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The Supreme Court said Monday it will not hear an appeal of a lower court’s ruling striking down a Texas law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, effectively killing one of the strictest such laws in the nation. The law, passed in 2011, required voters to show one of seven acceptable forms of photo identification at the polls, including a driver’s license, a passport, a permit to carry a concealed handgun or an election identification certificate. Voters could only obtain an election identification certificate, a form of identification provided to those who don't have a license, if...

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.

In her dissent to the Supreme Court’s ruling that Texas could enforce its voter ID law, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote: "The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters." No, Justice Ginsburg; the greatest threat to confidence in our election process is that too many people may vote who are not legally qualified to vote, or that may vote fraudulently. How confident can honest citizen voters...

Overnight the Supreme Court refused to reverse the stay imposed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and thus allowed voter ID to be required in the mid-term election in Texas. This is procedural delay based on the idea that election rules shouldn’t change at the last second. So voter ID gets one last hurrah in Texas. But election integrity advocates shouldn’t celebrate too much. Texas Voter ID is doomed. After this next election, it is prohibited from being used. Nor should much faith be placed in any appeal. The plaintiffs won on two separate theories under the Voting Rights...

The Supreme Court will allow Texas to use its controversial new voter identification law for the November election, the court said Saturday morning, despite a lower court’s ruling that the law unfairly targets minorities. By a 6-3 vote, the majority of justices rejected emergency appeals from the Justice Department and civil rights groups to prohibit requiring voters to produce certain forms of photo identification in order to cast ballots in the state. “The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax...

The Obama administration embarked on a new strategy on Thursday to challenge voting laws it says discriminate by race, an effort to counter a Supreme Court ruling last month that freed states from the strictest federal oversight. Attorney General Eric Holder vowed to start in Texas, a conservative stronghold. Texas' voter ID law requires voters to show a photo ID before casting a ballot, a measure its supporters, mostly Republicans, said is necessary to prevent fraud. Democrats said it would disproportionately affect the poor and minorities because even getting a free photo ID would require travel to a state office...

July 25, 2013 Breaking: Holder Tries to Re-grab Texas, Announces Nationwide Attack on Election Integrity J. Christian Adams Two important developments this morning. First: Attorney General Eric Holder will announce that the Justice Department will initiate broad nationwide attacks on election integrity measures like Voter ID using the remaining portions of the Voting Rights Act. Last month, the Supreme Court struck down the 1965 triggers that forced 15 states to submit election law changes to Washington D.C. for federal approval.Second: despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Justice Department announced it will try to recapture Texas under Section 5 of the...

Attorney General Eric Holder announced Thursday that the Justice Department will seek to recapture Texas and return it to federal oversight for approval of all election law changes such as photo voter identification. Holder’s move comes after the Supreme Court in June freed Texas and other states from the requirement that all state election laws be approved in Washington, D.C. Holder’s move prompted outrage from Texas Senators Ted Cruz, John Cornyn and Governor Rick Perry. The three should also be angry with the Republican National Committee. PJ Tatler has learned that staff at the RNC have been spending RNC donations...

A federal court on Thursday blocked a controversial new voter ID law in Texas, ruling that the state failed to show that the law would not harm the voting rights of minorities. The three-judge panel in the historic case said that evidence also showed that costs of obtaining a voter ID would fall most heavily on poor African Americans and Hispanics in Texas. Evidence submitted by Texas to prove that its law did not discriminate was “unpersuasive, invalid, or both,” wrote David. S. Tatel, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in the panel’s...

by John HillStand With Arizona In a despicable ruling today, a federal court has blocked a Texas law that would require voters to present photo IDs to election officials before being allowed to cast ballots in November - in clear violation of a U.S. Supreme Court precedent upholding the practice. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. ruled that the law, overwhelmingly supported by Texas voters and legislators, imposes "strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor" and that "a disproportionately high percentage of African-Americans and Hispanics in Texas live in poverty". This ruling is an outrage on several fronts....

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/12/156668326/texas-rep-voters-dont-have-confidence-in-system?sc=tw&cc=share

The United States Supreme Court struck down some parts of the Arizona Immigration Law, but the Supreme Court UPHELD a key provision (and very controversial part) of the AZ Immigration Law. According to the Washington Post, The Supreme Court has upheld the provision in the AZ law requiring police to check the status of someone they suspect is not in the United States legally. Anyone in AZ must now "Show Me Your Papers" when asked by AZ law enforcement. I believe that this ruling gives us a glimpse of how the Supreme Court will rule when they hear the Voter...

(Reuters) - The Obama administration on Monday blocked a new Texas law requiring voters to show photo identification before they can cast a ballot out of concerns it could harm some Hispanic voters who lack such identification. The state law approved in May 2011 required voters to show government-issued photo identification, which could include a driver's license, a military identification card, a birth certificate with a photo, a current U.S. passport, or a concealed handgun permit. The Justice Department said that data from Texas showed that almost 11 percent of Hispanic voters, just over 300,000, did not have a driver's...

The Justice Department is objecting to a new photo ID law in Texas for voters, saying the state has failed to demonstrate that the the law is not discriminatory by design against Hispanic voters. The department's head of the civil rights division, Tom Perez, wrote a a six-page letter to Texas' director of elections saying that Texas has not "sustained its burden" under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to show that the new law will not have a discriminatory effect on minority voters. About 11 percent of Hispanic voters reportedly lack state-issued identification. Perez wrote that while the...

<p>March 12 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration blocked Texas’s new law requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification at the polls, escalating a partisan dispute over voting restrictions.</p> <p>The U.S. Justice Department is using its power under the Voting Rights Act to halt the Texas law, saying in a letter to the state today that the measure may disproportionately harm Hispanics. The department in December blocked a similar law in South Carolina.</p>