Court blocks key Texas voter registration laws
ProudProgressive
2012/08/04 15:25:18
The Right Wing drive to disenfranchise as many American citizens as they can continues, but there are signs that the American Judiciary may indeed be the ones to protect the rights of all Americans from these attempts to stifle any voices that don't toe the conservative line. Let's hope this is only the beginning.
Article excerpt follows:
Court blocks key Texas voter registration laws
by: Michael Li
Thu Aug 02, 2012
Voting advocates scored a major victory this afternoon when U.S. District Judge Gregg Costa enjoined enforcement of Texas laws passed in the 2011 legislative session which require that deputy voter registrars be Texas residents and prohibited performance-based compensation for voter registration staff.
The restrictions had been challenged by the non-profit group Voting for America and various other plaintiffs in a suit filed early this year in federal district court in Galveston.
The court rejected claims of Texas that the new restrictions were required to prevent fraud, holding that "[i]f these practices did contribute to fraud, concrete examples of such fraud would likely exist from decades of experience . . . . But no such evidence was introduced for the Court to weigh against the harm to Plaintiffs."
The court also enjoined enforcement of existing provisions of Texas law which Texas interpreted as banning deputy voter registrars from "accepting or handling applications from residents of counties other than the county in which the person is appointed as a VDR," finding the requirement unconstitutionally burdensome. The court noted:
As Plaintiffs have pointed out, a VDR active only in the City of Dallas would need to be appointed in Dallas, Denton, Collin, Rockwall, and Kaufman Counties in order to legally accept applications from residents of all parts of the city ... The county limitation, by requiring both registration and training in any county in which a potential VDR wishes to submit applications, thus imposes severe time burdens and administrative expenses on voter registration activities.
The court also barred enforcement of prohibitions on "photocopying or scanning voter registration applications that have been submitted to a VDR but not yet delivered to the appropriate county registrar, so long as the information copied or scanned does not include" confidential personal information, such as driver's license or social security numbers.
In addition, the court enjoined provisions requiring that completed applications be delivered in person by a deputy voter registrar rather than by U.S. mail.
In its opinion, the court stressed the importance of voter registration drives in modern democracies:
Voter registration drives have played a vital role in increasing participation in the political process. This is especially true in minority communities with historically lower rates of voter registration. Census figures indicate that a significant percentage of African-Americans and Hispanics voting in the last presidential election registered through voter registration drives and other third-party voter registration activities.
But rather than helping to ensure participation in the electoral process, Judge Costa found that Texas laws had the opposite effect:
The result is that Texas now imposes more burdensome regulations on those engaging in third-party voter registration than the vast majority of, if not all, other states.
The laws in question are now blocked pending a full hearing and trial.
The court's 94-page opinion can be found here.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxeOfQQnUr_gcnJ1T2tERDNuMTQ
Article excerpt follows:
Court blocks key Texas voter registration laws
by: Michael Li
Thu Aug 02, 2012
Voting advocates scored a major victory this afternoon when U.S. District Judge Gregg Costa enjoined enforcement of Texas laws passed in the 2011 legislative session which require that deputy voter registrars be Texas residents and prohibited performance-based compensation for voter registration staff.
The restrictions had been challenged by the non-profit group Voting for America and various other plaintiffs in a suit filed early this year in federal district court in Galveston.
The court rejected claims of Texas that the new restrictions were required to prevent fraud, holding that "[i]f these practices did contribute to fraud, concrete examples of such fraud would likely exist from decades of experience . . . . But no such evidence was introduced for the Court to weigh against the harm to Plaintiffs."
The court also enjoined enforcement of existing provisions of Texas law which Texas interpreted as banning deputy voter registrars from "accepting or handling applications from residents of counties other than the county in which the person is appointed as a VDR," finding the requirement unconstitutionally burdensome. The court noted:
As Plaintiffs have pointed out, a VDR active only in the City of Dallas would need to be appointed in Dallas, Denton, Collin, Rockwall, and Kaufman Counties in order to legally accept applications from residents of all parts of the city ... The county limitation, by requiring both registration and training in any county in which a potential VDR wishes to submit applications, thus imposes severe time burdens and administrative expenses on voter registration activities.
The court also barred enforcement of prohibitions on "photocopying or scanning voter registration applications that have been submitted to a VDR but not yet delivered to the appropriate county registrar, so long as the information copied or scanned does not include" confidential personal information, such as driver's license or social security numbers.
In addition, the court enjoined provisions requiring that completed applications be delivered in person by a deputy voter registrar rather than by U.S. mail.
In its opinion, the court stressed the importance of voter registration drives in modern democracies:
Voter registration drives have played a vital role in increasing participation in the political process. This is especially true in minority communities with historically lower rates of voter registration. Census figures indicate that a significant percentage of African-Americans and Hispanics voting in the last presidential election registered through voter registration drives and other third-party voter registration activities.
But rather than helping to ensure participation in the electoral process, Judge Costa found that Texas laws had the opposite effect:
The result is that Texas now imposes more burdensome regulations on those engaging in third-party voter registration than the vast majority of, if not all, other states.
The laws in question are now blocked pending a full hearing and trial.
The court's 94-page opinion can be found here.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxeOfQQnUr_gcnJ1T2tERDNuMTQ
Read More: http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/12581/court...
Top Opinion
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+4Republicans are trying to do everything they can to pass every voter suppression and disenfranchisement law possible in order to steal the presidential election in November. Thank God for Judge Costa, I hope other judges in other states with these draconian laws will follow suit.
