“Motivated By Discriminatory Intent”: Justice Department Tells Texas It’s Voter Suppression Will Not Stand
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.”
A federal court blocked Texas’ voter ID law last year for very good reason. As I wrote last August, here are the facts of the case:
The state admitted that between 603,892 to 795,955 registered in voters in Texas lacked government-issued photo ID, with Hispanic voters between 46.5 percent to 120 percent more likely than whites to not have the new voter ID; to obtain one of the five government-issued IDs now needed to vote, voters must first pay for underlying documents to confirm their identity, the cheapest option being a birth certificate for $22 (otherwise known as a “poll tax”); Texas has DMV offices in only eighty-one of 254 counties in the state, with some voters needing to travel up to 250 miles to obtain a new voter ID. Counties with a significant Hispanic population are less likely to have a DMV office, while Hispanic residents in such counties are twice as likely as whites to not have the new voter ID (Hispanics in Texas are also twice as likely as whites to not have a car).
The court objected to the law specifically because “(1) a substantial subgroup of Texas voters, many of whom are African American or Hispanic, lack photo ID; (2) the burdens associated with obtaining ID will weigh most heavily on the poor; and (3) racial minorities in Texas are disproportionately likely to live in poverty.” Along with North Carolina, Texas has the harshest and most absurd voter ID law in the nation. Case in point: you can use a gun permit to vote but not a student ID. The state is also doing nothing to encourage people to get the supposedly “free” ID; a month after the Supreme Court’s ruling, only six people in Texas had obtained one, even though 600,000 to 800,000 registered voters lack the government-issued ID.
In its new court filing, DOJ contends that the voter ID law “will disproportionately impact Hispanic and African-American voters in the State of Texas, resulting in their being disenfranchised at a greater rate than Anglo voters.” The department says the law, known as SB 14, was “motivated by discriminatory intent” and “will have a discriminatory result.”
From the brief:
While the stated purpose of SB 14 was to ensure the integrity of elections, voter ID proponents cited virtually no evidence during or after enactment of SB 14 that in-person voter impersonation—the only form of election fraud addressed by the identification requirements of SB 14—was a serious problem or that the State’s then-existing identification procedures had failed to prevent in-person voter impersonation.
The State knew or should have known that Hispanic and African-American Texans disproportionately lack the forms of photo ID required by SB 14, as compared to their Anglo counterparts.
Nevertheless, supporters of voter ID in the Texas legislature made little to no effort to analyze the potential effect of photo ID requirements on minority voters and rejected amendments requiring investigation of the effect of SB 14.
The long history of voting discrimination in Texas makes the new law all-the-more worrisome. DOJ writes: “The State of Texas’s history of official racial discrimination against its African-American and Hispanic citizens is longstanding and well-documented. Federal intervention has been necessary to eliminate numerous devices intentionally used to restrict minority voting in Texas.” Texas has lost more Section 5 enforcement suits than any other state.
It will be much harder for the Department of Justice to block Texas’ voting changes under Section 2 of the VRA than it would have been under Section 5, but they’re smart to try. (See my piece on why Section 2 is no replacement for Section 5.) “We will not allow the Supreme Court’s recent decision to be interpreted as open season for states to pursue measures that suppress voting rights,” Attorney General Eric Holder said today. “This represents the Department’s latest action to protect voting rights, but it will not be our last.”
Since the Court’s decision, seven Southern states have rushed to pass or implement onerous new voting restrictions. North Carolina recently adopted the country’s worst voter suppression law (which voting rights groups are also challenging under Section 2), with local election boards escalating attacks on student voting hours after its passage by shutting down polling places at college campuses and preventing students from running for office. Since Holder has vowed more action to protect voting rights, there’s a very good chance that the Tarheel State will be next on his list.
By: Ari Berman, The Nation, August 22, 2013
“We Only Discriminate For Partisan Reasons”: Texas Struggles To Defend Discriminatory Voting Policies
It’s been about three weeks since the Justice Department, relying on what’s left of the Voting Rights Act, went after voter-discrimination policies in Texas. The U.S. Supreme Court may have severely damaged the VRA, but the Justice Department nevertheless argued that when “intentional voting discrimination” is found, changes to voting rights cannot be permitted to continue.
This week, as Adam Serwer reported, Texas submitted a brief presenting their defense.
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.
The arguments from Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) administration are pretty amazing, especially considering federal courts already found Texas’ election policies discriminatory as recently as two years ago, before the Supreme Court intervened.
As Kevin Drum explained, Texas’ first argument, as pushed by state Attorney General Greg Abbott, “is that, sure, Texas has tried to discriminate as recently as 2011, but their efforts were overturned by a court. So that means there are no current violations, and thus no reason to grant any kind of ‘equitable relief.'”
