Written By : Warner Todd Huston
July 13, 2012

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder originally said that some 600,000 Texans lacked a voter I.D. and therefore would be disenfranchised by the Texas voter I.D. law, but Department Of Justice lawyers have suddenly upped that number greatly. Holder’s DOJ now claims that 1.4 million otherwise eligible Texas voters don’t have proper I.D.s.

Unfortunately, Holder did not release the figures or the methods that were used to arrive at the newer and much higher figure which holds that one in fourteen Texans have no photo I.D.

AG Holder claims that because so many Texans have no photo I.D. they would be barred from voting under the Texas Voter I.D. Law even though the new law requires the state to give photo I.D.s to such citizens for free.

Other states have implemented voter I.D. laws without DOJ involvement, but Texas is a special case. The DOJ has jurisdiction over Texas voting laws because the 1965 Voting Rights Act gives it the power to interdict in the Lone Star State, as well as eight other southern states, because of past discriminatory voting laws.

On Tuesday, Holder appeared in Houston, Texas before the NAACP to decry the Voter I.D. Law. Amusingly, reporters noted that government officials said that if they wanted to hear Holder speak, they would have to present a photo I.D. before being allowed to enter the auditorium to hear the AG rail about the evils of photo I.D. requirements.

Not as amusingly, few news outlets cared to make an issue of the hypocrisy that meets them with this story. How can they accept numbers from a DOJ that refuses to prove its claims? Why is it OK to force reporters to show photo I.D.s to hear a government official speak but not OK for voters to be required to present an I.D. to vote?

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