Texas Attorney General Petitions U.S. Supreme Court For Reinstatement Of Controversial Voter ID Law

AUSTIN, TX — The attorney general on Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the state to reinstate its controversial Voter ID Law — one of the strictest in the country — that was previously determined to be in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

Attorney General Ken Paxton filed what's called a writ of certiorari in the nation's highest court, essentially asking the court to approve of the state's voter identification requirements that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in July was in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.

After that ruling was handed down, the U.S. Department of Justice chastised state leaders for not adhering to a strict set of guidelines laid out for them to follow, detailing a long list of documents that must be accepted to ensure all residents the right to vote.

In effect, the DOJ suggested lawmakers were disregarding 5th Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Texas of distributing inaccurate and misleading information to poll workers and voters about acceptable forms of identification needed to vote — in violation of the earlier order that struck down previous stringent requirements as unconstitutional.

In Friday's petition to the SCOTUS, Paxton reiterated the need for Texas' stringent Voter ID law is to prevent voter fraud — a claim he and his fellow conservatives have made in the past but that has been widely debunked.

“Safeguarding the integrity of our elections is essential to preserving our democracy,” Paxton said. “Voter ID laws both prevent fraud and increase the public’s confidence in our elections. Texas enacted a common-sense voter ID law and I am confident that the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately reinstate it.”

But others disagree with Paxton's assertion. In disallowing certain forms of ID commonly used by a largely Latino population but permitting a gun license ownership ID as an approved document to vote, many see the GOP-led efforts to be nothing more than an attempt to determine who gets to vote in Texas and who doesn't.

The allowance of a gun owner's license as an approved form of Voter ID, critics point to as an example, appeals to a conservative voting bloc that places extra currency on the Second Amendment protections — a clarion call for conservatives — to enhance voting by that constituency. Conversely, in disallowing other more mainstream forms of identification, other voting segments are marginalized, critics of Texas' voting laws assert.

As for the supposed prevalence of fraud Paxton and other conservatives claim is occurring, investigations determined such incidents were negligble — a handful of cases among tens of millions of votes — as to be virtually non-existent. A separate study determined it was more likely to be struck by lightning in Texas than for an incident of voter fraud to emerge.

But Paxton on Thursday appealed to the jurists by yet again invoking voter fraud, a claim often repeated by GOP lawmakers controlling state government. Critics of the assertion instead see their tactics as a way of marginalizing certain voter blocs predisposed to vote Democratic.

Paxton denied this is the motivation, at least as it relates to the November elections. "The petition will not affect the upcoming November 8, 2016, elections, for which an interim remedy has been ordered by the courts," his press release sad.

The presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is surprisingly close in Texas, despite the state's deeply conservative status. Polls show the Democratic nominee either within single digits of the real estate mogul or slightly ahead — a surprise in a state that last voted for a Democratic president in 1976, when Jimmy Carter achieved the office in the post-Watergate era.

After Texas passed its Voter ID law, studies showed it had the net effect of disenfranchising hundreds of thousands from the election process. A federal judge struck down the measure in 2014, finding that 600,000 registered voters lacked the IDs needed to vote. The judge ruled the requirement made it harder for minorities to vote and was intentionally passed to discriminate against them.

A copy of Paxton's petition can be viewed here.

>>> Image via Shutterstock