I have heard that the Texas Democratic Party is still looking for additional victims who could join the DC lawsuit. If you know any persons who both do not have the requried ID and do not have a birth certificate, then PM me.

Thank you for this update.

You know there are many people who will be impacted by this suppression law but the problem is always finding them in advance. Texas is a such a low voter information state, that it is hard to reach them. Plus the media market in Texas is so expensive to conduct a real effort at outreach to everyone.

Either way I applaud the TDP move.

The DOJ has already formally objected to the South Carolina voter id law and the state of South Carolina has filed a lawsuit in the DC circuit to overturn this law. The panel was announced today. One judge was appointed by President Clinton and two of the judges were appointed by Bush 43 (one of these two GOP judges did write a well written 150+ page opinion defending the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act). The other GOP judge was one of bush's legal team in the 2000 recount and got on the bench due to a compromise by the old gang of 14. I think that the panel that Texas has for the separate lawsuit filed is a better panel.

It looks like South Carolina also got a bad panel http://electionlawblog.org/?p=30142

The quality of the DC judges is very high to begin with but this is a very smart panel. Second, this draw is probably not great for South Carolina. Judge Kollar-Kotelly was a tour de force in writing one of the mammoth opinions in the three-judge court case McConnell v. FEC upholding most of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. The Ninth Circuit ended up following her decision. She’s going to be skeptical of South Carolina’s arguments about the constitutional problems with section 5 of the VRA. John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, recently issued two opinions (Shelby County and the LaRoque (Kinston) case) rejecting constitutional challenges to section of the Voting rights Act. Judge Kavanaugh, while very conservative, has proven himself no activist when it comes to the election case; he rejected a recent argument to blow a hole in the McCain-Feingold law’s soft money provisions on grounds that it was for the Supreme Court, not the lower courts, to overturn earlier precedent.

The Texas panel is even better in my opinion. Both panels will hopefully do strong opinions on these laws and we will see if the SCOTUS wants to get involved. In any event, it is unlikely that either the Texas case or the South Carolina case will reach the SCOTUS in time for the 2012 election

It is not cheap to properly adopt a voter id law. Here is a good analysis from the Brennan Center on the costs of implimenting a voter id law http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/the_cost_of_voter_id_laws_what_the_courts_say/ Texas ignored the cost of adopting a voter id law and did not provide additional funding to either the Department of Public Safety or the Secretary of State to impliment a voter id law.

Virigina's attempt at adopting a voter id law may have died due to the cost issue http://electionlawblog.org/?p=30153

“After the Commonwealth Institute in Virginia produced a briefing paper on the true costs of HB 569, which would take millions of dollars to implement and ensnare the state costly litigation, the eye-popping numbers (between $7.91 million and $22.59 million) sank the bill

Texas ignored the costs of the Texas voter id bill. I was on a panel on Saturday for a town hall held by Congressman Al Green and a representative from the DPS told the audience that they were allocated no additional funding for the Texas voter id law. The Secretary of State's only effort at educating the voters about this law has been posting something on their website.

If the DOJ does not object to the Texas voter id law, this lack of funding will be a basis to challenge the Texas law