Voter ID As A Way To The White House For The GOP

By Dr. Henry Flores, NewsTaco

Let’s face it, the Republican Party has become the party of ideological extremists where moderate folks can find no compatibility.  As a matter of fact moderate folks such as Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Olympia Snowe have found it more mentally healthy to depart office rather than to be continually hounded by the irrational ravings of extremists in their party.

The extremists who have taken over what loyalists have named historically as the Grand Old Party have moved the agenda of the GOP so far to the right that the vast majority of the American electorate, let alone racial or gender minority groups, find their positions either medieval or arcane.  In short, the extremists in control of the GOP are out of touch with today’s realities.

Because we only have two partisan options in the United States most voters either have to pick between the two or simply not participate.  However, if you remember an earlier column that I wrote, lets not forget what happens to societies that don’t vote, they get Hitlers!

The extremist GOP agenda has created a situation for that party that will make it difficult for them to win elections at the national level in the future.  They may win some elections in the short run but will lose and lose badly in the future.  Just look at California and the position the GOP finds itself today, a third party behind Democrats and Independents.

The only way the current edition of the GOP will win elections in the future without giving up its extremist positions is to fix elections.  Fixing elections is what is behind the ludicrously defined Ballot Security and Integrity Programs being implemented in states currently controlled by the Republican Party.  The fixing is in the form of voter ID laws and attempts to purge voting lists of illegal voters.  In both cases these programs will directly affect those groups of voters that traditionally vote in large percentages for Democratic Party candidates-Latinos, African Americans, the young and new voters, and the elderly among others.  Essentially, all voting groups that have a difficult time obtaining the rigid identification requirements being demanded by the states in question are the ones who will be heavily affected by these laws.

One other, rather nefarious, ambition behind some of the voter ID strategies pursued by some of the states is a direct challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.  Section 5 is the pre-clearance provision that requires those states having a history of voter discrimination to have any changes to or new election laws reviewed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) or a three-judge panel of the Washinton DC District.

Texas submitted its Voter ID law, passed in the 2011 legislative session, to DOJ and it was rejected.  DOJ indicated that the new law would have a disparate impact on Latino voters thus violate the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.  Texas then petitioned the DC District Court seeking relief.  In their petition Texas claimed that racial discrimination is a thing of the past thus Section 5 no longer applied.  Most importantly, Texas claimed that Section 5 violated the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution quaranteeing a certain degree of state sovereignty.  This was the same argument levelled against President Obama’s health care law!  Essentially, Texas is challenging the constitutionality of the VRA.

Texas may lose their appeal at the district court level hoping that an appeal to the United States Supreme Court will be successful.  If Section 5 is overturned then states such as Texas will be free to do whatever they wish to the election process-move polling places, change election days, control voter registration processes, change voter eligibility requirements and much more-without concernc for the civil rights of Latinos. Essentially, Texas will be free to return to the days where it could freely discriminate against Latinos and other protected groups.

Frankly, if Texas’s appeal is successful at the Supreme Court the GOP will have an open and free electoral highway to control of all national political offices.  That menas control of Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court.  Most importantly, the Tea Party will control the national public policy process.