The Voting Rights Act prohibits anyone from being denied his or her right to vote on the basis of the color of their skin or their race. The act specifically outlined policy changes to try to ensure that minority people would not be denied their right to vote anymore. Shelby County v. Holder (2013) was a historic Supreme Court case ruled that the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional. Since Section 5 depended on Section 4, it has a lack of power unless Congress were to introduce a new formula for calculating which areas needed federal examiners. This decision meant that states had complete freedom in implementing new voting laws, and did not have to wait to receive clearance to act upon the laws. Within hours of the Court’s decision, voting laws across the country were changing.

Texas was one of the many states that got assigned federal examiners to watch over elections after the Voting Rights Act was passed. This implementation of federal examiners were calculated through different formulas, such as seeing is less than 50% of the voting age population voted in the 1965 election. Without sections 4 and 5 of the act, Texas was now free to implement election laws without having to seek clearance from the government. In 2012, the U.S District Court of Columbia struck down a Texas voter identification law, saying that the state could not provide sufficient evidence that the law would not discriminate against black and Latino voters (Brennan Center for Justice). After the Shelby County v. Holder decision, Texas legislature drafted a new law that required voter identification.

Based on the Census data, I compiled the demographics of the population in Texas in 2010. The last Census was taken in 2010, so that is why the concrete data is only available for that year.

I looked at all of the demographics for the voting population in each election year. The following charts show the compiled data of the demographics of the population, citizens, registered voters, and people that actually voted for each year. First, I looked at the two midterms surrounding the court decision.

Since presidential elections have different turnouts than midterms do, I wanted to look at the two presidential elections surrounding the court’s decision.

Based on the data provided by the Census, the voting demographics between each of the groups accounted for did not have a huge difference. In general, they both had low turnout. White people had the highest turnout, and all minority groups had low turnout. I cannot accurately say that the court decision affected this election cycle based on the data provided.

INTERVIEWS I had email correspondence with Cecilia Aguilera, who is a fellow with the Voting Rights Institute under the Campaign Legal Center. I asked her the following two questions: How have the voting laws in Texas changed since Shelby County v. Holder (2013)? How has the culture at polling places affected the minority vote? Her response: “…many states, including Texas, have increased restrictive voting laws and practices since the Supreme Court struck down the preclearance formula in the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and, by extension, the Act’s preclearance requirement, which previously applied to Texas. Among many tactics, Texas has:

  • Closed hundreds of precincts, some of them in neighborhoods with large minority and/or Democratic populations
  • Instituted one of the strictest voter ID laws in the nation, which CLC challenged in Veasey v. Abbott
  • Stepped up voter purges
  • Engaged in alleged voter intimidation, including the conviction of a woman who was erroneously told by a poll worker that she could vote while on parole and subsequently sentenced to five years in prison, and false claims by election officials that nearly 100,000 non-citizens had voted in the 2018 elections. In reality, the majority of those voters were naturalized citizens who could legally cast a ballot; CLC recently won a settlement against the state. The documentary Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook features the story of a Texas sheriff who has been accused of intimidating Latino residents from voting by arresting and detaining individuals who allegedly voted illegally.

Brennan Center has additional information about voter restrictions enacted since 2013 on its website.

To your second question, I am not personally familiar with the culture that has developed at Texas polling places. However, generally speaking, precinct closures can lead to longer lines - a problem that was reported in Texas during the 2018 midterms. In turn, although Texas law requires employers to grant employees “sufficient” time off to vote, voters caring for children or other loved ones may not be able to commit the time needed to stand in line. As one of the articles I provided above addresses, closures may also require voters to travel further to cast a ballot, which can have adverse effects on individuals with limited transportation options. Unlike some states, Texas requires an excuse to cast an absentee ballot. Regarding voter ID, the district court in the Veasey case found that Texas’s voter ID law disproportionately impacted minority voters who, by virtue of where they tend to live in Texas, have little need for any of the acceptable forms of ID. They also experience poverty and engage in wage work at higher rates, making it difficult and expensive for them to collect the necessary documents and stand in line at a government office to obtain the required ID. (If you’re interested in learning more about how difficult it can be for residents living in poverty to obtain ID, I recommend visiting the websites for Vote Riders and Spread The Vote.) These hurdles may lead low-income-earning residents to forego registering to vote altogether. Voter purges are problematic for several reasons. Individuals who move frequently, whether for work or more affordable options, may not receive legally mandated notice that they need to confirm their address in order to avoid being purged. For context on how many voters may be affected by this issue, the Supreme Court observed in A. Phillip Randolph Inst. v. Husted that some 40 percent of Americans do not have the USPS forward their mail after they move. Certainly, people should update their voter registration; however, while many states allow for same day registration for new or purged voters, Texas does not. If someone does not know they have been purged because notice was sent to an old address, they cannot re-register before the registration deadline. Additionally, there have been major issues and alleged due process violations with how some states have carried out purges. Finally, threatening prosecution for voting violations - even ones committed as a result of government errors and good-faith misunderstandings of the law - can scare eligible voters from the polls. Returning citizens especially may not know that they are eligible to vote and may be especially reticent to register or cast a ballot in light of recent “voter fraud” prosecutions in Texas and North Carolina. When Texas officials announced that 98,000 people may have voted illegally, local election officials subsequently sent letters to lawfully registered naturalized citizens informing them that they had to produce documentation to prove they were citizens, or face being purged; many may have avoided providing this documentation out of fear that they had been mistakenly registered and would be prosecuted.

