallas County could take on Texas over voter ID law | The Dallas Morning News

Dallas County commissioners on Tuesday could join a federal challenge to a controversial state law that requires voters to show photo identification. Commissioners are expected to vote on whether to hire a law firm to join a federal lawsuit at Tuesday’s regular meeting. The move would pit county leaders against state officials. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said last month he is also taking aim at Texas legislators’ voting laws. Battles over voter identification laws have raged across the country in recent years. Supporters are typically Republicans. They say the laws prevent ineligible voters from casting ballots. Opponents are typically Democrats. They say such laws are designed to keep poor residents and minorities from casting ballots by adding financial and bureaucratic hurdles to voting. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins and District Attorney Craig Watkins, both Democrats, said in a joint statement Monday that the law “could disenfranchise many registered voters.”

Texas: Texas AG Acknowledges GOP Redistricting Decisions Made 'At The Expense Of The Democrats' | Huffington Post

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) explicitly referenced Texas Republicans' gerrymandering tactics in a court brief earlier this month, acknowledging that districts were redrawn in 2011 to minimize the clout of Democratic voters. In July, Attorney General Eric Holder filed a lawsuit, arguing that the state should be required to undergo some form of preclearance with districting plans. A month before, the United States Supreme Court had struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, meaning that the Texas redistricting plan was no longer subject to federal preclearance requirements.

Texas: We Only Hate Democrats, Not Minorities | Bloomberg

The State of Texas this week filed a rather impolite response to the voting-rights concerns recently expressed by Attorney General Eric Holder. Last month, Holder announced that the Justice Department would deploy a little-used section of the Voting Rights Act to impose federal oversight on some jurisdictions that had been freed, courtesy of a 5-4 conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, from having to "preclear" changes to voting rights (and redistricted election maps) with either a federal court or the Justice Department. Texas is precisely the kind of jurisdiction the Justice Department had in mind. In 2011, Republicans in the state legislature produced redistricting maps that, according to the federal court, had been designed with “discriminatory purpose.” The result was a significant dilution of Hispanic voting power. In a response filed with a three-judge panel in San Antonio, State Attorney General (and Republican gubernatorial candidate) Greg Abbott more or less told the Justice Department what it could do with a Texas longhorn.

Texas: Texas on voting rights: It’s not about race, just politics | MSNBC

Texas didn’t discriminate against minority voters. It was only because they were Democrats. And even if it did, the racial discrimination Texas engaged in is nowhere near as bad as the stuff that happened in the 1960s. These are some of the arguments the state of Texas is making in an attempt to stave off federal supervision of its election laws. In late July, citing the state’s recent history of discrimination, the Justice Department asked a federal court to place the entire state back under “preclearance.” That means the state would have to submit its election law changes in advance to the Justice Department, which would ensure Texas wasn’t disenfranchising voters on the basis of race. This week, Texas submitted a brief arguing that placing the state back under preclearance would be an “extreme” encroachment on state sovereignty and denying that they ever discriminated against minority voters in the state. “I don’t think it’s going to work, frankly. The mere desire to achieve partisan advantage does not give Texas a free hand to engage in racial discrimination,” says Brenda Wright, a voting law expert with the liberal think tank Demos. “If the only way you can protect white incumbents is by diluting the voting strength of Hispanic citizens, you are engaging in intentional racial discrimination, and the courts will see that.”

Texas: Primaries could be delayed again over redistricting | Associated Press

Politicians across the state are announcing their candidacies and hiring campaign workers, but the battle over redistricting again could delay the March primaries and make life difficult for incumbents. Lawyers working for Attorney General Greg Abbott and minority groups filed briefs with a San Antonio federal court that hint at a knockdown, drag-out fight over the state’s political maps and election laws. The fight has intensified since U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said he wants Texas to submit all proposed election law changes for federal approval before implementing them. Minority groups first filed their lawsuit against Texas’ new political maps May 9, 2011, when the Legislature created them following the 2010 census. Because the case was underway, three federal judges in San Antonio drew temporary legislative and congressional maps for the state to use for the 2012 elections. Abbott didn’t like those maps, so he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed with him that the maps went too far, absent a verdict in the case. The protracted legal wrangling delayed the 2012 primary from March 6 to May 29.

Texas: State moves to protect voter ID law | SCOTUSblog

Repeating its argument that its controversial new photo ID requirement for Texas voters is now in operation, the state on Thursday asked a federal court in Washington to put an end to a case testing that law’s validity.  The state filed a two-page motion to dismiss the case. That, however, could encounter resistance from the Obama administration, which believes the law impairs minorities’ voting rights and wants to block Texas from enforcing any such law. “Senate Bill 14 [the photo ID law] is now in full effect and being implemented in Texas,” according to Texas’s motion, filed in U.S. District Court in the case of Texas v. Holder (District Court docket 12-128).  That court ruled a year ago that the law would violate the voting rights of African Americans and Hispanics in Texas under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  The Supreme Court in late June sent that case back to the district court, to reconsider in the wake of the decision in the Voting Rights Act case of Shelby County v. Holder. Texas’s motion to dismiss the case altogether appeared likely to set up a new courthouse confrontation with the Obama administration, because Justice Department lawyers are pressing federal courts to put all Texas laws governing voting under a new form of federal court supervision, barring enforcement until any such law gets cleared in Washington.  Texas is vigorously opposing that effort.

