Former Speaker of the House Jim Wright has voted in every election since 1944 and represented Texas in Congress for thirty-four years. But when he went to his local Department of Public Safety office to obtain the new voter ID required to vote -- which he never needed in any previous election -- the 90-year-old Wright was denied . His driver's license is expired and his Texas Christian University faculty ID is not accepted as a valid form of voter ID.
To be able to vote in Texas, including in Tuesday's election for statewide constitutional amendments, Wright's assistant will have to get a certified copy of his birth certificate, which costs $22. According to the state of Texas, 600,000 to 800,000 registered voters in Texas don't have a valid form of government-issued photo ID. Wright is evidently one of them. But unlike Wright, most of these voters will not have an assistant or the political connections of a former Speaker of the House to help them obtain a birth certificate to prove their identify, nor can they necessarily make two trips to the DMV office or afford a birth certificate.
The devil is in the details when it comes to voter ID. And the rollout of the new law in Texas is off to a very bad start. "I earnestly hope these unduly stringent requirements on voters won't dramatically reduce the number of people who vote," Wright told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "I think they will reduce the number to some extent."
As I've reported previously, getting the necessary voter ID in Texas, which has one of the strictest laws in the country, is no walk in the park. As in Wright's case, you need to pay for a birth certificate or another type of citizenship document to obtain one (which Eric Holder called a poll tax). A handgun permit is an acceptable voter ID in Texas but a university ID is not. And there are no DMV offices in 81 of 254 counties in Texas. That's probably why only 50 of the 600-800,000 registered voters without voter ID in the state have so far successfully obtained one. (The Department of Justice has filed suit to block the law, which was invalidated by a federal court last year but reinstated when the Supreme Court invalidated Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. Texas filed a motion last Friday to dismiss the lawsuit.)
