After Marathon All Nighter, Voter ID Bill Passes Senate On Party Lines

After a marathon all-night session that lasted more than 24 hours, the Texas Senate, convened as the Committee of the Whole, passed Senate Bill 362 requiring that voters present a photo identification to vote on a party line 19-12 vote shortly after 9 a.m. this morning.

The vote had one more Republican “yea” than usual as Lt. Governor David Dewhurst is allowed to vote then the body is convened as the Committee of the Whole under Senate Rules.

The bill is all but assured a similar party-line vote when it comes up before the full Senate as early as Monday for final passage. The bill will then go to the Texas House, where it will likely be assigned to the House Elections Committee.

Yesterday’s proceedings were not without significant fireworks, many of which CapitolAnnex brought you live.

The day began yesterday with Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott declining to testify at the request of Democratic Senators. First, Abbott said that President Pro Tem Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock) told him not to testify. By this morning, he changed that story and was saying he couldn’t testify because it would result in a conflict of interest once the case over the law went to the courts or the U.S. Department of Justice.

State Rep. Chuck Hopson (D-Jacksonville) is using that opportunity to remind people that Abbott needs to be taken off the Legislative Redistricting Board, in fact:

Today, Representative Mark Homer (D-Paris) and other state lawmakers looked on as the Senate resolved into a Committee of the Whole to hear the so-called voter ID bill. Attorney General Greg Abbott was asked to testify on the bill, although he declined to testify citing a conflict of interest.

During a heated debate in the Senate, President Pro Tem Robert Duncan (R – Lubbock) argued that Abbott should not testify saying, “Litigation of some type is imminent.”

Abbott spokesman Jerry Strickland said, “Because the Office of the Attorney General would represent the State of Texas in legal matters that could arise from this legislation, the Chair decided it would be inappropriate for the Attorney General to be present as a witness in a Legislative debate.”

Earlier this session, Representative Homer filed House Joint Resolution 53 which proposes a constitutional amendment to replace the Attorney General on the Legislative Redistricting Board (LRB) with the Commissioner of Agriculture. “Senator Duncan and General Abbott have made a clear and compelling argument for HJR 53,” Homer said. “If General Abbott can not offer the Senate testimony regarding the results of a multi-million dollar investigation conducted by his office without a conflict of interest, he can not possibly vote on the LRB. His participation in the redistricting process would create an even more apparent conflict with even more imminent litigation coming out of it.” As currently structured, the Legislative Redistricting Board is composed of five members:  The Lieutenant Governor, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Attorney General, the  Comptroller of Public Accounts and the Commissioner of the General Land Office.

“If the LRB is called upon to act, there is a 100% certainty that litigation will follow. Through his actions today, General Abbott has certainly clouded the AG’s participation in LRB proceedings.” Homer continued by saying, “If the Attorney General is not replaced on the LRB and follows the precedent that he and Senator Duncan set today, he would be required to recuse himself. Because of this, I hope I can count on Senator Duncan and General Abbott to support this apparently much needed correction.”

That aside, yesterday got off to a slow start with several hours of debate over the bill–during most of which its author, State Sen. Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay) punted–refering nearly every question to the Texas Secretary of State and generally acting as if he hadn’t a clue what was actually in the bill bearing his name.

Of course, much of that debate–particularly the debate over the “tagging” issue–where Senators had tagged the bill for a 48 hour hold and Duncan ultimately ruled that the Senate Rules on tagging did not apply to the Committee of the Whole, and even a vote to attempt to overturn that ruling–was to preserve a record for appeals courts and the Department of Justice for the challenge the law will see about 15 seconds after the ink dries on the governor’s signature–if indeed it does pass.

Of course, partisans like State Sen. Dan Patrick (D-Houston) couldn’t repeatedly resist Twittering that Democrats were somehow doing a disservice to Texas and all of the witnesses in the gallery.

When invited testimony finally got underway, the first witness was none other than Hans Von Spavosky, one of the most controversial voter identification shills in the nation, and one of the most controversial nominees to the Federal Election Commission in its history.

Democrats spent about two hours ripping Von Spavosky to shreds and pointing out how idiotic some of his arguments were, as well as pointing out some other stupid arguments he’s made before.

Here are some highlights:

In the voter ID bill hearing, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Hans Von Spakovsky testified that voter ID requirements are necessary, and backed this up by mentioning reports of illegal aliens registering and voting in Bexar County. But El Paso Sen. Eliot Shapleigh asked him if he knows the end results of these reports, whether they ended in prosecutions or convictions. Von Spakovsky admitted he doesn’t know. (The Brennan Center report mentioned in a previous post noted that allegations of voter fraud make sensational headlines, but usually turn out to be “smoke and no fire.”)

