Texas joined South Carolina and Wisconsin in passing a bill to curb vote fraud by demanding photo identification before letting someone cast a ballot. Republican Governor Rick Perry plans to sign the measure tomorrow, according to an e-mailed statement today. The second most-populous state joins six others including Florida and Indiana that demand a photo ID from voters at the polls.
Opponents plan to challenge the measure in court, said Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project. The Austin-based nonprofit group, which advocates on behalf of minorities, says the law is unconstitutional and aimed at making it harder for Latinos to vote. Republicans who dominate the Legislature say it will survive judicial review.
“It’s a way of suppressing the Hispanic vote, which is increasingly important in Texas,” Harrington said May 23 in a telephone interview. “It’s nonsense and it’s racist and just cheap politics.”
About 75 percent of Hispanic Texans who voted backed Democrats in November’s election, Richard Murray, a University of Houston politics professor, said in December. Latinos made up 65 percent of the state’s population growth in the past decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About 38 percent of Texas’s 25.1 million residents are Hispanic, compared with 45 percent who are non-Hispanic whites, Census data show.
Full Article: Texas Passes Voter Photo-ID Law – Bloomberg.
