Two years ago, the voter ID bill was the fire that burned down the Texas House. This time, it didn’t even set off the smoke detector.
With their numbers reduced from 74 in 2009 (only two away from a majority) to 49 in 2011 (not even enough to break quorum), all Democrats could do was delay, chide, and hopefully amend Senate Bill 14 into something less odious. Sixty-three amendments were offered up for debate on March 23, most by Latino and black representatives worried about the potential burdens on minorities due to the bill’s requirements for a photo ID to vote (and also to build a case that this bill was really about keeping potential Democrats away from the ballot box rather than the ostensible purpose of ballot security).
Of those amendments, only 15 passed, mostly tinkering with the bill to iron out potential trouble spots, such as targeting voter education campaigns specifically at minorities, allowing for IDs issued by Native American tribal organizations, and allowing voters to sign an affidavit in cases when an ID has been stolen or lost in a natural disaster. As the Democrats’ point man on the issue, Dallas Rep. Rafael Anchía admitted early in the session that the strategy now was just to minimize the harm.
Republicans viewed the amendments mostly as annoying posturing rather than correctives, and debate occasionally got testy. At one point, Anchía, frustrated with answers from House sponsor Patricia Harless, R-Spring, said the debate was “not a game.”
“Really, it’s not?” Harless shot back. “You want to go there?”
The bill passed 101-48, with only Democrat Joe Pickett of El Paso crossing party lines.
And thus, the GOP passed one of Gov. Rick Perry‘s major “emergency” initiatives, placing the issue among other such “crises” as the need to make women receive an ultrasound before having an abortion. They continued to repeat misleading claims such as those touting increased voter turnout after the passage of voter ID bills in other states (though such claims were based on the 2008 election, when enthusiasm over the Obama campaign drove numbers up).
Meanwhile, Democrats ruefully wondered why Perry and Republicans made the issue a priority. Noting that cases of voter impersonation – the only type of voter fraud this bill addresses – were almost nonexistent in Texas or nationwide, San Antonio Rep. Joaquin Castro said: “The real question today, though, is why have we been talking about voter identification fraud? What we should have been talking about before anything else this session is the budget. The budget will impact ordinary Texans and their children for years to come. While teachers, counselors, nurses, and health care providers are scared about losing their jobs, the conversation today was about voter identification fraud.”
This article appears in Dome Sweet Dome.