Could it be that the Supreme Court justices overlooked the elegant simplicity of Texas’ traditional election system? We’re talking about the tried-and-true method in place for years, before the Legislature invented a crisis of voter fraud and imposed a photo ID law that places more obstacles before the voting booth.
If the justices understood the state’s time-tested system, they wouldn’t have bought the argument that it was too close to Election Day to reinstate it, in favor of the relatively new photo ID requirement.
Let’s recall the Texas voting system that was in place before the Republican-controlled Legislature swept it aside in 2011. A registered voter could enter the voting booth by presenting pretty much any ID or document that proved identity, with or without a photo. It might have been a voter registration card or driver’s license. It might have been a library card. It might have been an electric bill, a phone bill or a water bill.
The point was to show election workers who you were and where you lived, so long as it coincided with the name on the voter rolls.
The beauty of that system was this: If someone stole Grandma’s purse and ID cards, or if — God forbid! — she let her driver’s license expire the year before, she’d still have papers at home she could take to the polls to get a ballot. Grandma would not lose the right to vote on Election Day on a technicality.
What was remarkable about that system was this: Voter fraud at the polls was virtually nonexistent in Texas.
The simplicity of Texas’ traditional voting system gave us confidence that poll workers could quickly reinstate it, after a federal judge in Corpus Christi ruled Oct. 9 to block the new photo ID requirement on grounds that it is unconstitutionally discriminatory.
But an appeals court, fretting about the risk of “voter confusion” if the photo ID system were shelved so close to Election Day, blocked the judge’s order. The Supreme Court rubber-stamped the appeals court’s decision over the weekend. That keeps the photo ID system in place — for now.
Sure, it would have pressed election officials for a mega-dose of effort had the traditional voting system been reinstated just as early voting began Monday. There might have been scattered instances of confusion but maybe no more than the scattered confusion to be expected under the restrictive photo ID provisions.
And which poses the bigger threat to our democracy — a law found to unconstitutionally discriminate against voters or possible confusion about reinstating simpler rules?
In any case, we imagine election officials would have managed to pivot quite well. That would have kept a simple, reasonable system in place until the Supreme Court is able to weigh the full case against the troublesome new voting system.
A scathing dissent
The Supreme Court didn’t comment in upholding an appeals court ruling reinstating photo ID requirements — known as Senate Bill 14 — for the Nov. 4 election. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a seven-page dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Here are excerpts:
“There is little risk that the District Court’s injunction will in fact disrupt Texas’ electoral processes. Texas need only reinstate the voter identification procedures it employed for 10 years (from 2003 to 2013) and in five federal general elections.”
“Any voter confusion or lack of public confidence in Texas’ electoral processes is in this case largely attributable to the State itself.”
“Senate Bill 14 may prevent more than 600,000 registered Texas voters (about 4.5% of all registered voters) from voting in person for lack of compliant identification. ... A sharply disproportionate percentage of those voters are African-American or Hispanic.”
