{"id":5545,"date":"2016-08-19T19:26:04","date_gmt":"2016-08-19T19:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=5545"},"modified":"2016-08-19T19:26:32","modified_gmt":"2016-08-19T19:26:32","slug":"agreement-means-more-texans-can-vote-in-november","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=5545","title":{"rendered":"Agreement Means More Texans Can Vote in November"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"More<\/a>

More Texans will be able to vote in November under an agreement that allows a wider range of identification documents at the polls. Photo: niyazz\/iStockphoto<\/p><\/div>\n

by Mark Richardson<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

AUSTIN, Texas<\/strong> \u2013 Voting rights advocates encouraged the more than 500,000 Texans who could not have voted under the Texas Voter ID law because they lacked a photo ID to cast a ballot in the November general election.<\/p>\n

Following a federal court ruling striking down most of the law, state officials and the plaintiffs in the case agreed to a set of rules<\/a> making it easier for voters to identify themselves at the polls. Mary Moreno, communications director with the Texas Organizing Project, said her group is gearing up to get the message out to minority voters to get them to the polls on Election Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to launch our \u2018Get Out the Vote,\u2019 which is what we really focus on, more than registration,\u201d Moreno said. \u201cWe knock on doors and we connect the issues to the ballot box. You might not know who the politicians are that are running, but people always care about the issues that affect their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the agreement, a voter who doesn\u2019t have a photo ID like a driver\u2019s license or passport can now use a birth certificate, a paycheck stub, or a utility bill to establish their identity.<\/p>\n

When the voter ID law was passed in 2011, backers said it was designed to prevent voter fraud. But opponents like Matt Angle, executive director at the Lone Star Project, believed it was passed to keep minority voters away from the ballot box, whether they had an ID or not.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of Texans who might have had the type of photo ID that was necessary were discouraged from voting by the Republican state leaders making voting sound like a risky proposition, sounding like it was something difficult to do,\u201d Angle said. \u201cThat discouragement will no longer be there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the Texas ruling, courts struck down all or some of similar voter ID laws in Arkansas, North Carolina, and North Dakota. Legal challenges to voter ID laws are also pending in several other states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Mark Richardson AUSTIN, Texas \u2013 Voting rights advocates encouraged the more than 500,000 Texans who could not have voted under the Texas Voter ID law because they lacked a photo ID to cast a ballot in the November general election. Following a federal court ruling striking down most of the law, state officials and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5546,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545\/revisions\/5546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}