Congratulations, Texas Republicans! Mission accomplished! Ya’ll kept this guy from being able to cast his vote this year!…
The TX GOP has also kept a 93-year old veteran from being able to vote (because, ya know, fuck him and his “freedom”) along with a whole bunch of others this year that we’ll get to in a moment, thanks to their new polling place Photo ID law which was found to be both “purposefully discriminatory” and an “unconstitutional poll tax”.
Unfortunately, despite the U.S. District Court judge’s well-documented findings after a year-long trial process, the U.S. Supreme Court is allowing the law to be implemented this year anyway. Their apparent reason: the lower court struck down the law due to illegalities and unconstitutionalites of the Photo ID scheme, but that determination happened just too close to this year’s elections to be allowed to stand this year.
But that 93-year old vet and the man pictured above, 45-year old Eric Lyndell Kennie, are hardly the only ones losing their right to vote in the Lone Star State election this year due to the Republican voter suppression scheme. The unconstitutional law, for now, replaces the state’s previous Voter ID law which had already required every single voter to present an ID at the polls before voting. That’s right, that was already the law since 2003, and during the trial, state Republicans were only able to demonstrate two cases of polling place impersonation over the past decade out of 20 million votes cast in the same period.
Nonetheless, with the new, much more draconian version of the law threatening some 600,000 legally registered voters who do not have the new type of ID required to vote, all sorts of disenfranchisement is already underway.
Let’s start with Kennie’s story, since it’s both amazing and heart-breaking, even if, we fear, not particularly unusual right about now…
As reported by Ed Pilkington at the Guardian this week, Kennie has never left the state of Texas. He’s never even ever left Austin, where he was born and raised. He’s never had a driver’s license, but he does have a state-issued personal ID card and a voter registration card. He has always used them — or, at least used to — when voting, since he’s always tried to vote in every general election.
But now, neither his personal ID card, which is expired, or his voter registration card is acceptable for voting under the new law.
Kinnie has spent the last year trying and trying to get a supposedly “free” Election Identify Certificate (EIC) in order to vote. Yet, despite repeated trips to the TX Dept. of Public Safety (DPS) to obtain that “free” state-issued ID, Kinnie is still out of luck…
Each trip to the DPS office involved taking three buses, a journey that can stretch to a couple of hours. Then he had to stand in line, waiting for up to a further three hours to be seen, before finally making another two-hour schlep home.
Kennie was told he’d need to go to a different part of town (“another three-bus trek to the official records office”) to get a birth certificate, which costs $23, and then get himself back to the DPS yet again if he wants that “free” ID. He only makes about $15 to $20 per day collecting cans, bottles and metal for recycling, so $23 (plus all the bus fare) is not easy.
Nonetheless, he made the trip, paid the poll tax for the birth certificate and then made the trip back to the DPS. Again. However…
Bad luck, Eric. Guess you should have thought of that when you were born. No voting this year for you.
…
The one thing he is not prepared to do is to give up the fight. Though he has admitted defeat this election cycle, he is determined to find a way through the mess and regain his vote.
“I do need to vote, I really do,” he said. “It’s too late for me, but this is for the next generation. They need us to get out the people who harm us and bring in folk who will make things a little better.”
Kennie is hardly the only one having trouble exercising the right he had always enjoyed up until the Texas Republicans decided to take it away in their shameful drive to retain political power.
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU’s School of Law has been detailing similar stories. Here are a sampling…
…
Even if he does have the money, he will need to go through the whole process of getting the documents and going to the office again, when he has already tried to vote once and gone to a DPS office twice. Mr. Garcia thinks it is unfair that he cannot vote with the documents he has. He was born here and he has an ID with his picture on it; it’s just expired. He has a voter registration card, and voted in past elections.
Ms. Watson stated that she has observed many other students having trouble voting.
He is unable to get around easily. Mr. McGriff got to the polls during early voting because Susan McMinn, an experienced election volunteer, gave him a ride. He brought with him his expired driver’s license, his birth certificate, his voter registration card, and other documentation, but none were sufficient under Texas’s new photo ID requirement.
“No one knows how many other voters are being turned away because of the draconian new law,” the Brennan Center explains. “For example, one election official reported that in one day of early voting at a single site, seven voters were turned away because they had expired or insufficient ID.”
Congratulations, Republicans! Those Americans who have died while fighting for and protecting democracy thank you very much for cherishing their memories.
UPDATE 11/3/2014: More on the “huge problem” students are now having voting in TX under the GOP’s Photo ID voter suppression law.
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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Olester McGriff was lied to by the office in Irving if they told him they were out of IDs. Our IDs are not given to us the day we apply for them; we get a photocopy of what the new ID will look like to use until we get the ID itself in the mail in a couple of weeks. And they come from the main DPS office in Austin. I know this because I just had to renew my driver’s license in August and that was the way it was handled. My daughter also renewed her state-issued photo ID this year in September and she said it was handled exactly the same way. So why did this office lie to Mr. McGriff? Is that something you could check out?
