Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed a bill on Thursday that would require voters to show photo identification at the polls, a law likely to be rejected by the Justie Department. The state is covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and must have its voting laws precleard by the feds because of its history of racial discrimination, and DOJ has rejected similar laws in Texas and South Carolina.
The Justice Department told the state in March that it wouldn’t render a verdict on whether they would approve the state’s voter ID measure until the law was actually passed. Voters had enacted a constitutional amendment that required legislators to pass a voter ID law. An analysis of the vote found that less than 25 percent of non-white Mississippi citizens voted in favor of the state constitutional amendment.
