How Will The Texas GOP Keep Wendy Davis Out Of The Governorship? Easy-- By Keeping Women From Voting

Republicans are so scared of women voters right now, they can't see straight." Especially Texas Republicans. So they're doing all they can to prevent as many women from voting. Lawrence O'Donnell and his guest explain what's going on and why. So did Natalie Smith:

The new Texas law requires all voters to provide a photo ID that reflects their current name. If they cannot, voters must provide any of a series of other acceptable forms of identification all of which must match exactly and match the name on their birth certificate.

Supporters of these new laws insist that requiring voters to have an ID that matches their birth certificate is a reasonable requirement. As Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has repeatedly said, "Almost every single person either has a valid photo ID … or it is very easy to get one." What they don’t say, however, is that the people who don’t are largely married women who have taken their husband’s name.

In fact, only 66% of women have an ID that reflects their current name. If any voter is using name different than what appears on their birth certificate, the voter is required to show proof of name change by providing an original or certified copy of their marriage license, divorce decree, or court ordered name change. Photocopies aren’t accepted.

Now ask a woman who’s been married for years where her original marriage certificate is. Ask a woman who’s been divorced-- maybe more than once-- where all the divorce decrees are. Ask elderly women where their original birth certificate is.

As Elisabeth Genn, counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program, has noted, "While some women do have access to the entire chain of documents that connects their current name with birth name-- including birth certificates and marriage licenses-- that’s not always the case."

Ordering a new copy of your birth certificate or marriage verification means travelling in person to the state capital, something largely impossible for senior citizens or people with day jobs, and paying the $22 to have a certified copy printed. You can also wait 6-8 weeks to have it mailed to you and pay $22 plus up to $19.95 in mailing costs.

That is assuming, of course, that you already have several forms of identification. If you don’t, a U.S. District Court has estimated that many Texans would have to travel up to 250 miles to receive a "free" election ID card and pay all the additional fees associated with providing documentation to explain their name change.

More importantly, women who have been voting the same way for years will likely go to the polls in the same way they always have, unaware the changes mean they can no longer vote and that they, in all likelihood, would have needed to begin the process to acquire copies of their legal documents months beforehand.

Meanwhile, men who are married or divorced don’t typically change their name and are therefore not required to submit any additional supporting documents. The extra forms of identification, extra fees, extra travel and, in many cases, exorbitant waiting times mean that the acquiring the documents necessary to legally vote amounts to a poll tax that applies only to women.  While lawmakers may say that those are small barriers, necessary to ensure the integrity of the voting process, they’re barriers that only apply to certain segments of the population.

It’s no coincidence that Republican-controlled state governments are making it harder for women to vote following a presidential election with the largest gender gap in recorded history. It’s certainly no coincidence that the same states legislators who are passing alarming new restrictions on abortion and birth control are the same ones making it harder for women to vote them out of office.

While some Republican lawmakers insist these new rules are designed only to combat voter fraud, (note: in Texas there have only 37 individual cases voter fraud since 2000), others are more honest and admit that these laws will make it easier for Republicans to win elections, since the groups predominantly affected by the new rules tend to vote Democrat.

Despite a ruling from a U.S. District Court that declared the law unconstitutional, recent Supreme Court rulings that invalidated sections of the Voting Rights Act meant Texas could move forward to enforce the law anyway. Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that the Department of Justice will sue Texas over the law, saying that it "will take action against jurisdictions that attempt to hinder access to the ballot box, no matter where it occurs" and that he will "keep fighting aggressively to prevent voter disenfranchisement."

But as November 5th approaches, we’re reminded that elections are taking place whether or not the law is successfully blocked in court. In 2014, midterm Congressional and gubernatorial elections will be in full swing at the same time that similar voter ID restrictions go into effect in states across the country.

That means this time next year, it won’t just be Texas and it won’t just be nine obscure amendments to a state constitution. Millions of women, young and old, could go to the polls just like they always have and realize that, this time, the only thing they’ll be allowed to do is watch their husbands vote. 

Why not take it out on corrupt sexist pig Pete Sessions and make an example of him? Even though the Republican-controlled state legislature rescued him from certain political demise last year by taking minority areas around Irving and Grand Prairie out of his district-- making the district far whiter and far less Hispanic, down to 28% from 43%-- gerrymandered TX-32 is still the least red district in Texas held by a Republican. Basically, it's the far right, wealthy suburbs north of Dallas, one of America's traditionally most hateful areas-- sort of what Bavaria has long been for Germany. Obama, though, did better in the 32nd than in any other GOP-held Texas district, 44% in 2008 and 42% last year. The PVI is R+10, pretty daunting for any Democrat thinking about running. Last year Katherine McGovern held Sessions to under 60%. He won 146,129 (58%) to 98,867 (39%). Katherine, who got exactly no help whatsoever from the DCCC, spent $78,647. The only outside group to give her a hand was the Texas Democratic Women of Collin County. Sessions spent more than 20 times what she spent-- $1,716,843. If every woman in Texas was offended enough by this new law, Sessions' career could be swept down the toilet-- along with Greg Abbott's.



UPDATE… And Speaking Of Pete Sessions

I wonder how voters in Highland Park, University Park, Preston Hollow, Oak Lawn, North Dallas, Richardson and Garland feel about their congressman, Sessions, standing up in a meeting at the White House and saying to the President of the United States, "I cannot even stand to look at you." Anyone read Dallas 1963 by Bill Minutagio and Steven Davis yet. This is the area the book is about.

In Dallas 1963, which opens three years before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, authors Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis tell their story of the “City of Hate” in the present tense, a decision that does not, as the book jacket claims, create a “breathtakingly paced… cinematic” narrative. It sort of works the opposite way. We find ourselves trapped in the tedious, deadening politics of the time.

This means, for example, that we have to suffer through the ranting rhetoric of figures like W.A. Criswell, the racist minister of the largest Baptist church in Dallas. It was Criswell who opined that people in East Texas, by which he meant whites, could no longer say “chiggers” but had to say “chegroes” instead. Reminders of this level of racism are depressing, to say the least.

Criswell was hardly alone. Dallas in those years was a hotbed of conservative activism. The John Birch Society and other right-wing fringe groups pressured conservatives like U.S. Rep. Bruce Alger, a Republican, to move even further right. In 1960, Alger led a rowdy protest against Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon blamed the resultant public backlash for his loss of Texas in the general election. In 1961, Ted Dealey, the fiery publisher of The Dallas Morning News, confronted Kennedy face-to-face at a White House luncheon, telling JFK, “We need a man on horseback to lead this nation-- and many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline’s tricycle.”

Then there was H.L. Hunt, the fabulously wealthy and eccentric oilman, bigamist and author who for some reason is termed craggy when in fact at that time he resembled nothing so much as a soft-boiled egg. Hunt used his money to support anti-Communism, anti-Catholic, anti-Kennedy and anti-integration efforts.

The most visible figure of all was Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker. Cashiered by Kennedy for preaching rightist propaganda to troops under his command, Walker moved to Dallas and became, briefly, a national figure. Ted Walker, as his acolytes called him, was way out there. He believed that a “real control apparatus”-- the ultimate in paranoia-- enforced a liberal agenda in the United States and abroad. In 1962, he ran for governor of Texas, as a Democrat, and finished sixth in a field of six.

In April 1963, he survived an attempt on his life, and in the weeks before the assassination he flew the American flag upside down in advance of Kennedy’s visit. Walker was especially popular with matrons entranced by his military bearing and up-with-America rhetoric, though what they didn’t know is that he preferred men. Years later, he was arrested twice for public lewdness.