At the link.  The author doesn’t seem to understand why Texas would be having so many problems getting its voter ID law precleared when “the U.S. Department of Justice has not objected to similar Voter ID laws in Arizona, Louisiana, Florida, and South Dakota which have jurisdictions that must also face Department of Justice pre-clearance.”  

The answer is very simple.  The Obama Administration and the Holder DOJ decided quite a while back that there will be no voter ID laws approved and implemented during his reign. This despite Department precedent of approval going back to the Clinton and Bush Administrations.  And that doesn’t include the fact that the Crawford decision at the Supreme Court is hanging over the whole debate.  It’s as if it never was written.

With the Left having lost the legal war over photo ID and then losing major public opinion battles on the state and legislative level, DOJ has quickly become the sole remaining bastion of holdouts, opposing the very concept of voter ID and arrogantly ignoring Crawford. 

Reason or reasonableness plays no factor, politics does. 

Regardless of past approvals in other Section 5 states or the Supreme Court’s approval stamp on the fundamentals of photo ID, this Civil Rights Division will not approve any voter ID law, PERIOD.  The political leadership at the Civil Rights Division is so virulently opposed to the concept that the chances of any state having a photo identification law approved in this 2012 cycle is close to nill.

Section 5 has provided the Left and DOJ the sole remaining avenue to defy the Supreme Court and, once again, leave part of the country (Section 5 states) as second class citizens in the voter ID debate.  Despite a lot of noise, states can usually pass and implement voter ID laws without incident.  That is true, unless you are under Section 5 where no matter what type of law you pass, it will never be good enough for the Holder DOJ.   

The battle over voter ID in the Section 5 states has become part of the larger political argument despite 80% approval in the country.  The Supreme Court attempted to de-politicize the issue by approving the Indiana Voter ID law by a 6-3 margin and leaving this as a political issue to be decided by state legislatures.  However, a few refuse to accept that answer, with a majority of the few working full-time at DOJ.  This behavior is ripe for a smackdown.