The Picture ID bill, infamously carried by Mary Denny last session, has been delayed for a trip back to committee to clean up points of order. Perhaps we should expand our Ten Worst list to include staff; they can’t seem to get a bill through the process without mistakes. Or maybe Craddick should appoint the Bill Clean-Up committee and put Talton, Dunnam, and Thompson on it.
Back to substance. This is a bad old bill. It was part of a nationwide effort, spearheaded by Karl Rove, to suppress the turnout of racial minorities (who are less likely to have picture IDs than more affluent voters). It passed the House two years ago only to run afoul of the two-thirds rule in the Senate and may do both again. Republicans have told me that this is the most-polled bill of the session. What warped priorities the leadership has.
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission reported in December 06 (see page 10) that in its wide reaching intervies of election officials and scholars, “Many asserted that the impersonation of voters is probably the least frequent type of fraud because it is the most likely to be discovered, there are stiff penalties associated with this type of fraud, and it is an insufficient means of influencing an election.
I’m not being partisan about this. I think the Democrats’ claims that Bush stole the 04 election with voter fraud are unjustified. I hope that this session produces a bill calling for a paper trail for all voting machines.
From Greg Abbott on down, Rs should be ashamed of themselves for pursuing this anti-small-d-democratic bill.
