The best chance of invalidating the voter id law (SB 14) is under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The DC circuit has exclusive jurisdiction over Section 5 issues The DOJ has not officially ruled on the Texas voter id law yet but the State of Texas is anticipating that the DOJ will object to SB 14 and has filed a lawsuit already. The three judge panel assigned to the Texas case is a good panel with two judges appointed by Democrats and the one republican judge also being on the panel looking at the Texas redistricting issues.

The attorney who represents the Texas Democratic Party has already filed a motion intervene in the Texas case in DC and the party is looking for additional votes to ad to the lawsuit. The Texas voter id issue will be litigated for a while and I doubt that the litigation will be resolved prior during this election cycle.

This is good news but is not directly relevant to the Texas litigation http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/breaking_doj_opposes_florida_laws_on_voter_registration_groups_early_voting.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

The Justice Department objected late Friday to new provisions of Florida election law which place strict regulations on third-party voter registration groups and cut down on the early voting period. DOJ alleged in a court filing that Florida was unable to prove the new provisions were not discriminatory under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

“As to the third-party voter registration and early voting changes enacted… respectively, the United States’ position is that the State has not met its burden, on behalf of its covered counties, that the two sets of proposed voting changes are entitled to preclearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act,” according to a court filing.

Florida had begun the preclearance process with DOJ but subsequently sued the government after federal lawyers asked for additional information about how some provisions of the state’s new election law would be enforced.