Voter ID Again ?

Back in the 2009 session of the Texas legislation the Republicans tried to pass a bill they called "Voter ID". Attorney General Greg Abbott told Texans "voter fraud is occurring on a large scale when viewed statewide, and consequently, our state elections are significantly impacted." Of course, that was just another Republican lie. It's now nearly two years later and even though the Republicans control all statewide offices they have yet to show any evidence of widespread (or even moderate) voter fraud.

Current Texas law states that all a voter has to do is show a valid voter registration card to vote (which is then stamped to prevent double voting). This system has worked perfectly well for many years. But in 2009 the state senate passed a Voter ID Bill that would require Texas voters to show a picture ID in addition to a voter registration card (or two other forms of valid ID without a picture).

The bill got hung up in the Texas House where Democrats and Republicans are pretty evenly divided. Democrats knew this was not really a voter fraud bill, but just a Republican effort to suppress voters who are likely to vote for Democrats -- like poor, elderly and disabled people (who are unlikely to have the necessary extra ID even though they have valid voter registration cards). The bill died in the House as the time limit for the legislative session ran out.

Now the Republicans are saying they plan to revive the Voter ID Bill in the 2011 legislative session. This past weekend the Republicans put the desire for a Voter ID Bill in their state party platform. Now Rep. Todd Smith (Euless) and Rep. Debbie Riddle (Tomball) are both saying they will re-introduce the bill in the next legislative session (the Texas legislature only meets every two years).

According to Jay Dyer, who works for the Attorney General's Office, there are a whole 12 cases that they are trying to get indictments in, and since 2002 about 35 cases have been resolved (although most of them were resolved by dismissing the cases). Frankly, that doesn't sound like widespread abuse to me, especially since 8,077,795 people voted in the 2008 election. Even if all 35 of the cases resolved since 2002 showed voter fraud (and most didn't) that would make the incidence of fraud about 0.0000043%.

Obviously the Republican bar for "fraud is occurring on a large scale" is extremely low. The truth is that voter fraud in Texas is very rare. But then the Voter ID Bill has never been about voter fraud but voter suppression. The Republicans know their time is running out with fair and free elections. Texas already has more minority people than whites and that will soon start to show in state elections. Their only hope to retain power in the future is to suppress as much of the Democratic vote as they can, and they know it.

The whole Voter ID Bill scam is just another Republican dirty trick based wholly on Republican lies.