The second argument is the half-glass-full tack. As Serwer put it, “[T]he state claims, even if Texas did discriminate, and the state stresses that it did not, it was nothing as bad as ‘the ‘pervasive,’ ‘flagrant,’ ‘widespread,’ and ‘rampant’ discrimination that originally justified preclearance in 1965.’ So as long as Texas skies aren’t alight with flames from burning crosses, what’s the big whoop?”
But it’s the third argument that’s truly amazing.
From the brief filed by the state:
DOJ’s accusations of racial discrimination are baseless. In 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party’s electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats….The redistricting decisions of which DOJ complains were motivated by partisan rather than racial considerations, and the plaintiffs and DOJ have zero evidence to prove the contrary.
Got that? Texas wasn’t trying to discriminate against racial and ethnic minorities; Texas was simply trying to discriminate against racial and ethnic minorities who vote for Democrats.
In other words, Texas’ defense is that state policymakers were trying to crush the Democratic vote, and this led to inadvertent discrimination against African Americans and Latinos. As such, the argument goes, Texas was motivated by crass partisanship, and not racism, so the discrimination doesn’t really count.
Any chance this might be persuasive in court? Brenda Wright, a voting law expert with the liberal think tank Demos, told Serwer, “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. 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.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 13, 2013
“Paranoids Or Problem Solvers”: Can The Republicans Get A Handle On Their Party’s Bigots?
Of the many arguments against comprehensive immigration reform, this from Republican activist Cathie Adams is one of the strangest.
Speaking to right-wing radio host Rick Wiles last week, Adams decried a measure in the Senate immigration bill that would require biometric scanning for non-citizens at airports. “[O]f course, we know in biblical prophecy that that is the End Times,” Adams said of the initiative. “That is going to be the brand either on our foreheads or on the back of our hands. That is demonic through and through. That is End Times prophecy. There is no question about that.”
Except there is. For the large majority of Christians (and Americans, writ large) who don’t hold fundamentalist eschatological views, this is either incomprehensible, misguided, or—at worst—near-heretical. For our purposes, however, it’s simply important to note that this idiosyncratic religious belief forms the basis for Adams’s opposition to comprehensive immigration reform. She has one other problem, too: that the bill would give “amnesty” to Muslims who don’t have the “best intentions” for the United States, which seems to rely on a distorted and prejudiced view of Islam and its adherents.
If Cathie Adams were just one of the countless activists or provocateurs that dominate conservative politics, this would be worth noting, but not commenting on. But she’s the former chairman of the Texas GOP, from 2009 to 2010, and that’s no small thing.
By size and population, Texas is the second largest state in the Union. It contains four of the country’s largest cities and metropolitan areas, and is a major engine of economic growth for the nation.
Texas Republicans don’t just dominate the state’s political landscape—controlling its legislature, 24 of its 36 congressional districts, both of its Senate seats, and all of its statewide offices—but they’re also a powerful force in national politics, and one of the most important wings of the GOP writ large. Not only is Texas the home state of the party’s most successful political dynasty—the Bush family—but its members play influential roles at all levels of politics, from John Cornyn at the Republican National Committee to Karl Rove at American Crossroads. Leading the state party is a big deal; it allows for significant influence over everything from candidate selection and outreach, to fundraising and platform writing.
In other words, Adams is a Texas GOP elite who reflects other, similar elites. There’s Rep. Louie Gohmert, who once warned that “radical Islamists” were “being trained to come in and act Hispanic,” which—for him—was a reason to oppose comprehensive immigration reform. Likewise, there’s Rep. Steve Stockman, who declared immigration reform a Democratic plot to “destroy America,” and Sen. Ted Cruz, whose vocal opposition reflects right-wing anger over the Gang of Eight proposal.
In fairness, it should be said that there are Texas Republicans who support immigration reform, and who are working to bring Latinos into the state Republican Party. This summer, chairman Steve Munisteri announced an effort to hire two dozen new full-time workers, and dedicate them to minority outreach, including Latinos. At the same time, groups like Hispanic Republicans of Texas—spearheaded by George P. Bush, son of former Florida governor Jeb Bush—have made heavy investments in Latino candidates for public office. Munisteri has been silent on comprehensive immigration reform, but Bush, like his father, is a supporter.
What you can’t escape, however, is that Cathie Adams and her ilk speak for a large number of Republicans—in Texas and nationwide—who oppose immigration reform. And while there is a sensible argument against reform—and the Senate bill in particular—the reality is that the most vocal opponents rely on Adams’s blend of paranoia and prejudice. Iowa Rep. Steve King, for example, argues that a path to citizenship will encourage drug runners to enter the country. “For every [immigrant] who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there that, they weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert,” said King, doing his best to alienate Latino voters.
