Voter ID rubberstamped by Republicans

No surprise ...

Exhausted after an all-night debate but assured of victory, Republicans (yesterday) rammed a bill requiring Texas voters to present identification papers through the first Senate vote on the bitterly partisan issue.

After emotional pleas to stop the bill, and expert and public testimony that begin Tuesday and didn’t end until shortly before 9 a.m.today, the so-called “Voter ID” bill passed a special Senate panel 20-12.

The “committee of the whole” includes all 31 senators and Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. While the bill must still get a final Senate vote, today’s action all but assures it will pass and be sent to the House as early as Monday.

The bill is being driven by Senate Republicans over fierce opposition from Democrats, who promised a legal challenge if the bill ultimately passes.

They don't want poor people or the elderly to vote, to say noyhing of all those people with extra pigmentation, because they lose when that happens. So, like redistricting, it's going to the courts. But not before the Texas House gets a crack at it:

Now that hotly contested legislation to require Texans to produce more identification to vote has won tentative approval in the state Senate, the battle will soon shift to the House, where prospects are less certain.

Rep. Todd Smith, R-Euless, who will play a lead role in shaping a voter ID bill in the Legislature, says he will oppose attempts to duplicate a strict photo-ID law now on the books in Indiana and will fight vigorously for safeguards against voter discrimination.

"I don’t think there is any chance we’ll be proposing the Indiana law on the House floor," Smith, chairman of the House Elections Committee, said Wednesday after the Senate advanced its version of a voter-ID bill after an all-night hearing.

The Indiana statute, considered the strictest law of its kind in the country, requires voters to present a photo identification before voting. The Senate measure also calls for photo identification but would allow voters without a photo ID to present two forms of alternate identification, such as a birth certificate, library card and hunting or fishing licenses. It also allows provisional ballots for registered voters without the required identification.

The SCOTUS, the above article notes, upheld the Indiana law on appeal. So eventually -- unless legal action delays its implementation -- the GOP will get its voter suppression, and Texas gets a few more years of one-party rule.

Update: Eye on Williamson, linking to Burka, leads me to believe that Voter ID will go through the DOJ, rather than the court system, due to (what else?) Texas' long sordid history of disenfranchising minority voters.

Voter ID: solving a non-existent problem *update*

Floor Pass:

The main argument put forth will be that the only problem Republicans are solving by requiring photo identification in order to vote is the problem of citizens casting legitimate votes for Democrats. The people least likely to have photo identification—such as the elderly, the disabled and the poor—all belong to groups that vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

“The burden should be on the state to prove that there’s a real problem, that there’s no other way to deal with this problem, and that the state will not be precluding people from voting before it enacts this sort of legislation,” said Sen. Kirk Watson.

The only type of voter fraud that Voter ID prevents is voter impersonation. The Democrats will point out, as they did today, that one is more likely to be struck by lightning or see a UFO than they are to come across an act of voter impersonation.

Campaign Legal Center executive director Gerald Hebert said, “There is no widespread, organized, or even significant voter impersonation in Texas. Not a single case has been prosecuted in over 20 years. And I know, because I brought a lawsuit against [Texas Attorney General] Greg Abbott to prove that fact and he acknowledged that it was so.”

Greg Abbott sent agents from the OAG to peek in a little old lady's bathroom window, and he STILL couldn't find any evidence of voter fraud.

Many, many more Texans will be denied their vote because a volunteer poll worker would have the unquestioned authority to decide whether or not someone looks "correct". Think this an exaggeration? Well, it used to be the case during both the Jm Crow period, as well as the time prior to the suffrage movement in the US:

In Texas this week, debate opens on a proposal that places extraordinary identification requirements on citizens who wish to vote. The proposed law's ambiguous language appears to grant part-time, amateur polling place officials the absolute power to accept or reject a would-be voter based solely on that citizen's appearance or other subjective judgments. For the first time since women and blacks were granted the vote, appearance alone may disqualify a would-be voter.

But since this is the greatest single issue facing Texas today, the Republicans are going to make certain it passes.

Update:

"This hearing is a sham, just like your redistricting hearings were a sham," (civil rights attorney Gerald) Hebert said.

Hebert said the voter identification legislation is the "latest in a long series of attacks on minority voters in this state" and is part of a "long dark history of keeping people on the reservation through voting."

Hebert, who works out of the nation's capital, said there is no widespread "or even occasional" cases of voter impersonation in Texas.

He called the bill "raw partisan politics" by Republicans "to harm voters in their own state." Hebert said the bill will cost taxpayers millions of dollars to implement.

Follow the live action here and here. And more summary assembled at Off the Kuff. Still more play-by-play from Patricia Kilday Hart at Burkablog.