A Lone Star State congressman who filed suit against Gov. Rick Perry to try to block a voter ID law said he did so because the law “sends the wrong message about Texas.”
Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) sued after Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said he would immediately implement the voter ID law that had been blocked by the federal courts but was liberated by the Supreme Court ruling that deemed Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act unconstitutional.
“This law was found to be discriminatory. And the fact just because section four was struck down that you would move to make a law that a court has found to be discriminatory is absolutely nonsense,” Veasey said on MSNBC.
“We are a great state and don’t want to send a message to businesses and companies and people that are moving to the state of Texas in record numbers, mostly Latino and African-American, that discrimination is OK. We need to stop. I believe this law, this voter I.D. law passed by Republicans, when I was still in the legislature in 2011, that it’s discriminatory and violates section two.”
Veasey said during his four terms in the state legislature he “saw some of the worst discrimination as far as public policy is concerned coming from Republicans trying to implement that public policy so it would have an adverse impact on African-American and Latinos when it comes to exercising the right to vote.”
“Groups like the King Street Patriots, they are alive and well, and they are actively trying to make sure that Republicans can continue to win elections at the expense of African-American and Latino voters,” he said, singling out the Tea Party group that created True the Vote. “And absolutely Texas is not in any position to say that we should, can live in a post-section five world. There is no absolutely no doubt about that.”
Like many Democrats after the ruling, Veasey advocated a bipartisan reworking of the Voting Rights Act in Congress.
“Let’s come together and let’s be for fairness,” he said. “We want people to know that Texas and other states want to do the right thing when it comes to all of its citizens, and we know that many of these policies, like the ones trying to be implemented in Texas, are simply unfair.”
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