A new report says the combined impact of voter ID laws, proof of citizenship requirements, and inaccurate purges of voter registration rolls could prevent over 10 million Latino Americans from registering and voting in elections this year.
The report is authored by the Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization that opposes measures like voter ID. It argues that “voter suppression laws and policies threaten to relegate eligible Latino voters to second-class citizenship and impede their ability to participate fully in American democracy.”
Texas laws and actions are targeted by The Advancement Project, including the state’s voter ID law (which was overturned by a U.S. district court, and is unlikely to be implemented this November). The report also lists Texas as among 14 states that have requested U.S. Department of Homeland Security data “for the purpose of conducting state voter purges based on citizenship.”
A similar attempt to cull Texas voter rolls by cross referencing names against the Social Security Administration’s death master file has been temporarily blocked by a state district judge, amid concerns it would disenfranchise living voters this Election Day.
Crunching 2010 Census data, the Advancement Project notes Texas has a Hispanic citizen voting age population of nearly 4.4 million, yet just over a million of that population voted in the 2010 election.
You can read the report online.
