In Wisconsin and Texas, Courts Deliver Victories for Voting Rights
In a 6-3 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday evening blocked Wisconsin from implementing a voter ID law that would have required voters to provide photo identification before casting their ballots in the coming election.
The Court, which recently allowed North Carolina officials to eliminate same-day voter registration and discount votes cast mistakenly in the wrong precincts, did not consider the merits of the Wisconsin case, but rather vacated a Seventh Circuit appeals court order from mid-September that allowed state officials to implement the law as the case proceeds through the courts.
Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said he would seek ways to reinstate the law, which Governor Scott Walker and fellow Republicans approved in 2011, within the month—in other words, before Election Day.
But critics of the law said it would create chaos because the state would not be able to train poll workers, inform voters, and distribute IDs to those who would need them to vote.
Click Here: cd universidad catolica
“Today’s order puts the brakes on the last-minute disruption and voter chaos created by this law going into effect so close to the election,” said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “It will help safeguard the vote for thousands of Wisconsinites as this case makes its way through the courts.”
Also Thursday, a federal trial court in Texas struck down that state’s ID law, saying it put a disproportionate burden on African American and Hispanic voters and calling the law an “unconstitutional poll tax.”
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
