Democracy in the Valley: Impacts of Voter ID Laws in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley

Abstract

ABSTRACT: While we celebrate the monumental achievements of American democracy since its inception, we should also acknowledge that the Founding Fathers purposefully excluded a segment of the population from participating in the new republic. What has come to be known as “voter suppression” is a political strategy to discourage those qualified to vote from participating in the democratic process. For example, white supremacists used direct violence, literacy tests, and poll taxes to keep the former enslaved and their descendants from voting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In Texas, the integrity of the voting process came under intense scrutiny after the 2008 presidential cycle. Even though voter fraud and irregularities were generally unproven, state officials still passed new voter identification laws, which took effect in 2013. Critics of the new laws claim they are merely a voter suppression act aimed at the state’s growing Hispanic population. Therefore, this case study examines the predominantly Hispanic region of Texas, known as the Rio Grande Valley, to determine if such voter suppression acts successfully reduced voter participation during the national elections between 2012 and 2022.