Ex-House speaker Jim Wright rejected for voter ID card

Catalina Camia | USA TODAY

Note: This post was corrected to reflect Wendy Davis cast a regular ballot in early voting in Texas.

Just how tough are new voter identification requirements in Texas? Apparently tough enough that former U.S. House speaker Jim Wright reportedly was denied a voter ID card on Saturday.

"Nobody was ugly to us, but they insisted that they wouldn't give me an ID," Wright, a Democrat who resigned from Congress in 1989, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in a story about his experience at a Texas Department of Public Safety office.

The 90-year-old told the newspaper he realized last week that he didn't have a valid ID to vote in Tuesday's elections. He said he was refused a voter ID card because his driver's license expired in 2010 and his faculty identification from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, where he teaches, doesn't meet requirements under the state law enacted in 2011.

Election officials have said voters without a valid photo ID or voter ID certificate can vote provisionally. The Texas secretary of state's website says a voter who casts a provisional ballot will then have six days to present proper ID to the county registrar.

"I earnestly hope these unduly stringent requirements on voters won't dramatically reduce the number of people who vote," said Wright, who in the early part of his political career pushed to abolish the poll tax. "I think they will reduce the number to some extent."

Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis, a Democrat, recently had to sign an affidavit because the name she uses on her driver's license doesn't match the one on voter rolls. She was allowed to cast a regular ballot in early voting for the election. Attorney General Greg Abbott, Davis' likely GOP opponent for governor next year, will also have to sign an affidavit to vote because the name on his driver's license doesn't match the one he uses on his voter registration.

Wright and his assistant, Norma Ritchson, told the Fort Worth newspaper they will return to the Department of Public Safety on Monday with a certified copy of his birth certificate to get a voter ID card.

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