Do Over Half A Million Texans Lack Proper Voter IDs?

Our weekly check-in with the Texas Truth-O-Meter.

By Alain StephensApril 27, 2016 10:46 am,

Tom “Smitty” Smith, a liberal activist, says more than half a million Texans lack sufficient papers to legally turn out to vote.

Is that a fact? Gardner Selby of the PolitiFact Texas fact-checking team has the answer.

Smith, the longtime director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, made his claim in an April 14, 2016, commentary on campaign finance published in the Austin American-Statesman that also mentions the law under legal challenge requiring Texas voters to present a photo ID before being casting a ballot at a polling place.

Republicans who carried the ID mandate into law in 2011 say it reduces chances of voter fraud. Democrats say the show-your-ID hoop was needless and obviously intended solely to reduce turnout by minorities, the elderly and other citizens likely not to have one of the accepted kinds of identification.

And “Texas,” Smith wrote, “has 600,000 registered voters who don’t have the kind of photo ID needed to vote.”

Hear how Smith’s claim scored in the player above.