Texas: Texas Launches New Legal Attack On Voting Rights Act | TPM

Texas escalated a confrontation with the Obama administration this week over the Voting Rights Act, staking out an aggressive new challenge to the landmark 1965 law that could send it back to the Supreme Court for yet another review. “Just a few weeks ago, the Supreme Court invalidated the legislatively imposed preclearance requirement, calling it an ‘extraordinary’ ‘departure from the fundamental principle of equal sovereignty’ of the states,” Attorney General Greg Abbott wrote in a 54-page brief filed this week, in a case about whether the state’s latest redistricting map should be subject to court review before taking effect. “A judicially imposed preclearance requirement is no less extraordinary and no less constitutionally suspect.” Rick Hasen, an election law expert and professor at UC-Irvine, told TPM that the brief is “a signal to DOJ that Texas is not afraid to escalate if necessary, and they may have a receptive audience among the conservative Justices on the Supreme Court.”

Texas: State fights new voting supervision | SCOTUSblog

Mounting a strong counter-attack to attempts by the Obama administration and others to give federal courts new powers of supervision over Texas voting laws, officials of the Lone Star State have told a three-judge district court in San Antonio that it cannot impose that regime at this stage, or at any point unless there is new proof of “rampant” racial bias in election procedures in the state. In a fifty-four-page filing Monday evening, state officials cited the Supreme Court’s June 25 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, and told the District Court that it “cannot impose preclearance on Texas while remaining faithful to Shelby County and the constitutional principles on which it relies.”  Preclearance obligations under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the state contended, can now only be ordered if racial bias in voting in a state rises to the level of the “ever-changing discriminatory machinations that gave rise to the preclearance regime in the first place….Nothing remotely like that has occurred in modern-day Texas.”

Texas: Justice Department Targets Texas With ‘Band-Aid’ on Voting Laws | Bloomberg

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, stung by the Supreme Court’s decision gutting federal power to pre-emptively strike at state voting laws, opened a new front in the Obama administration’s fight against election laws it views as discriminatory. The first target in what Holder says may become a multi-state effort is Texas. In the face of strong objections from the state’s top officials, the Justice Department will ask a federal court to require Texas to obtain approval from the government or a federal court before making voting-law changes. “It’s very significant, but not at all surprising,” Dan Tokaji, a law professor who focuses on election law and voting rights at Ohio State University’s Moritz College Law. “It’s best viewed as a Band-Aid rather than an inoculation, which is what the old regime was.”

Texas: White House denies Rick Perry’s “end-run” allegation on Voting Rights | Dallas Morning News

The White House pushed back this afternoon against allegations from Texas Republicans that the Justice Department is overreaching its authority by trying to reimpose preemptive U.S. oversight of Texas elections. Not so, Obama spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters traveling with the president aboard Air Force One to Florida. Earnest noted that Texas political maps for years “have attracted quite a bit of controversy… I don’t think it’s a surprise to anybody that’s been following this that that’s attracted the attention of the Department of Justice.” Attorney General Eric Holder’s announced this morning that he would seek a court order forcing Texas to submit any and all election changes for federal review. The Supreme Court lifted that burden last month when it struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act.

Texas: Justice Department to Seek Curbs on Texas Voting-Law Changes | Businessweek

The U.S. Justice Department, deprived by the Supreme Court of the power to pre-emptively halt state voting laws it finds discriminatory, will seek a federal court ruling to force Texas to get approval before changing any voting laws. “We believe the state of Texas should be required to go through a preclearance process whenever it changes its voting laws and practices,” Attorney General Eric Holder Holder said in prepared remarks for the National Urban League Annual Conference in Philadelphia. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a cornerstone of the Voting Rights Act when it ruled invalid a rule that certain states, including Texas, must get Justice Department approval before changing their election rules.

Texas: Redistricting fight terribly tangled again | Fort Worth Star-Telegram

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in a landmark voting rights case last week released Texas from federal supervision of its election laws and procedures for the first time since 1972. But the clarity of that ruling was fleeting. This week, attorneys for minority groups filed motions with separate three-judge panels in San Antonio and Washington, D.C., asking that Texas be returned to federal oversight under a section of the Voting Rights Act left intact by the Supreme Court. Court watchers — and the San Antonio court itself, which held a hearing Monday — are taking the new challenges very seriously. Lawyers for the state want the whole thing dismissed. “There’s no question this is new territory for everyone,” wrote Dallas attorney Michael Li in his widely followed (among people who follow arcane politics) Texas Redistricting blog at txredistricting.org.