But even with people like King in the party, if just some House Republicans got behind an immigration bill, it would pass. And indeed, several GOP lawmakers have either dropped their opposition to citizenship, or announced their flexibility on the issue. For instance, in an interview Thursday, Rep. Dave Reichert of Washington state floated citizenship as a fair trade for greater border security. “I want to get to the point where they have to pay a fine, there are some penalties they have to go through, there are some steps they have to go through. I want to hold them accountable, and then they get citizenship,” he said.
The dilemma for the rest of the party is this: Do they want to stand with Cathie Adams and her ilk? Or do they want to join with Republicans like Reichert, who are trying to solve problems? The Adams contingent holds significant sway in the House of Representatives, but they aren’t all-powerful, and if enough Republicans decided on reform as a project worth pursuing, it would happen.
Beyond the narrow issue of a bill, the choice between Adams and Reichert expands into a broader question: What kind of party does the GOP want to be? Does it want to be one that can reflect a more diverse group of constituents, who may share similar interests but come from different perspectives? Or does it want to remain a redoubt for a shrinking minority of older whites? The GOP’s choice on immigration reform won’t answer the question, but it will push them in one direction or another. For the sake of our novel experiment in broad-based multiracial democracy, I hope they reject the Cathie Adamses of their party.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The Daily Beast, August 9, 2013
“Just Secede Already!”: Texas Asks Court To Nuke The Voting Rights Act, Forever
When the Supreme Court dismantled a key provision of the Voting Rights Act last June, there were two small silver linings in this decision. The first was the possibility that Congress could revive the regime killed by the Court, where states with particularly poor records of racialized voter suppression must “preclear” their voting practices with the Justice Department or a federal court before those practices can take effect. The second potential silver lining is Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows a state to be brought back under the preclearance requirement if a court finds that it engaged in “violations of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment justifying equitable relief.”
Now, however, Texas wants to destroy these two silver linings as well. And there is a fair chance that the conservative Supreme Court will allow them to do so.
Late last month, the Justice Department joined a Section 3 lawsuit claiming that federal supervision of Texas’ election practices should be reinstated in light of very recent examples of intentional race discrimination by Texas. Among other things, a federal court found that Texas “consciously replaced many of [a] district’s active Hispanic voters with low-turnout Hispanic voters in an effort to strengthen the voting power of [the district’s] Anglo citizens.” These, the Justice Department explained, were “violations of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment” justifying federal supervision.
Texas’ response to the Justice Department does not simply reject the idea that it should be subject to preclearance, it calls upon the courts to declare virtually any preclearance regime unconstitutional. According to Texas, the Supreme Court’s decision hobbling the Voting Rights Act “threw out Congress’s reauthorization of a preclearance regime because the legislative record failed to show ‘anything approaching the ‘pervasive,’ ‘flagrant,’ ‘widespread,’ and ‘rampant’ discrimination that faced Congress in 1965, and that clearly distinguished the covered jurisdictions from the rest of the Nation at that time.’” In other words, Texas wants a federal court order saying that any effort to reinstate the Voting Rights Act in Texas is unconstitutional unless Texas transforms into Mississippi at the height of the Jim Crow era.
And they may very well succeed in getting this order. While Texas’ theory cannot be squared with the text of the Fifteenth Amendment — which provides that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” and gives Congress “power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation” — it is not that hard to square with the Supreme Court’s recent decision. Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion does indeed contain language suggesting that only something “approaching the ‘pervasive,’ ‘flagrant,’ ‘widespread,’ and ‘rampant’ discrimination that faced Congress in 1965″ can permit a preclearance regime now. The fact that this language flies in the face of the Constitution is not likely to bother the five conservative justices who already signed onto it once.
As a final act of chutzpah, Texas also claims that it cannot be subject to preclearance because “Hispanic citizens in Texas registered to vote at higher rates” than Hispanics in other states not subject to federal supervision under the Voting Rights Act. That very well be true, but it’s also besides the point. The thrust of the Justice Department’s lawsuit is that Texas intentionally drew its district lines so that white votes would count more and Hispanic votes would count less. In other words, the whole purpose of these lines was to make sure that it didn’t matter if Hispanic voters registered at high rates because their voting power would still be diluted by gerrymandering. It’s like a basketball referee claiming that it doesn’t matter that he’s not counting all the points scored by one team because that team is taking more shots.
By: Ian Millhiser, Think Progress, August 9, 2013
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