Thanks, Mary. I don’t know if EICs are issued any differently than regular drivers licenses or regular state-issued photo IDs (which are good for stuff other than voting, unlike the EIC), but I’ve forwarded your comments to Brennan Center and some others, in case it’s helpful. Don’t know if they (or I) will have time to figure it out between now and Election Day. But the input is much appreciated!!
The GOP (Group of Paranoids) are afraid to be Americans.
(The song lyrics “I am proud to be an American” will have to be changed to “I am afraid to be an American” so they can sing the truth).
Thanks, Brad, for forwarding my email to the Brennan Center. It really bothered me that the Irving office told the man they were out of IDs. I also wonder if he was trying to get the voter ID or the state-issued ID for non-drivers.
I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that 2 USC 6 applies to Texas,and someone needs to sue to get an injunction forcing the required reduction in representation.
If the estimates of ~600,000 disenfranchised voters are correct, and we assume about 1/2 are males over 21, then when you work out the math, Texas should lose at least one representative to congress. I’m not sure who the injured parties might be, but I think any other state that is not “denying or abridging” votes would clearly be suffering an injury. The only problem with this is that a lawsuit to enforce this provision would probably have to go directly to the Supreme Court, where it would likely be granted cert and then ruled against by the 5 conservatives.
In any case we need a campaign to enforce 2 USC 6 against these voter id states that are “denying and abridging” voting rights.
I’m curious how a 93-year old veteran has managed to never leave Austin, TX? Did he do all of his training and deployments in Austin?
Second thought, as a resident of the state of Texas, I’m glad people have pointed out that the gentleman in Dallas who was “refused” an ID twice pointed out that it is impossible for them to be out of cards since the print the ID out on plain printer paper and mail the card within a few weeks. They don’t have to be in the same county either, it can be done at any DPS office.
Finally, the Eric Lyndell Kennie story is full of holes, and I question it’s validity. In the story it noted that he had previously been issued a Texas ID card, which means he had to have presented a birth certificate that was acceptable at the time it was issued. That expired ID card is one of the accepted means of establishing his identity under the “Supporting Identity Documents”…
Texas driver license or ID card that has been expired more than two years.
So twice now I’ve seen stories about how people are being disenfranchised by the Texas law, but they are easily proven to be false. Why is that?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-02/90lbs-cocaine-found-ship-owned-senate-majority-leader-mitch-mcconnells-father-law
The poor McConnell family lost some of their net worth in the 2008 financial disaster. But hey, coke and insider trading will fix that.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/expd/15513048960/
Mitch the Snowman
C. Galloway @ 6 said:
You may want to read the story a bit closer. That’s two different voters. If your error was due to my confusing writing, my apologies.
It’s unclear whether that’s the case or not, since EICs may work differently than drivers licenses or personal ID cards.
You sure about that? What were the requirements for a personal ID card in TX back in the 1990s (or earlier) when he got his TX Personal ID card that expired in 2000?
Nope. You are wrong, at least according to the TX Sec. of State’s website [emphasis added]:
Where does the TX SoS (or any other TX authority) instruct that an expired TX personal ID card is an “accepted means of establishing his identity”?
You didn’t have the courtesy to link to whatever it is that you were quoting from, but I appear to have found it. That seems to be a quote from an “Identification Requirements” page at the TX Dept. of Public Safety (DPS).
That page states that “There are three ways an individual can verify his/her identity when applying for a drivers license or identification card”:
The “Texas driver license or ID card that has been expired more than two years.” that you cite is listed in the “Supporting Identity Documents” section. So, without being able to present the items listed in 1 or 2 above, he’d have had to have a “Secondary Identify Document” and two from the “Supporting Identity Documents” list.
Presuming that page is accurate (and the TX SoS has changed the rules on the fly since passing SB 14 in 2011, btw), while Kennie’s expired Personal ID might have worked as one “Supporting” document, he still would have needed a “Secondary” document and another “Supporting” document.
Since he didn’t have any of the “Secondary” documents, as listed here…
…His expired personal ID wouldn’t have done the trick. Sorry.
Because you either don’t know how to read, or don’t care to check the actual facts? Or because you just want to believe they are “proven to be false”, when they haven’t been? That’s just a couple of guesses.
Whole thing is absolutely asinine in my opinion, close the borders, and kick out the people who are not Citizens. Until that happens, there is no Chain of Custody of Who is eligible citizen to vote. D’s have to see that this is why R’s fight this at the ballot box.
Whoever is saying leave the borders open and unchecked does not have the best interest of this country in their plans.
Jefferson @ 10:
Whoever you are…
a) Please stop spamming comments on every article with the same nonsense over and over again. b) No, non-citizens are not voting or stealing your elections.
c) Even if they were (which they are not), polling place Photo ID restrictions have nothing to do with stopping it. (Yes, non-citizens have drivers license and other ID that is allowable for voting under Photo ID voting restriction laws.)
c) Read and learn something please: https://bradblog.com/?p=9412
d) Stop being a dupe.
e) Thank you.
Oh, and, since you don’t seem to know, immigration is at the lowest rate its been in decade, Obama has deported more immigrants than any other President and has put more money into border security than any other President.
Not that I support any of that, but please see item (d) above again. Thanks.