Within hours of a U.S. Supreme Court decision dismantling a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, Texas lawmakers announced plans to implement a strict voter ID law that had been blocked by a federal court. Lawmakers in Alabama said they would press forward with a similar law that had been on hold.
Voter ID laws for voting are discriminatory in practice in the US, especially in southern states for a mulitide of reasons including barriers to getting the IDs, easily losing them due to discriminatory law enforcement, and many minorities not getting them for other reasons.
Restrictive voting measures are designed to maintain the power structures that benefit those in control — largely white legislators — and their legacy is still felt today.
For example, Texas didn’t even sleep on it — they moved to introduce a strict voter ID law at midnight after the Supreme Court decision was handed down in 2013. That law resulted in the ineligibility of an estimated 608,470 registered voters in Texas, representing a total of about 4.5% of registered voters in the state at the time.
Other countries with universal and easily obtained IDs might not have the same outcomes, but in the US the ID requirement for voting only exists to suppress minority voting. You can find a lot of sources on how it works, but keep in mind that at the same time states added the ID requirement they also made it harder to obtain an ID.
The idea that voter ID laws are pro-white-hegemony is basically racist.
That law resulted in the ineligibility of an estimated 608,470 registered voters in Texas, representing a total of about 4.5% of registered voters in the state at the time.
How did these people register to vote without ID? How, if IDs aren’t checked in that process, do we know some of those people weren’t registered twice or more?
The federal oversight has a lot of opinions and there are hundreds of write ups about it if you don’t like the easily accessible article I linked. The fact that voter fraud has been proven to not be an issue in US elections has a lot of write ups too.
Saying “we don’t know” ignores the fact that ee do know and is just a talking point based on nothing from the people that want to suppress the vote. You know, Republicans.
What was the content of the discriminatory voting laws?
https://apnews.com/article/voting-rights-act-supreme-court-black-voters-6f840911e360c44fd2e4947cc743baa2
Voter ID laws for voting are discriminatory in practice in the US, especially in southern states for a mulitide of reasons including barriers to getting the IDs, easily losing them due to discriminatory law enforcement, and many minorities not getting them for other reasons.
My northern state has required id to vote for a long time. If you don’t have a driver license, you can get a non-driver id for free so you can vote.
voter ID is not discriminatory
Yes, voting ID requirements in the US are discriminatory.
https://www.lwv.org/blog/whats-so-bad-about-voter-id-laws
Other countries with universal and easily obtained IDs might not have the same outcomes, but in the US the ID requirement for voting only exists to suppress minority voting. You can find a lot of sources on how it works, but keep in mind that at the same time states added the ID requirement they also made it harder to obtain an ID.
The idea that voter ID laws are pro-white-hegemony is basically racist.
How did these people register to vote without ID? How, if IDs aren’t checked in that process, do we know some of those people weren’t registered twice or more?
The federal oversight has a lot of opinions and there are hundreds of write ups about it if you don’t like the easily accessible article I linked. The fact that voter fraud has been proven to not be an issue in US elections has a lot of write ups too.
Saying “we don’t know” ignores the fact that ee do know and is just a talking point based on nothing from the people that want to suppress the vote. You know, Republicans.