Texas Agrees to Soften Voter ID Law After Court Order

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/us/texas-agrees-to-soften-voter-id-law-after-court-order.html

Version 0 of 1.

An agreement reached Wednesday would weaken Texas’ strict voter identification law and allow residents to cast ballots in November’s election even if they have none of the seven identifying documents that the law recognizes.

The accord, filed with the Federal District Court in Corpus Christi, followed a July 20 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that the Texas law violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The appeals court ordered the law weakened to end its discriminatory impact on black and Hispanic voters.

A district court judge must still endorse the agreement, which was reached by lawyers for the state, civil rights groups and the Justice Department, but the approval is likely to be a formality.

Civil rights advocates sued to block the law after the Texas Legislature enacted it in 2011, and federal courts struck down the law three times. Until the appeals court ruling last month, though, it had been in effect since 2013.

Wednesday’s agreement is the latest in a series of legal moves that have weakened or struck down voter ID laws, sometimes in battleground states where turnout in the presidential election could be crucial.

On Friday, a federal appeals court panel nullified North Carolina’s identification law and rolled back a host of other restrictions enacted by the state’s Republican Legislature, saying the rules had targeted African-American voters “with almost surgical precision.” The same day, a Federal District Court ordered Wisconsin to expand its list of valid ID cards and do away with other constraints on voting.

The 2011 Texas law required voters to produce one of seven photo IDs, such as a driver’s license, military ID or passport, before casting ballots. Civil rights advocates said the requirement disenfranchised Hispanics and African-Americans, who often lacked the money or means to obtain the cards. Evidence filed in the lawsuit indicated that as many as 600,000 eligible Texas voters had none of the acceptable IDs.

Under the proposed settlement, Texas voters with one of the valid ID cards would still be required to show it before casting ballots. But those without any of the IDs could still vote if they had a voter registration certificate, a birth certificate, a utility bill or bank statement, a government check, or any other government document with their name and address.

Those voters would also have to sign an affidavit stating that they were unable to easily procure any of the IDs.

Under the law, voters lacking a valid identification were allowed to cast provisional ballots, but their votes were counted only if they obtained a valid card and delivered it to a county voting registrar within six days.

Many provisional voters never produced the needed documents, and their ballots were discarded.

For citizens without valid identification documents, Wednesday’s agreement would essentially return the requirements for voting to the conditions that existed before the ID law took effect, said Jose Garza, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The litigation is not completely settled, but Mr. Garza said the plaintiffs were pleased with the agreement.

“It expands the franchise,” he said. “It opens the door to voting for those people who do not have these documents. It allows them to cast a regular ballot. And those ballots are going to be counted.”