Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Challenge To Law Penalizing Voting Helpers
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
November 9, 2006

AUSTIN, TEXAS--Just three days before the mid-term election, the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday rejected an effort by Texas Democrats to stop the state attorney general from prosecuting people who helped voters with disabilities and other minorities to cast absentee mail-in ballots.

On Tuesday of last week, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, from enforcing a 2003 state law that the Texas Democratic Party said violated the U.S. Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act.

The law prohibits people from handling or mailing absentee ballots for voters who are not related to or do not live with them.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision on Friday, ruling that while the Texas law seems overly broad in making it a crime to help voters with disabilities, the law does not completely deny people the opportunity to vote.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Abbott's office had indicted 13 people -- all of whom had a record of voting Democrat -- for voter fraud.

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Reproduced here under special arrangement with Inclusion Daily Express international disability rights news service.
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