Chamber Of Ironies: Old Poll Tax, Meet New Poll Tax

Must we point out how ironic it is that the Texas House of Representatives ratified (at long last) the 24th Amendment abolishing the poll tax on the same day it was set to consider House Bill 626, which is essentially a brand new poll tax?

Hopefully, you were savvy enough to catch that. If not, here’s a bit of a recap.

Today, the Texas House finally ratified the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax in the form of a post-ratification via HJR 39 authored by Rep. Alma Allen and a host of other Democrats and Republicans (note the irony of the fact that Rep. Betty Brown, author of the voter disenfranchising HB 218, was a co-sponsor).

And, today, the Texas House was supposed to consider HB 626, which was postponed last week (and is tantamount to another, more modern, poll tax). Rumors flew throughout the capitol today that there was some sort of a compromise on the bill, which would have required anyone desiring to register to vote to present proof of citizenship in the form of a birth certificate, naturalization papers, or a passport.

Rep. Phil King (R-Weatherford) was all set this morning with a floor substitute which was essentially no better than the original bill. It would have shifted the burden of verifying citizenship to the Secretary of State’s Office (because used car dealers and political hacks are, you know, really good at that sort of thing). Instead of requiring the actual documents be presented when registering, it would have required that registrants note their city and county of birth or place and date of naturalization on their voter registration card.

While that sounds better, it’s not, because the verification process would take forever and be subject to many flaws and human error (plus, you still have many older people and older minorities whose births couldn’t be verified).

Ultimately, the bill was postponed again.

The rumor I’m hearing now is that the bill may be dead because of, irony of ironies, the floor substitute would cost several million dollars or more to implement in terms of new staff for the SOS, and possibly some sort of new computer system or database that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars that aren’t anywhere in the budget because Republicans gave it all away in tax cuts.

Is HB 626 dead? Who knows.

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