Our most fundamental right is in jeopardy

By Terri Burke Executive Director The day I cast my first vote, admittedly for losing candidates, I walked a little taller because I was certain that day I had become an adult.  To this day, my family may have to miss spending Thanksgiving together, but we always get together in person or, now, virtually, on Election Day. Simply put, for me, there is just no constitutional right more important than the right to vote. Without it, our Constitution is not worth the paper it is printed on. That’s why I’m so excited to have been invited to hear Attorney General Eric Holder’s remarks about the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on Tuesday night at the LBJ Auditorium in Austin. The late president’s family will be there to hear General Holder talk about the importance of voting rights and Lyndon Johnson’s heroic leadership in getting the law enacted. The Attorney General is expected to reiterate the importance of respecting and ensuring the voting rights of all Americans. In Texas, this means, fighting back against those who would shrink our democracy by restricting the right to vote. We await a decision from the Department of Justice about the legality of Texas’ new Voter ID law under the Voting Rights Act. I trust that the justice department sees clearly the motives of those who would deny large groups of Texans their right to vote.  It would be funny if it weren’t so awful: our state ranks among the lowest (45^th in 2008) in the nation in voter turnout. We ought to be thinking of ways to promote and ensure the right to vote; instead we are shamefully making it more difficult for people to exercise their constitutional right.  As I told the Texas Senate in January, this law is a solution in search of a problem. There is NO evidence of in-person voter fraud in Texas. Our new Voter ID law, like efforts in at least six other states, is designed to keep people of color and those in lower income groups away from the polls.  Here’s why: it would require a registered voter who previously only had to present her voter registration card to now show a Texas drivers’ license, a Texas state ID card, a concealed handgun carry license, a U.S. military card or a U.S. passport.  Unable to show any of these, she may cast a provisional ballot, which will only be counted if she comes forward with the required ID within 6 days. (Small comfort, as our state has one of the lowest rates of cleared provisional ballots in the country. About eighty percent were rejected in 2008.) If this law is allowed to stand, our state will have serious problems.  An expert on census and voting reviewed three demographic studies and concluded that hundreds of thousands of minority voters do not have the required identification. Nor will it be easy for them to get the IDs required to vote. Almost half of Texas’ 254 counties have drivers’ license offices with reduced hours or no motor vehicle office at all. A person who lives in, let’s say, the Big Bend area of Texas where her county has no motor vehicles office, faces potentially insurmountable hurdles. First, she has to have a birth certificate ($22) or a marriage license ($71) if there has been a name change or a passport ($110) to get the state-issued ID.  Then, there is the cost of the trip to the drivers’ license office; in the case of the Big Bend resident, it’s about an hour and half to the nearest office in Alpine.  With gas prices so high, she could spend up to $85 for the roundtrip. And remember, our potential voter doesn’t drive: she has to find a friend or relative who does have a drivers’ license. And then there are the costs of lost wages. It’s like that advertisement says: The Cost of the Right to Vote in Texas? priceless. Under this law Texans -- particularly those who are elderly or have disabilities or are students or are voters of color or are low-income -- will have their cherished constitutional right to vote restricted. That’s wrong, and we hope Attorney General Holder will put a stop to it. Click on our voting rights action alert, and urge the Department of Justice to exercise its authority under the Voting Rights act and block this suppression measure.