Voter ID laws in Wisconsin and Texas were blocked by the courts Thursday evening, by the Supreme Court
in the Wisconsin case. After a federal appeals court upheld the state's voter ID law on Monday:
On Thursday night the U.S. Supreme Court issued a one-page order that vacated the appeals court ruling pending further proceedings. Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented, saying the application should have been denied because there was no indication that the 7th Circuit had demonstrably erred.
There groups challenging the voter ID law cited
major concerns that trying to re-implement the law in less than a month would "virtually guarantee chaos at the polls":
Whatever the legality, they said, the state cannot issue enough IDs and train enough poll workers before the November election.
The law requires absentee voters to submit identification. But forms sent before the appeals court acted did not include that requirement. State officials had said they would not count ballots returned without copies of valid ID.
In Texas:
U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos wrote in an opinion released Thursday evening that “There has been a clear and disturbing pattern of discrimination in the name of combatting voter fraud in Texas,” and that the state hadn’t demonstrated that such fraud was widespread.
Gonzales said the evidence showed the proponents of the law “were motivated, at the very least in part, because of and not merely in spite of the voter ID law’s detrimental effects on the African-American and Hispanic electorate.”
Texas attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott has said he will appeal immediately, which means the Supreme Court will likely be tested on this issue again very soon. In Wisconsin, though, the ACLU and the Advancement Project now have 90 days—well past the November 4 elections—to follow up with the Supreme Court, so voter ID is dead in at least this one state for this one election.
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It's nice to get some good voting rights news for a change, and getting it from the Supreme Court adds that element of surprise.