GOP does itself long-term damage with Latinos

And no wonder. Many Hispanics are Roman Catholic and considered conservative socially. They are the nation's fastest-growing ethnic group, and many live in politically important states. Half live in Texas, California and Florida, and such crucial swing states as Arizona, Colorado and Nevada have more than the national percentage of Hispanics.

Given their declared intent and those statistics, it seems startling that Republicans in Texas - and at least a dozen other states - seem determined to drive Hispanics and other minorities even further into the arms of the Democratic Party. That is one of the likely effects of the spate of new laws aimed at reversing the recent trend of making voting easier around the country.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, those laws include ones requiring voters to have state-issued identification cards and others designed to restrict early and absentee voting.

But these efforts are beginning to run awry of the Obama administration's Justice Department because, for the first time in the 47 years since the Voting Rights Act was passed to spur minority turnout, the department is in Democratic hands at the time of the census, taken every 10 years.

Earlier this year, the department challenged a Texas legislative and congressional redistricting plan that largely ignored the fact that 65 percent of the state's 10-year population growth was Hispanic. On the congressional level, the heavily Republican Legislature created four new seats with white Republican majorities, rather than draw two seats with Hispanic Democratic majorities.

In doing so, it ignored the state's congressional delegation's recommendation that the four seats be divided. Ultimately, a compromise was reached permitting this year's elections to proceed, but the long-term situation remains unresolved.

Last week, the Justice Department challenged the voter identification plan that the Legislature's Republican majority passed, which could have the effect of disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of the state's Hispanic voters.

In a March 12 letter to Texas Director of Elections Keith Ingram, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said Texas neither showed evidence of voter fraud requiring the measure nor proved that it "will not have a retrogressive effect."

In examining data submitted by Texas, Perez said the department concluded that Hispanics were less likely to have driver's licenses or other identification cards issued by the Department of Public Safety. It concluded that more than half a million registered voters lacked one or the other and that "a disproportionate share of those registered voters are Hispanic."

Under the Texas law, an applicant for an election identification certificate has to travel to a driver's license office. But the department noted that twice as many Hispanics don't have an available vehicle, and that 81 of the state's 254 counties don't have an operational driver's license office.

In opposing the department's claims, Texas is challenging the constitutionality of the portion of the Voting Rights Act that requires states with histories of voter discrimination to get advance approval of voting changes from either the Justice Department or the federal court in Washington.

Ultimately, the case could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court, possibly before next November's election. So could a similar action against a new South Carolina voter ID law.

In neither case, will the court's ruling impact this year's presidential election since both Texas and South Carolina are reliably Republican. That might not be the case in Wisconsin, where a country judge has temporarily backed its new voter ID requirement.

But the long-term damage of such actions could be substantial, in Texas as well as in more competitive states. As the Hispanic population in Texas continues to grow, it should help the Democrats cut into current GOP majorities, especially if Republicans keep trying to make it harder for the Hispanics to vote.

Nationally, the GOP efforts to curb Hispanic voting and the anti-immigration views of top Republican candidates seem likely to keep the party's share of Hispanic voters at or below the 31 percent of 2008, rather than near the 40 percent President George W. Bush achieved in 2004.