Now Shapleigh is ripping into von Spakovsky’s credibility as a witness. He quoted a 2007 letter from von Spakovsky’s former Department of Justice colleagues as they urged the Senate not to appoint him to the Federal Election Commission (he was a George W. Bush recess appointment who eventually withdrew from the confirmation process; he played a role in the infamous 2003 Texas re-redistricting). The letter reads in part:

[H]e was the point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division’s mandate to protect voting rights. … Over the past five years, the priorities of the Voting Section have shifted from its historic mission to enforce the nation’s civil rights laws without regard to politics, to pursuing an agenda which placed the highest priority on the partisan political goals of the political appointees who supervised the Section.

“Was that about you?” asked Shapleigh.

“That letter is full of lies,” Spakovsky replied. “I wrote a response pointing out the many inaccuracies and misrepresentations.”

“So it is about you?” Shapleigh pressed on.

“It was written by people now working for very liberal advocacy groups,” Spakovsky said.

Shapleigh repeated the question several more times, and Spakovsky never did precisely say “yes.”

UPDATE: Sen. Rodney Ellis just got in a jab at von Spakovsky that made the media table laugh.

“Is this your first time in Texas?” a friendly Ellis asked to open his questioning. Of course, Ellis well knew the answer, given von Spakovsky’s history with Texas’ controversial mid-decade redistricting, and von Spakovsky reminded him of that.

“Oh, well welcome back,” Ellis said.

From Elise Hu:

6:48pm: I’m back after a break to find some food and consume it. Some tough questioning for the first expert witness, Hans Van Spakovsky. Shapleigh challenged him on “real” cases of voter fraud. No cases of voter impersonation fraud (which photo ID would address) has been prosecuted in Texas.

5:51pm: “It’s hard to prosecute something when you don’t have the tools to detect it,” von Spakovsky of The Heritage Foundation says. He lays out several examples of fraud from around the country.

5:47pm: Nearly eight hours after Senators got onto the floor, invited testimony begins. First person to testify is in favor of the bill, Hans von Spakovsky. As Selby points out, he was denied a confirmation vote by U.S. Senate years ago http://budurl.com/mhmx

As much as Von Spakovsky was a lightening rod witness for Democrats, J. Gerry Hebert of the Campaign Legal Center brought out the most wingnutty of Republican questions and a 10-minute “Hello, I want to be your next United States Senator! Watch me try to rip this lawyer a new asshole over something that didn’t happen the way I am going to make it sound like it did,” bit of theatrics from State Sen. Florence Shapiro (R-Plano).

This was, of course, after Hebert told Republicans exactly what they were doing with the voter ID bill:

“This hearing is a sham, just like your redistricting hearings were a sham,” Hebert said.

Hebert said the voter identification legislation is the “latest in a long series of attacks on minority voters in this state” and is part of a “long dark history of keeping people on the reservation through voting.”

Hebert, who works out of the nation’s capital, said there is no widespread “or even occasional” cases of voter impersonation in Texas.

He called the bill “raw partisan politics” by Republicans “to harm voters in their own state.” Hebert said the bill will cost taxpayers millions of dollars to implement.

Shapiro and other Senators tried to discredit Hebert by bringing two sad instances from re-redistricting back in 2003. State Sen. Tommy Williams (R-The Woodlands) grilled Hebert over whether Congressman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Dallas) once called Hebert a liar during the redistricting debacle and said she didn’t trust him. Hebert responded that he believed Johnson directed that at former Congressman Martin Frost. Hager pushed the point, so we’ve decided to fact check him. Hebert was right, as we expected:

Claiming not to trust Rep. Martin Frost, who heads the delegation’s opposition to the GOP-drawn map, two African-American Texas lawmakers have retained their own lawyer to represent them in court challenges.

“I don’t have any basic trust with [Frost] when it comes to drawing maps,” said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas). She and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) have hired civil-rights lawyer Anthony Griffin to safeguard their interests. Attorney Gerry Hebert represents Frost and most other Texas Democrats.

Also adding to the split are the interests of at least two white Democratic incumbents — Reps. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) and Chris Bell (D-Texas) — who are eyeing seats in new districts crafted for minority representation.

Hebert was also accused of stealing maps from the Republicans during the 2003 redistricting debacle, which Shapiro brought up. Again, it was beyond a tempest in a teapot.

Republicans also paraded in witnesses from Georgia and Indiana to talk about how well voter ID worked in their states. Of course, it was pretty amusing to hear these witnesses asked how diverse the populations in their states were compared to Texas and them be unable to say so. It was particularly amusing when witnesses from Georgia and Indiana reported five and seven percent Hispanic populations. State Sen. Carlos Uresti (D-San Antonio) reminded the witnesses from Georgia that his Senate District was larger than the entire state of Georgia.