Ari Berman: You Can Vote with a Handgun Permit but Not a Student ID

[midnight]

The Justice Department and the Texas Legislature are squaring off in court today over the state's controversial voter ID law. The law requires voters to show photo identification at the polls, and Texas hopes to implement it before the November election. The DOJ blocked Texas' voter ID law in March, saying it will disenfranchise at least 600,000 voters -- a disproportionate number of which are Latinos and other minority groups.

Currently, 16 states have passed restrictive voting laws that have the potential to impact the 2012 election, including vital swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania. We speak with Robert Notzon, the Legal Redress Chair for the Texas State Conference of the NAACP and co-counsel in a lawsuit challenging Texas' voter ID law; and Ari Berman, who covers voting rights for The Nation and Rolling Stone magazines.

"Not only is Texas such a large state but it has probably the strictest voter ID law on the books right now," Berman says. "You can vote with a handgun permit but not a student ID. Hispanics are anywhere from 46% to 120% more likely to not have an ID than white voters. In some ways it really is 'As goes Texas, so goes the nation' in terms of demographic change and the Republican response."http://www.commondreams.org/video/2012/07/09-0

[cags]

1. Did you know that you don't have to be a citizen to buy a gun in Texas. Just a legal resident and

they can't vote.

So that whole thing is a bunch of BS

[Igel]

2. Yes, but you also don't have to be a citizen to buy a drink if you're over 18.

Neither is relevant.

TX doesn't require license to buy a gun or own a gun any more than it requires me to have a drinking license. (Although, you know, a state-mandated drinking license might not be a bad idea for increasing revenue; if that's a problem, we could also have a surcharge of $20 per drink, waived upon presentation of the ID.)

Anyway, the "gun license" is a concealed weapons permit.

For that you have to have a SS number, a driver's license (which, in Texas, requires that you prove citizenship or have it marked in a way that says you're a legal resident), and a number of other things.

A concealed weapons permit has a photo and presupposes a valid TX DL (or ID card). And that's one of the valid IDs for voting purposes.