Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott wasted no time after the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act today. The Lone Star AG implemented Texas’ voter ID law immediately.
“With today’s decision, the State’s voter ID law will take effect immediately,” Abbott announced. “Redistricting maps passed by the Legislature may also take effect without approval from the federal government.”
The Dallas Morning News, in noting Abbott’s decision, called the state’s voter ID “controversial.” It’s anything but, at least outside the far left and the media. It’s a law the vast majority of Texans have wanted to put in place for years to secure the state’s elections from fraud. Roughly 80% of Texans across all ethnicities support requiring voter ID to vote. The Texas legislature had attempted to pass a voter ID law across a couple of sessions, but kept getting thwarted by the state’s Democrats. The lege finally passed voter ID in the 2011 session and Gov. Rick Perry signed it into law, only to have the Obama-Holder Justice Department block it. The Texas law that Holder blocked, though, was modeled on a similar law in Indiana which has already been upheld at the Supreme Court.
The Obama administration has consistently militated against states’ authority to set their own election laws, and has specifically fought requirements to produce proof of identity at the polls. That should be controversial, not the fact that the state’s attorney general is implementing a law that the majority wants and which has already passed muster.
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