GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Not suppressing the vote in Texas

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Via HotAir, a look from Bryan Preston at Texas voter ID laws in action:

For weeks leading up to the 2013 off-year elections, prominent Texas Democrats directly blamed the state’s new voter ID law for problems in registration…

Democrats who oppose voter ID have consistently claimed that it suppresses votes. If they are correct, then Texas should have seen turnout drop off in 2013 compared with the closest comparable election…

According to the Texas secretary of state’s office, 10 amendments were up for vote in 2011, the last constitutional amendment election before the voter ID law passed…Overall, an average of about 672,874 Texans voted on these 10 constitutional amendments.

…nine amendments went up for vote in 2013…The average number of votes cast in 2013 was 1,099,670.

So, in terms of raw votes, turnout in 2013 increased by about 63% over turnout in 2011 in comparable elections.

…Democrats allege that voter ID will suppress the vote in predominantly Hispanic regions. Hidalgo County sits on the Texas-Mexico border and is 90% Hispanic. In 2011, an average of just over 4,000 voted in the constitutional amendment election. In 2013, an average of over 16,000 voted.

Of course that doesn’t settle the argument; both from the standpoint that it takes a good deal more facts to prove anything conclusively, and from the standpoint that the Left won’t care about the facts. But, as Preston concludes:

If voter ID was intended to suppress votes, it is failing as spectacularly as HealthCare.gov.

Some Zimmerman links

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Recent-ish, and I found them worthwhile:

  • Shelby Steele on The Decline of the Civil Rights Establishment. “The purpose of today’s civil-rights establishment is not to seek justice, but to seek power…based on the presumption that [blacks] are still…victimized…This idea of victimization is an example of what I call a ‘poetic truth.’ Like poetic license, it bends the actual truth…[listeners] say, ‘Yes, of course,’ lest we seem to be racist…this establishment is fighting to maintain its authority to wield poetic truth…One wants to scream at all those outraged at the Zimmerman verdict: Where is your outrage over the collapse of the black family?” – Read the whole thing.

  • A good piece from Cathy Young reviewing the depth of the Established media’s malpractice in this case, and one from Bill Whittle expressing his outrage over that malpractice.

  • Now old, but: Video of the jury reading the Not Guilty verdict. (Just to see the moment. And sorry, but there is no honest way to force Zimmerman into a ‘white’ identity; by conventional standards, he seems clearly a Latino / person of color.)

BONUS (from Kurt in the comments): Bryan Preston critiques how Obama has cast his lot with the race-baiters. “In Florida, blacks benefit from ‘stand your ground’ laws more often than whites do…[and] the president went on to acknowledge that…’stand your ground’ was not invoked in Zimmerman’s defense, [but said] we should re-examine such laws anyway. Logically, why?”

UPDATE: Zimmerman helps people, despite the nasty death threats that Trayvon Martin supporters have inflicted not only on him, but even on strangers who (say) happen to have a phone number similar to his.