Eric Holder Calls Voter ID Laws “Poll Taxes”
Attorney General Eric Holder has made headlines after likening voter ID laws to a “poll tax.”
Speaking before the NAACP in Houston, Holder explained that “many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them – and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them.”
For those unaware, poll taxes were widely utilized in the Jim Crow south as a means of discouraging African Americans from exercising their right to vote.
“Under Texas’ law, Holder noted, a concealed handgun license would serve as acceptable ID to vote, but a student ID would not. He went on to say that while only 8 percent of white people do not have government-issued photo IDs, about 25 percent of black people lack such identification.
‘I don’t know what will happen as this case moves forward, but I can assure you that the Justice Department’s efforts to uphold and enforce voting rights will remain aggressive,’ the attorney general said.
Holder said the arc of American history has always moved toward expanding the electorate and that ‘we will simply not allow this era to be the beginning of the reversal of that historic progress.'”
Read more at HuffingtonPost.com
As we’ve previously reported, Republican legislatures across the country have been hard at work pushing through voter ID legislation that will disproportionately impact minorities, students, impoverished persons, and the elderly this November.
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