About Time! Judges Shoot Down Republican Voter Restrictions in 2 States

Federal judges in Georgia and Texas have ruled against two controversial election laws passed as the Republican Party sought to tighten voting rules after Trump’s loss in 2020.

Texas law blasted to smithereens

U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez struck down a provision of Texas’ law requiring that mail voters provide the same identification number they used when they registered to vote. He ruled the requirement violated the U.S. Civil Rights Act because it led to people being unable to cast ballots due to a matter irrelevant to whether they are registered.

The change led to skyrocketing mail ballot rejections in the first election after the law was passed in 2021 and was targeted in a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice.

“This ruling sends a clear message that states may not impose unlawful and unnecessary requirements that disenfranchise eligible voters seeking to participate in our democracy,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement after the ruling, which came Thursday.

Most of Georgia voter suppression laws exterminated

In Georgia, voting rights advocates got a more mixed set of rulings Friday from U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee.

He temporarily prohibited officials from enforcing penalties against people who provide food and water to voters waiting in line as long as they are more than 150 feet from the building where voting is taking place. He also blocked a part of the law that requires voters to provide their birthdate on absentee ballot envelopes.

But Judge Boulee rejected the groups’ claims that certain restrictions imposed by the law deny voters with disabilities meaningful access to absentee voting.

However, the judge also upheld Georgia’s law banning ballot harvesting and absentee ballot drop boxes.

Still, civil rights groups who sued to block the law were cheered by the ruling: “Today’s decisions are important wins for our democracy and protecting access to the ballot box in Georgia,” said John Cusick, assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

The Georgia and Texas laws were two of the most prominent of a blizzard of red state restrictions on voting passed in the wake of Trump’s 2020 loss, which he falsely blamed on voter fraud. More than 100 restrictive laws have passed in 30+ GOP-controlled states since 2020.

Republican extremists continue to push voter suppression laws, even as the initial measures remain enmeshed in litigation.

“I think these rulings demonstrate that courts agree that these kinds of restrictions on mail ballots especially really have no place in our democracy,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, co-director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project.

Madness in purple Arizona

“Ballot harvesting,” or collecting ballots for friends and neighbors, is a felony in Arizona.

Guillermina Fuentes, the former mayor of San Luis, near the border in southwest Arizona, was sentenced to one month for alleged unlawful ballot collection – and advocates say prosecuting cases like hers suppresses the right to vote.

A 2016 law pushed by state Republicans made it a felony punishable by prison time to collect a voter’s ballot unless the collector is their relative, household member, or caregiver. Since then, the local excitement and joy surrounding voting have been replaced with fear. 

Former fascist attorney general Mark Brnovich prosecuted a grand total of only four community members, including Guillermina Fuentes, who was jailed for 30 days for alleged unlawful ballot collection.

On October 13, 2022, Fuentes, a 66-year-old grandmother, former farm worker, school board member, and local Democratic leader, was sentenced to one month in jail and two years of probation for collecting four completed mail ballots that belonged to community members during the August 2020 primary. Fuentes and her neighbor, Alma Juarez, were the first people prosecuted under the state’s ballot collection law.

“When I was about to go to jail, I was so sad and frustrated, and I couldn’t believe that I was going, because I see it like a witch-hunt,” she said.

Fuentes’s daughter, Lizette Esparza, said she wakes up each morning in fear of how conspiracy theorists will talk about her family on social media.

“We’re living in a nightmare right now,” said Esparza, who serves as the superintendent of the local elementary school district. She also worries about how her mom’s ordeal will affect the community. “They’re not going to want to go to vote, especially now because now they’re scared.”

Meanwhile, Brnovich is no longer in office, ran a failed campaign for US Senate, and has been banished to a dark hole in Hell.