Today the Justice Department’s civil rights division objected to a new photo ID requirement for voters in Texas on the grounds that many Hispanic voters lack state-issued identification.
Here’s is an excerpt on the report from Reuters:
The state law approved in May 2011 required voters to show government-issued photo identification, which could include a driver’s license, a military identification card, a birth certificate with a photo, a current U.S. passport, or a concealed handgun permit.
The Justice Department said that data from Texas showed that almost 11 percent of Hispanic voters, just over 300,000, did not have a driver’s license or state issued identification card, and that plans to mitigate those concerns were incomplete.
“Hispanic registered voters are more than twice as likely as non-Hispanic registered voters to lack such identification,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said in a letter to the Texas director of elections outlining the objection.
This is the second state voter identification law blocked by the Obama administration, which earlier objected to a strict new law in South Carolina that it prevented from taking effect. South Carolina then sued in federal court seeking approval of its law.
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The Twitter reaction to DOJ’s move has been overwhelmingly negative:
https://twitter.com/#!/NeilJEdmondson/status/179242218475884544
https://twitter.com/#!/JayAyS/status/179242763441799168
https://twitter.com/#!/MarcBrumbaugh/status/179242873294831616
https://twitter.com/#!/WEMcCormick/status/179242359979122689
https://twitter.com/#!/MadonnaWarwick/status/179243593645559808
https://twitter.com/#!/BlackstoneCr8iv/status/179245879520280577
https://twitter.com/#!/ranKismet/status/179246373894500352
On the other hand, a minority of Twitter users celebrated the DOJ’s move:
https://twitter.com/#!/morgmeneshets/status/179245704772993026
https://twitter.com/#!/garak99/status/179246769463504896
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