Voting Rights
More on Voting Rights
Some districts have significantly more children, felons, and immigrants who are ineligible to vote, and this gives the voters in those districts more political clout. For example, while each district holds the same population, 70 percent of citizens in Lamar Smith’s San Antonio district can vote, while only 44 percent of those in Marc Veasey’s Fort Worth district are eligible. This means that, in a perfect election with 100 percent turnout, a vote in Veasey’s district would carry more weight than one in Lamar’s district.
The 36 congressional districts in Texas each had 698,488 people in them when they were drawn. That seeming exactitude hides big differences. The 17th Congressional District, represented by Bill Flores, R-Bryan, has the same number of people in it as the 33rd, represented by Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth. But Flores’ district has 532,324 adults — 62,868 more than Veasey’s.
A few months later, in October 2013, federal Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos struck down the voter ID law in a consolidated suit filed against the state by U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Texas, the NAACP, and the Mexican American Legislative Council.
The law was subsequently blocked as racially discriminatory under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in 2012, right until the U.S. Supreme Court declared Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional in 2013, allowing the law to go back into effect.
Opponents claim the Texas law violates the federal Voting Rights Act and is an attempt to cut into the electoral strength of the state’s growing minority population — people less likely to have photo identification or the means to obtain a certificate for the election.
DALLAS/FORT WORTH, TX — U.S. Congressman Marc Veasey, TX-33, released the following statement today as the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will consider whether to uphold a lower-court decision on the Texas Voter ID law.
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