You might think the news of the day is all wrapped around the Republican National Convention in Tampa or perhaps tropical storm Isaac battering Louisiana. While both stories certainly carry some weight, the biggest story of the day is actually a court ruling in a federal case against the state of Texas.
Court Protects The Poor — Not The Constitution
Today, August 30, 2012, the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC ruled against a Texas law that would require voters to present photo IDs to election officials before being allowed to cast ballots.
The court’s three-judge panel ruled that the law imposes “strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor” and noted that racial minorities in Texas are more likely to live in poverty.
A number of states, including Texas, Georgia and Pennsylvania, have passed laws tightening identification requirements for in-person voting. The Texas law would require a government-issued photo ID, such as a driver’s license, passport, or gun permit, but wouldn’t allow a student ID for purposes of voting.
Does the court ruling mean that “the poor” will now be able to get on a plane without presenting a photo ID; or is it okay to discriminate against poor folks if it’s a federal law?
You can’t get a library card without a photo ID. You can’t buy alcohol or cigarettes, vices that are all too common in the lower-income brackets, without a photo ID. You can’t cash a welfare check at a bank without presenting a photo ID; in fact you’ll probably remain poor because the federal government requires banks obtain a photo ID to even open a bank account. Yet the court believes something so precious to our nation, the sanctity of our election system, doesn’t warrant the same level of protection required to check out Winnie the Pooh?
In the court’s decision they ruled that the new voter identification law in Texas would have an unconstitutional impact on the right to vote for poor people and especially Hispanics and African-Americans.
In the aforementioned law, the state of Texas would provide a free photo ID to citizens that do not have one of the other sources. Is it possible to be too poor to afford free? Before you left-wing nuts start complaining that some poor folks don’t have a way to get to the office to get their free ID, hold your hot air; there are more than 20 different charitable organizations in Texas and even some state-run agencies that will pick you up and take you to get your free ID.
Just yesterday a federal court blocked a Florida registration measure from continuing in effect.
South Carolina’s strict photo ID law is on trial Monday in front of another three-judge panel in the same federal court that struck down the Texas law.
An appeal is likely in the Texas case, but there is no guarantee that the U.S. Supreme Court is going to get involved in this case, or any of these voting rights cases, before the election.
It’s not been a good week for the Texas GOP that took it on the chin earlier in the week when a federal court decided that Texas’ voting districts map drawn by the Republican-controlled legislature was discriminatory.
States Must Prove To Court What They Did Not Intend
The U.S. District Court in Washington wrote in a 154-page opinion that the maps don’t comply with the federal Voting Rights Act because state prosecutors failed to show Texas lawmakers did not draw congressional and state Senate districts “without discriminatory purposes.”
So now states must prove a negative? Is this some upside-down world where the representatives of the citizens of a state must prove to a court what they did not intend? It may be time to institute some form of randomized drug testing for federal court judges because there have been some preposterous decisions issued recently.
The Supreme Court will likely address the voting maps issue, however unless they step in on the photo ID cases liberal federal judges will continue to assert their left-wing view that anyone, whether they be legally entitled to vote or not, should be allowed to do so.
If you think that it’s pure happenstance that these court rulings have all been announced the same week as the GOP convention, think again. Our federal court system has never been so politically motivated in our 236 years. In a complete reversal of the basis upon which this country was founded, the federal courts no longer serve the welfare of the citizenry, only their radical left-wing masters.
—————————————————————
Subscribe to Mr. Kaplan’s articles at Examiner.com
Read Mr. Kaplan’s blog at Conservatively Speaking
Email Mr. Kaplan at ken@conservativelyspeaking.us
Join Mr. Kaplan on Facebook at ConservativelySpeaking
Follow Mr. Kaplan’s tweets at ConsSpeaking