{"id":19843,"date":"2013-07-25T14:12:34","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T18:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=19843"},"modified":"2013-07-25T14:12:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-25T18:12:35","slug":"sometimes-there-is-a-reason-a-law-needs-to-be-changed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=19843","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes There Is A Reason A Law Needs To Be Changed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today <a href=\"http:\/\/hotair.com\/archives\/2013\/07\/25\/holder-vows-to-force-texas-into-pre-clearance-despite-supreme-court-ruling-on-vra\/\">Hot Air<\/a> posted an article about some changes Texas has made in its voting laws.<\/p>\n<p>The article explains the conflict between <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Texas\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=31.0,-100.0&amp;spn=10.0,10.0&amp;q=31.0,-100.0 (Texas)&amp;t=h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"geolocation\">the state of Texas<\/a> and <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Eric Holder\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Eric_Holder\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Eric Holder<\/a>&#8216;s Justice Department:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>What Holder proposes to do is to tell Texas to get <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"United States Department of Justice\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=38.89325,-77.0249722222&amp;spn=0.01,0.01&amp;q=38.89325,-77.0249722222 (United%20States%20Department%20of%20Justice)&amp;t=h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"geolocation\">DoJ<\/a> approval for its voting (and redistricting) laws before putting them in force, right after the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Supreme Court of the United States\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=38.8907083333,-77.0043444444&amp;spn=0.01,0.01&amp;q=38.8907083333,-77.0043444444 (Supreme%20Court%20of%20the%20United%20States)&amp;t=h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"geolocation\">Supreme Court<\/a> told Texas and the other Section 4 states that they don\u2019t need to do so.\u00a0 Holder can file a lawsuit to attempt to force compliance, but that\u2019s just bluster. Texas isn\u2019t going to comply, and it\u2019s doubtful a federal court would do anything but laugh at the filing after the ruling last month.\u00a0 The DoJ has no more jurisdiction to tell Texas to get pre-approval for laws passed under its own sovereignty.\u00a0 This is grandstanding on a particularly demagogic scale.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In 2011, Texas passed a law requiring the following forms of identification in order to vote (according to the <a href=\"http:\/\/votetexas.gov\/register-to-vote\/need-id\">Texas.gov<\/a> website):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Texas driver license issued by the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Texas Department of Public Safety\" href=\"http:\/\/www.txdps.state.tx.us\/index.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">Texas Department of Public Safety<\/a> (DPS)<\/strong><\/li>\n<li style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Texas Election Identification Certificate issued by DPS<\/strong><\/li>\n<li style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Texas personal identification card issued by DPS<\/strong><\/li>\n<li style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Texas concealed handgun license issued by DPS<\/strong><\/li>\n<li style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"United States Armed Forces\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States_Armed_Forces\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">United States military<\/a> identification card containing the person\u2019s photograph<\/strong><\/li>\n<li style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Citizenship in the United States\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Citizenship_in_the_United_States\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">United States citizenship<\/a> certificate containing the person\u2019s photograph<\/strong><\/li>\n<li style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"United States passport\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States_passport\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">United States passport<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>With the exception of the U.S. citizenship certificate, the identification must be current or have expired no more than 60 days before being presented for voter qualification at the polling place<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Why are these laws necessary? As I reported in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=2278\">rightwinggranny.com<\/a> in September 2010, this is what happened when a group of people decided to investigate who was voting in Texas:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>\u201c\u201dThe first thing we started to do was look at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=2278\" target=\"_blank\">houses<\/a> with more than six voters in them\u201d Engelbrecht (Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote) said, because those houses were the most likely to have fraudulent registrations attached to them. \u201cMost voting districts had 1,800 if they were Republican and 2,400 of these houses if they were Democratic . . .<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>\u201c\u201dBut we came across one with 24,000, and that was where we started looking.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<strong> \u201cVacant lots had several voters registered on them. An eight-bed halfway <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=2278\" target=\"_blank\">house<\/a> had more than 40 voters registered at its address,\u201d Engelbrecht said. \u201cWe then decided to look at who was registering the voters.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>\u201cTheir work paid off. Two weeks ago the Harris County voter registrar took their work and the findings of his own investigation and handed them over to both the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Secretary of State of Texas\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Secretary_of_State_of_Texas\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Texas secretary of state<\/a>\u2019s office and the Harris County district attorney.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>\u201cMost of the findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Sean Caddle, who formerly worked for the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Service Employees International Union\" href=\"http:\/\/www.seiu.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">Service Employees International Union<\/a>. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid. The other registrations included one of a woman who registered six times in the same day; registrations of non-citizens; so many applications from one Houston Voters collector in one day that it was deemed to be beyond human capability; and 1,597 registrations that named the same person multiple times, often with different signatures.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It seems as if voter id would be a good idea after that kind of fraud. Why would the Department of Justice want to prevent a law that would stop voter fraud?<\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/?px\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: none; float: right;\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=a03080b2-af78-4140-8e8f-7b54e119e4a3\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today Hot Air posted an article about some changes Texas has made in its voting laws. The article explains the conflict between the state of Texas and Eric Holder&#8216;s Justice Department: What Holder proposes to do is to tell Texas &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=19843\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[395,115,933,163,5978,5979,285,68],"class_list":["post-19843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-eric-holder","tag-service-employees-international-union","tag-supreme-court-of-the-united-states","tag-texas","tag-texas-department-of-public-safety","tag-texas-secretary-of-state","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-department-of-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19843"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19847,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19843\/revisions\/19847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}