The House Committee on Elections is taking up the voter ID issue for a second consecutive day. Yesterday was invited expert testimony; today is public testimony.
I’ll be in and out of the hearing; I’m not staying for every second of it, because frankly, if anything is said on this issue that hasn’t been said a million times before, I’ll drop over dead from shock. That said, I’ll post the occasional Twitter update.
The real story is the turnout. Despite being moved out of the Capitol and into a fairly large hearing room next door in the John H. Reagan Building, they are using an overflow room to seat all the people who have come to speak.
Part of that turnout story is the number of people wearing red, which has been adopted as the color of the voter ID movement – and not coincidentally, the color that has come to identify the Republican Party over the past decade.
Troy Fraser’s SB 362 is likely to be the subject of almost all the testimony and debate, although there are six other bills before the committee related to identification provided by voters, “voter integrity,” and related topics.
(The hearing may be viewed online at http://www.house.state.tx.us/media/welcome.php, LiveStream 2)
This article appears in April 3 • 2009.