^then you say.
"or the past century are sufficient when the claims of "voter fraud" prove not to have even ONE factual example to back them up is a bad thing,"
Your contradicting yourself like a true lib.
Disenfranchisement of voters. More new lib terminology.
And the fact that there has been virtually no polling place voter fraud anywhere in the United States in the last century doesn't mean that elections are fair. Take Florida, for instance - in 2000 Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State (and state chairman of the Bush campaign - no conflict of interest there, right?) threw over 20,000 registered voters, almost all of whom were black, off the voter rolls because they had similar names to a list of felons in Texas. The Republicans threw out hundreds of absentee ballots in Democratic districts for technical defects like misspellings, while they fought to get the same defective ballots counted in Republican districts. They used an illegal ballot in at least one district to defraud a community of holocaust survivors into casting votes they thought were for Gore but were instead for Pat Buchanan, a holocaust denier. In 2004 the President of Diebold, the company that made the electronic voting machines, fixed the returns so that in spite of the fact that every poll showed Kerry winning Ohio by a comfortable margin he...
And the fact that there has been virtually no polling place voter fraud anywhere in the United States in the last century doesn't mean that elections are fair. Take Florida, for instance - in 2000 Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State (and state chairman of the Bush campaign - no conflict of interest there, right?) threw over 20,000 registered voters, almost all of whom were black, off the voter rolls because they had similar names to a list of felons in Texas. The Republicans threw out hundreds of absentee ballots in Democratic districts for technical defects like misspellings, while they fought to get the same defective ballots counted in Republican districts. They used an illegal ballot in at least one district to defraud a community of holocaust survivors into casting votes they thought were for Gore but were instead for Pat Buchanan, a holocaust denier. In 2004 the President of Diebold, the company that made the electronic voting machines, fixed the returns so that in spite of the fact that every poll showed Kerry winning Ohio by a comfortable margin he wound up losing, with returns like 9000 votes for Bush in precincts that only had about 800 registered voters.
THAT kind of voter fraud is common, almost expected, from Republicans, but that kind of voter fraud is not what the Right Wing voter suppression laws are supposed to prevent.
^all the claims you made above hold no credibility. First you say there is no proof of voter fraud for past half century. Now, when it comes to Bush, you say there is. Typical lib hatred.
I dont see how having to show an ID, you know something every person has to carry with them by law, is disenfranchisement.
May God Damn you a whole Lot. you smug little Feces Bowls.
Do Dem's have some exceptional problem that Republicans and Independents don't, concerning rules & regulations set forth by the states? Last I checked, the Constitution doesn't specify any rules on how a state conducts their registrations, type of ballots, voting or verification. It says the electors from each state shall assemble and cast their vote for President and VP.
Why is it then that they raise such a stink about wanting the most accurate elections possible while trying to suppress the military vote in another state?
Could it be that all those smiling faces at the photo ops are flipping the bastard off behind his back?
Your statement that "Dems have some exceptional problem that Republicans and Independents don't, concerning rules & regulations set forth by the states" is more ridiculous than usual from you. Dems have NO problem with the rules and regulations set forth by the states. It is the Republicans who seem to have the problem. THATS WHY THEY WANT TO CHANGE LAWS THAT WEREN'T EVER A PROBLEM UNTIL WE GOT A BLACK PRESIDENT.
Republicans have long known that in a full and fair election they have no chance of winning. That's WHY they work so hard to suppress as many votes as they can. Democrats are perfectly happy with a system that has worked for the last century or more. Republicans are the ones who know that if a working and effective system is left in place, they're out of business.
It's not up to anyone to PROVE there's 1 or 1,000 cases of voter fraud. It's the fact that it does exist, has been exposed numerous times by deceased voter absentee ballots and registrations mailed out to people's family pets, in some cases deceased as well.
Most states have laws on the books that requires them to keep the voter registration logs as up to date as possible and the efforts of the DOJ - WH and select judges are working against that goal.
There is bo Nationwide mechanism in place that prohibits a voter from being registered in more than one state. Nor is there any Nationwide database that alerts districts when one has become deceased since the most recent election.
Fact is, the process HAS been left up to the states LONG before the Indonesian National usurped the Oval Office and states are fully within their rights to do the best they can to preserve the accuracy of LEGAL ballots cast in their state.
They are requiring that the registrars are TX. residents. Doesn't matter because TX. will just refuse to obey the order and let the DOJ sue away.
The burden of proof is on the Feds to show that any action taken would have an adverse affect, not the other way around.
"before any election-related modifications can be put into place.."
Like I said, let the DOJ try suing the state and add this to their list of losers for 2012.
You've had plenty of time to study up on that and should understand the SCOTUS only rules on what is placed before the court, NOT an entire piece of legislation.
And for the 1,000th time, they shot the individual mandate down as argued by 0bozo's attorneys and said it was unConstitutional under the Commerce Clause.
Big win for the people which sets precedent for the Proglodytes future attempts to force citizens to purchase a particular product or service.
The rest is going hasta-la-bye-bye in 2013, well before those new taxes are scheduled to hit.
and
ruled it Constitutional as a tax, BFD. You lose as usual.
Yeah, Roberts had to add his own words because not ONCE in the entire monstrosity of 2,700 pgs. did 0bozo have the balls to call it a Tax.
It never would have passed in the first place regardless of all the bribes, and back-room deals.
Doesn't matter,....... the whole thing is toast.
The mandate is constitutional.
What's your next trick,.... rubber - glue?