On Monday of this week voter ID became a requirement in the state of Texas but, wouldn’t you know, a lot of people lack ID and very few have been able to obtain one so far.
Voter ID’s defenders often point to the fact that states that have enacted these voter suppression laws typically offer free IDs to voters who can jump through certain bureaucratic hoops necessary to obtain one as evidence that the laws will not actually have a significant negative impact on voters, but the data in Texas suggests that these free IDs will do little to mitigate the impact of the law. Despite an estimated 1.4 million voters in Texas who lack a photo ID, Texas has issued only 41 free ID cards since last week.
If only this, a problem that will have immediate effects, received half as much coverage as the problems currently facing the federal healthcare exchange.
At least half a million people have successfully filed applications on both the federal and individual state exchanges, but if you’ve paid any attention to cable news or beltway newspapers lately, you’d think the apocalypse was upon us because a hulking database is experiencing technical difficulties.
Healthcare dot gov has been compared — I shit you not — to Hurricane Katrina and Iraq by Republicans, and compared to the BP oil spill and the government shutdown by supposed liberals.
Meanwhile, a real tragedy is unfolding in Texas. But this problem will primarily effect those people. You know the ones.