For my next interview, I had a brief phone conversation with Alexa Ura. Ura is a demographics reporter for the Texas Tribune. We discussed how recently, Texas Attorney General refused to give Congress information on the voter roll review. The Attorney General’s office treated congressional request as a public information request, which under Texas law, allows the Texas Attorney General’s Office to control what information is withheld. Though people are becoming more and more aware of voter purges, it seems that the state is managing to find loopholes to avoid disclosing information about the voter disenfranchisement that they performed.

For my last interview, I spoke briefly to Derek Rosenfeld, who is a specialist on voting rights and elections along with fair courts. He works for the Brennan Center for Justice as a media strategist. Rosenfeld gave me more insight on how catastrophic the decision in Shelby County v Holder was. Under the original Voting Rights Act, certain places that had a history of voter suppression had to get clearance before passing any laws regarding election. But, after the Supreme Court struck down that portion of the law, Texas, like many places, were free to make new election laws. Rosenfeld explained to me that within hours of the court decision, the Attorney General, Greg Abbott, released a statement saying that voter ID law would go immediately into effect, along with plans for redistricting. Rosenfeld explained that people had been waiting to continue to suppress the vote for minority communities, and the decision of Shelby County v Holder opened the gate for elected officials to do so.

Voter Registration by County For the midterms of 2010 and 2014, I wanted to compare the amount of registered voters in each county. First, I calculated the demographics of each county based on data provided by the US Census Bureau and the Texas Secretary of State. To calculate whether the county population was majority white or minority majority, I looked to see if the white population was above or below fifty percent. Then, I looked at each county’s number of registered voters for 2010 and 2014 and compared the percent change. The counties with the most negative change in number of registered voters were Motley (-13.08%), Menard (-10.58%), Coke (-10.22%), Garza (-9.37%), Wichita (-8.98), Terrell (-8.97), Floyd (-8.44), Concho (-7.84%), and Stonewall (-7.33%), and Duval (-7.12%). Garza, Terrell, Floyd, Concho, and Duval are all minority majority counties.

Voting purges are a common practice by election officials to keep an up-to-date list of eligible voters. In essence, it is meant to remove people from voting list that have moved to a new place or that have passed away. Unfortunately, this process is often flawed and ends up removing eligible voters from voting lists. The problem with this is that people usually do not know that their names have been removed, and by the time they find out it is election day so there is nothing to be done to allow them to vote in that election. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 360,000 more voters were removed from Texas voting rolls between 2012-2014 than between 2008 and 2010. The 2012-2014 period was right when Shelby County v. Holder was decided and Texas regained complete control over election laws. It is proven fact that there is more voter turnout for presidential elections compared to state and local elections. 2012 and 2016 were both huge election years. President Obama was running for reelection in 2012 against Republican Mitt Romney. In 2016, the presidential race recieved huge media coverage as Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton faced off. Texas voting showed a lot of changes between the two elections.

I used the data that I had already collected on the counties of Texas and their demographics, and I used the data found on the Texas Secretary of State website to see the amount of registered voters in November of both 2012 and 2016. I compared the amount of change that happened in the numbers. It is important that I looked at 2012 first, because 2013 is when the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act. After collecting the data, I noticed large percentages of changes in voter registration. The counties with the most negative changes were Terrell (-21.70%), Frio (-11.94), Kenedy (-11.91), Foard (-11.90), Loving (-10.57), Menard (-9.16), Presidio (-7.58), Haskell (-7.12), Donley (-6.32), and Coke (-5.76). Out of these top ten counties, Foard, Loving, Menard, Haskell, Donley, and Coke have a majority white population. Terrell, Frio, Kenedy, and Presidio have minority majority population. The county with the highest amount of voter registration increase, Denton (20.18%), is a majority white county.

Through my research, I found that Texas has an extremely flawed history with voting registration. Between redistricting, voter ID laws, and vote roll purges, the state effectively suppresses the minority vote throughout different counties. Shelby County v Holder (2013) allowed Texas to perform this voter disenfranchisement. The Texas legislature and election committees need to be held accountable for the amount of voices they have suppressed throughout the recent election years.