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I'm not convinced we should legislate English as the sole American language. I've given this great thought and believe we should accept certain other languages as well, such as Arapahoe, Choctah, Navajo, Apache, Seminole, ...............

Oldgringo wrote:gdanaher does raise a couple of valid questions; however, I believe every county has a courthouse and/or a Sheriff who could issue a photo ID.

Under whose authority can a county sheriff or other LEO issue a photo ID? Really, I'm not aware of any. The Texas law as I understand it has a defined list of acceptable IDs, and if your ID isn't on the list, it isn't valid to vote with.

Oldgringo wrote:That said, elections are not held every day nor are they held every year. I fail to see where a photo ID voting requirment can be likened to a 'poll tax' because sometime between elections, everyone who needs one can obtain a legit photo ID - one way or another.

Actually, municipal and other local elections occur with great frequency. Voting is a right, not a privilege. As such, it isn't supposed to cost you anything out of pocket to vote. Get to the polling location and vote. To get a free state photo ID you have to produce other identification, preferably other photo ID like a passport, These things cost money. If you don't have a hundred bucks to get a passport, you can't vote. If you can't get the certified birth certificate you need, you have to buy it and if you can't easily find the money for it, you can't vote. Never mind that you might have a year to collect the information. It costs, and that cost infringes on your right to vote. If one eligible citizen is disenfranchised, we are ALL disenfranchised.

FWIW, The county in which I was born gets $21 for a copy of the birth certificate, it must be mailed in, not via the net, and it takes a minimum of 5 weeks to deliver it.......

Illegals can counterfeit a social security card faster than I can type this note. And they weren't intended to be used for ID anyway--if you have an old one, it says so, right there on the card. If they want everyone to have a photo ID, the state is going to have to make it easy to get it, and free to the recipient. They may have to go to senior living centers, park a van there for a day, and wheel people out to it to get their picture taken, and they will have to be liberal in what they call identification to get the picture ID. You pay for a drivers license because driving is a privilege, not a right. Voting is a right. If I show up to vote and I have a copy of my birth certificate showing that I was born in the USA, that ought to be good enough. If I show up and someone can show that I was born in Queretaro, and am not a citizen naturalized to the USA, then an agent should haul me off and prosecute me. But If my great grandson has driven me to the poll and I hobble in with a walker to vote, the first numbnut who tells me that I can not exercise my constitutional right to vote is going to get that walker wrapped around his neck!

This topic seems to have been beat to death, so here's to beating the horse some more. This article and your reaction to it are a good example of people reading into something just what they want to hear. "Illegal" is not found anywhere in the article. Illegals do not have a right to vote, and they should not vote. If they vote, they are committing a felony, and they are criminals, but then they were committing criminal acts when they entered the nation illegally, anyway. Criminals should be tried and if found guilty, punished appropriately. That is not the issue here. Not at all. Photo ID is the issue, and how to get it. All you fine 30 somethings can get a drivers license in an afternoon. Even less time if you live in town. For those who don't live near a DPS office, it can take longer. Less than half of all Texas counties have a single DPS office, and of those that we have, many are open only one or two days a week and none of them on a weekend. You might have to drive 3 counties away to get a drivers license or ID card. The ID card is issued without charge now, but there is still a cost. You have to get there, and at $3.50 a gallon, three counties each way can cost a few bucks. But you also have to have other identification available to even get the ID card, and things like passports cost a Franklin these days. This is nothing more than a trick to reinstate a poll tax, to prevent citizens who by any standard are eligible to vote, and that has been illegal since 1964. It discriminates against whole classes of Americans: elderly, visually handicapped, physically handicapped,geographically isolated, etc. I'm all for finding a way to prevent illegal aliens from voting, but starting a topic and entitling it as it was is disingenuous and points to a shallowness of understanding of what is otherwise a complex problem.