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Texas’s amended Voter ID law not good enough, opponents say

Jim Malewitz
/
Texas Tribune

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed a law that supposedly defangs the state’s controversial Voter ID law, the nation’s most stringent such law.

But, as The Texas Tribune reports,opponents of the former law aren’t backing down, saying instead that the new law does nothing to fix the old law’s discrimination—nor does it absolve Texas Republican lawmakers of their effort to disenfranchise minority voters.

Federal courts have ruled that the law intentionally set out to discriminate against black and Latino Texans.

The new law still requires Texans who own a qualifying photo ID to show it at polls. If they have no ID, they can show a bill or bank statement and sign an affidavit.

But critics say that’s not good enough; they want the state to scrub its laws clean of any reference to SB14, and return Texas to a time when a voter registration card was sufficient.