The Republican governor of Texas today welcomed President Obama to the Lone Star State by asking him to distance himself from comments made by Attorney General Eric Holder comparing the state’s 2011 voter identification law to a “poll tax,” the Jim Crow-era laws that were declared unconstitutional in 1937.Perry is probably right about the incendiary language, but the Holder may have a point:
While the voter ID itself is free, the Obama administration argues that the documentation required to obtain an ID – such as a birth certificate – is not. [emphasis added]If you have to obtain a birth certificate for this voter ID, and you have to pay for it, Holder can win this argument.
In his remarks, the attorney general specifically said that the Texas law would be “harmful to minority voters” because 25 percent of African Americans lack the required identification needed to obtain a voter I.D., as opposed to eight percent of whites.
But there's a big caveat though in all of this. The US Constitution does not require popular vote in order to elect a President. If a voter ID is required for a Presidential Election, it may not be unconstitutional because the state has the plenary power in how to delegate its electors to the Electoral College. Since the popular vote is something that a state can determine as part of its powers in who wins their electoral votes, it can also decide how those votes can be qualified, I would think.
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