Texas: Voting Rights Lawsuit Wants Texas Back Under Pre-Clearance | Texas Public Radio

A lawsuit filed by several civil rights groups this week could result in continued federal oversight of Texas voting laws despite a Supreme Court ruling that section 4 of the voting rights act is unconstitutional. Section 4 mandated that some states, including Texas, must get pre-clearance for any voting changes made by the legislature. The suit was filed in a Washington D.C. court by the League of United Latin American citizens, the NAACP, the Texas Legislative Black Caucus and state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth.

Texas: New Texas voting disputes | SCOTUSblog

For more than 40 years, the state of Texas has had to ask official permission in Washington before it could put into effect any change in the way its citizens vote.  A week ago, state officials — relying on the Supreme Court’s new ruling on federal voting rights law — said they would no longer have to do that.  Now, however, efforts have begun in two federal courts, 1,600 miles apart, to keep that obligation intact. Those efforts — in Washington, D.C., and San Antonio — are quick sequels to the Court’s decision last week in Shelby County v. Holder (docket 12-96), striking down one key section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but leaving other parts of the law on the books and presumably functioning.   One of those other parts, the 1965 law’s Section 3, could provide a method for keeping in force Washington’s legal supervision of Texas voting laws and procedures under another, still-standing provision, Section 5.

Texas: MALDEF: End Of Voting Rights Act Leaves Minorities Exposed | Texas Public Radio

The chief legal counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund is applauding Gov. Rick Perry for signing into law the interim voting maps, but said not having a Voting Rights Act leaves minority communities vulnerable. This week the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Nina Perales is the chief legal counsel for the MALDEF and said the supreme court has taken away a tool for fair and equitable state voting maps. "While the supreme court didn't strike down all of the Voting Rights Act, it invalidated the most important tool, which allowed us to fight discrimination and which had been recently re-authorized by Congress in 2006 by a wide bipartisan margin," Perales said.

Texas: New Voter ID, Unavailable in Seventy Counties in State, Opens With Wealth of Issues Remaining | Houston Press

Between Sen. Wendy Davis's filibuster and the Supreme Court's decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, this week has been a strangely successful one for progressives in Texas. However, there was a ruling before either of these realities that girded conservatives and tea partiers in the state. On Tuesday, the SCOTUS ruled in a 5-4 decision that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act should be excised, and that Congress "may draft another formula based on current conditions." This section, which contained a formula forcing nine states and assorted counties to pre-clear electoral changes with the federal government, was one of the main pillars of the VRA, providing federal oversight to areas that had used traditionally discriminatory practices to prevent minorities from voting.

Texas: The Supreme Court’s Other Voting Rights Decisions This Week | PBS

On its last day of the term, the Supreme Court delivered two more blows to the Voting Rights Act. Two days ago, the court ruled that the law’s key provision, which requires several states to pre-clear voting changes with the government, was invalid. Then on Thursday, it vacated two voter discrimination cases in Texas that could have long-term repercussions in the battle for voting rights. Here’s what happened: Texas had appealed two rulings by the D.C. federal court — one blocking a set of 2011 redistricting maps, and another blocking its voter ID law — that found both policies were discriminatory under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. On Thursday, the Supreme Court sent both cases back to the federal court for “further consideration” in light of its decision to strike down the VRA’s pre-clearance formula. That means the federal court will most likely have to reverse both decisions, given that pre-clearance no longer exists.

Texas: Congressman files suit to stop Texas voter ID law | Associated Press

A Democratic congressman joined seven others Wednesday in filing a federal lawsuit to keep Texas from enforcing its voter ID law. U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth filed the papers in Corpus Christi federal court, calling the requirement to show a state-issued photo ID card at the ballot box unconstitutional. The law "would have the effect of denying thousands of Texas voters the ability to vote in person, a large number of whom would be disenfranchised entirely since absentee voting in Texas is available to only certain specified categories of voters," according to the lawsuit.

Texas: Perry signs redistricting maps | The Statesman

The special session that ended Tuesday wasn’t a total loss. On Wednesday, Gov. Rick Perry signed all three redistricting bills that lawmakers sent to him. With his signature, Perry set the district boundaries for the U.S. House of Representatives, the state Senate and the Texas House, his office confirmed. Capitol gossipers had been whispering that the governor might try to find a way to shove state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, into a Republican district as punishment for her filibuster that led to the death of a strict abortion measure in the Senate early Wednesday. But by signing off on the redistricting maps, Perry silenced the rumors that he might veto the new state Senate map and seek to put into place the more Republican-friendly maps passed by the Legislature in 2011.

Texas: Supreme Court ruling on Voting Rights Act could renew battle over Texas redistricting | Dallas Morning News

The Supreme Court decision striking down elements of the Voting Rights Act could lead to the Legislature implementing a 2011 redistricting plan that was deemed by federal judges to be discriminatory to Texas minority voters. Soon after Tuesday’s decision, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said that the state’s voter identification plan would immediately take effect, requiring voters to show a photo ID at the polls. “Redistricting maps passed by the Legislature may also take effect without approval from the federal government,” he said. A spokesman for Abbott, a Republican, confirmed he was talking about the 2011 redistricting plan, which is under appeal before the Supreme Court. That plan would give Republicans even more strength in the U.S. House and the Legislature.