Justice Ginsburg's Myopic View of the Law

Ruth Buzzi Ginsburg Pens Scathing Dissent

On Texas Voter ID Law

Early Saturday morning, Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg issued a six-page dissent  blasting the court's decision to allow Texas to use its new voter ID law in the November elections. She was joined in the dissenting opinion by........you guessed it......Ginsburg's inferior legal intellectual toadies, Justices Kagan and Sotomayor. 

Ginsburg argued that the Fifth Circuit was remiss to ignore the findings of a full trial in district court, which found that the law was "enacted with a racially discriminatory purpose and would yield a prohibited discriminatory result."

"The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters." 

"Senate Bill 14 may prevent more than 600,000 registered Texas voters (about 4.5% of all registered voters) from voting in person for lack of compliant identification. A sharply disproportionate percentage of those voters are African-American or Hispanic."

I'm amazed at the insufficient knowledge of the details of the Texas law she so abhors. One of 7 different ID's are approved for voting.  The law clearly states an approved picture ID will be issued by the state of Texas for voting proposes at no cost if the voter is disabled and of limited resources.   

"Based on the testimony and numerous statistical analyses provided at trial, the Court finds that approximately 608,470 registered voters in Texas, representing approximately 4.5% of all registered voters, lack qualified SB 14 ID and of these, 534,512 voters do not qualify for a disability exemption."

The bill authorizes voters who cannot provide identification to cast provisional ballots. It requires voters who cast provisional ballots because they do not meet identification requirements to provide photo identification within six days of the date of the election.

Many of the registered voters cited in Ginsburg's dissent have signed their voter registrations at registration drives at grocery stores and gas stations giving name, age and address with no proof of who they really are. I'm watching this happen daily here where I live. And not once have I been approached to ask if I am registered. (Need I say who is?)

A Texas ID cost $16, and only $6 if over 60.

This is not a Poll Tax, It's a card to Prove Who You Are!!!!

Receipt for payment of poll tax, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, 1917
(the $1 tax would be equal to $18.41 today)

I find it hard to believe (unless you are in the state illegally) that the people cited in Ginsburg's decent, and by open voting proponents (primarily African-American or Hispanic) are not capable of securing at least one of the required pieces of ID. Is Justice Ginsburg's reasoning that they're not capable of carrying out a civic duty, or just to stupid to do so? These are primarily the same people who are receive government assistance which require proof of residency, who regularly use public transportation and seem to have money and means to purchase tobacco and liquor. But because they are black or Hispanic they somehow can not acquire an ID? 

Justice Ginsburg believes  SB14 is about creating a burden on the right to vote, when in actuality, it's about guaranteeing the rightful legitimate vote of a citizen against fraudulent voting. Perhaps Justice Ginsburg should spend some time reading a little Texas history of the legendary voter fraud and political shenanigans of the very signer of the Voting Rights Act himself, Lyndon B. Johnson.

Ginsburg also pointedly added to her dissent: 

"racial discrimination in elections in Texas is no mere historical artifact. To the contrary, Texas has been found in violation of the Voting Rights Act in every redistricting cycle from and after 1970."

The very violations Justice Ginsburg cites are in part approved in principle by the very court in which she sits (and defended by a corrupt DOJ) in gerrymandering artificial minority districts for the purpose of creating a democrat majority in other states. But she doesn't seem to have much of a problem with that.