Voter ID Law In Texas

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Abidjan Bright
Badih Elarba
Texas Politics 1133.010
Fall 2015
Voter ID law in Texas
It was in 2011 that the Legislature passed Bill 14 that allowed Texas to have a strict voter ID law for the November election. Many people were opposed to this because it limited many eligible citizens from voting causing a lower voter turnout than what Texas has already had. This is a major problem in Texas because majority of our population consists of immigrants from Mexico and many of them are still fighting for citizenship. Because of this law it is in question, how much power does our state actually have in the regulation of elections?
Limits on voter qualifications are stated in the US constitution and within federal laws as well. Majority of the …show more content…

The main purpose of the voter ID law is to prevent voter fraud and it has yet to be a big issue. Since there has been no problems, I assume that there has been some sort of leeway happening in the registration process. One of the main forms of leeway could be the fact that we have the option of 7 different types of identification that could be presented in order to vote. And not only that, but we have the right to submit provisional votes as well until we show some sort of ID to match our registration …show more content…

I feel that in any other state, applying the new voter ID law would not have as big an impact as it would in Texas. Since Texas has such a huge population of immigrants trying to get their citizenship it limits many people that make up the majority of the population. According to the Texas voter data for the 2014 November election, out of 14,025,441 registered voters only 4,727,208 were recorded in the turnout amount. So, based off of this information I can assume that applying this law to Texas could significantly affect the voter turnout negatively.
Being that Texas has such a low voter turnout rate, I feel that the voter ID law should not be applied mainly because of the issues with the ethnicity background of our population. In my opinion it would make it much easier for Texas to actually have an impact on the polls in the election because our number would be significantly larger than any other state and it is true that voter fraud could still come into play at any given time but since it has yet to happen, voting in Texas should be secure for the time being.
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