Thursday, October 9, 2014

Wisconsin and Texas Voter Suppression Laws Blocked

These are only short term injunctions though:
The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked Wisconsin from enforcing its strict voter identification law in this year's election.

By a 6-3 vote, the justices granted an emergency appeal from civil rights lawyers who argued it was too late to put the rule into effect.

Lawyers for the ACLU had noted the state had already sent out thousands of absentee ballots without mentioning the need for voters to return a copy of the photo identification.

It would be "chaos," they said, for the state now to have to decide whether or not to count such ballots because the voters failed to comply with the new law.

Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented. The six justices in the majority did not issue a written opinion to accompany the decision to lift an order by a lower court that would have allowed the law to take effect.
So not surprised that the three most right wing justices decided that keeping the n*****s from voting is more important than preventing chaos in the already started balloting.
At nearly the same time, a federal judge in Texas struck down that state's new voter ID law on the grounds that it violated the constitutional right to vote and discriminated against racial minorities.

Texas Atty. Gen. Gregg Abbott said the state would appeal the ruling.

The Wisconsin and Texas cases were the two most closely watched tests of new voter rules this year. In both states, the Republican-led legislatures sought to tighten the rules for voting and to require all registered voters who did not have driver's license to obtain a photo ID card at a state motor vehicles office.
In Texas, a gun license was acceptable too, but not a college ID, even a college ID issued by a state college.

Funny that.

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