Texas ID law didn’t mess with as many voters as feared

AUSTIN, Texas — This state’s new voter identification law — widely considered the most stringent in the nation — received its first major test in Tuesday’s midterm elections amid fears that hundreds of thousands of voters, including many Hispanics and African-Americans, would be prevented from voting. One federal judge even likened the situation to the state’s “shameful history” of poll taxes.

But early indications suggest that while some voters ran into roadblocks, the effects were perhaps less dire than the law's harshest critics predicted.

A hotline for voter questions, set up by Election Protection, a nonpartisan organization, fielded nearly 500 phone calls from Texans who did not have at least one of the seven approved forms of ID needed to vote or who were confused about the requirements. “We talked to a number of people who had trouble voting because of an expired ID or who had a hard time voting even though they had the right ID,” said Vishal Agraharkar, a counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law who helped run the phone lines. “There haven’t been adequate efforts from the state to educate people about the law, so it’s unfortunate but not surprising.”

Meanwhile, VoteRiders, a nonprofit organization formed in response to voter ID laws passed in Texas and 15 other states since 2010, fielded only four calls from voters on Election Day, according to Marianela Acuña Arreaza, the organization’s Texas coordinator. Over the last few weeks, she estimated VoteRiders worked with about 30 voters who were attempting to obtain required IDs.

Other signs pointed to only limited trouble. In Travis County, which has more than a million residents and includes Austin, the state capital, only one voter called the county’s election clerk to complain — in that case, regarding an issue with a birth certificate. “I expected more. I really did,” said Dana DeBeauvoir, the county clerk and a Democrat who opposes the new law. “I also think there’s a shaming factor. People who have ID problems have been so belittled that they’re embarrassed to talk about it."

Voters who showed up without an acceptable ID could cast a provisional ballot, provided they could present a required ID within the next six days. Just 50 provisional ballots were filed in Travis County by Tuesday afternoon, according to DeBeauvoir.

Early voting totals in Texas were slightly lower this year (1,715,731) compared with 2010 (1,731,589), the last midterm year, though it’s unclear whether the voter ID law played a role.

One of the state’s most closely watched congressional races was between Pete Gallego, the incumbent Democrat, and his Republican challenger, Will Hurd. The two were running neck and neck, and it was thought that, in such a close election, the voter ID law might hurt Gallego’s chances of holding on to his seat. Mother Jones magazine posited that Gallego might be the one candidate in Texas whom the law “could really screw over.”

But as of Tuesday afternoon, that didn’t appear to be the case. “We haven’t heard of a whole lot of problems,” said Anthony Gutierrez, Gallego’s campaign manager, who said they heard from one voter with an ID question. “We’re hoping it’s not going to be an issue.” Hurd did, however, go on to defeat the incumbent, riding the electoral wave that will give the GOP at least 52 senators and 242 representatives in the next congressional term.  

While it did not appear that people were being turned away from the polls in droves, some struggled to exercise their voting rights. Madeline Pearsall of Austin tried voting early last week but was turned away because of an expired driver’s license. She couldn’t renew her license, thanks to tickets she couldn’t afford to pay. After making a number of phone calls to figure out what to do and waiting in line for several hours at the Department of Public Safety, she was able to obtain an ID that cost her $6. Though she did get to vote, Pearsall, who is 61, remains incensed about the experience. “I didn’t know you had to pay to vote,” she said. “They’re not going to beat me down.”

Terry Tiffany of Houston recently lost his wallet, which contained his driver’s license. The 69-year-old retired oil field worker had a copy of his birth certificate, but he wasn’t sure how to use it to obtain the right kind of ID in time to vote. “The hassle, the hoops — it was too much pain for too little gain,” he said.

There are many others like Tiffany, said Agraharkar, though few of them are likely to contact an election clerk or an advocacy organization. “A lot of people tend to be under the radar,” he said. “Either they’re turned away or they learn about the law and stay home.”

The question of whether the law substantially stifles turnout is separate from whether it is necessary — or, for that matter, constitutional. In October, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos ruled that the law had an “impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans,” who are more likely to be without an acceptable ID, and that it was therefore unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, approved the restrictions for Tuesday’s elections. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in a dissent that the law was “purposefully discriminatory,” and she echoed Ramos’ poll tax comparisons. (Texas imposed poll taxes until 1966 that were intended to suppress minority voting.)

In order to push back against the argument that the law places too heavy a burden on poor voters, who may lack a driver’s license or passport, Texas started offering free election identification certificates in June of last year. But that idea, which requires would-be voters to present a birth certificate and other documentation, hasn’t exactly caught on: Only 407 voters in the state have received the certificates since the program began.  

State officials say they have made an effort to reach out to voters without acceptable IDs. “We’ve worked very hard to make sure people know about the photo ID requirement,” said Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for Texas’ secretary of state. She also said that the number of registered voters who lack acceptable ID is far below 600,000, the number that has been reported in numerous news articles and cited by judges. “When you look at those 600,000, it’s not that they don’t have ID — it’s that we can’t confirm that they have ID,” she said, noting that the list of supposedly disenfranchised voters includes the state’s director of elections, Keith Ingram. “We don’t think that number is reflective of the situation in Texas.”

The supposed impetus for the ID law was the prevention of voter fraud, though such cases are extremely uncommon. There have been just a handful of voter-fraud allegations in Texas over the last decade, and a report by the Brennan Center found that it was statistically more likely that a voter would be struck by lightning than attempt to commit fraud. Instead, according to the J. Gerald Hebert, legal counsel for the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit attempting to overturn the law, the real purpose has always been to discourage minority voters, who traditionally tend to vote for Democrats.

Hebert and others have pointed out that the law doesn’t allow voters to use student IDs but does allow concealed handgun licenses. “Every time [lawmakers] made a decision about which IDs to accept and which to reject, they accepted ones that would be available to white voters,” he said.  “Every time they made a choice, they made a choice that was harmful to minorities.”