Texas Two-Steps All Over Voting Rights

[Gothmog]

It says it can make voting as difficult as it wants to, and any law that says otherwise is unconstitutional. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/09/voting_rights_act_sections_2_and_5_texas_defends_voter_id_laws.html This is a great article on the attempts by Texas to maintain its discriminatory voter id law in place. Texas is now seeking to overturn Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act

But now Texas has upped the ante, arguing that if Section 2 indeed makes its voter ID law illegal, then Section 2 violates the Constitution. That means the other great statutory protection of minority voting rights would suffer the same fate as the preclearance provision and leave minority voters with few protections from unwarranted new voting hurdles.

Section 2 provides relief when minority voters have less opportunity than others to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice. It has long been accepted by the courts in so-called vote dilution cases, in which black, Latino, or other minority voters get gerrymandered out of political power by the creative drawing of district lines. In 1986, the Supreme Court adopted a framework for deciding when Section 2 requires jurisdictions to draw legislative or congressional districts to help minority voters elect candidates of their choice....

Let’s not mistake what Texas is doing here. To seem more moderate, it couches its constitutional arguments in the language of “constitutional avoidance,” not exactly saying that Section 2 is unconstitutional but saying that the courts should read it narrowly because otherwise the law would be unconstitutional. In practical terms, that’s a distinction without a difference. In either case, according to Texas, the result is that Section 2 cannot offer protection for racial minorities in vote denial cases.

[DhhD]

1. In renewing your driver's license, be sure to re-register to vote. n/t