Voter ID Debate Offers Many Fireworks

More than 12 hours of invited testimony and debate over SB 362 by members of the Texas Senate took a short break at 2:25 this morning after a day, evening, and early morning with fireworks, rude questioning of witnesses by Republicans, and a Harris County Tax Office official talking about all sorts of “election fraud” cases–not a single one of which actually had anything to do with voting, but rather with alleged voter registration fraud.

One witness, Gerry Hebert of the Campaign Legal Center and one of the nation’s foremost experts on the Voting Rights Act and voter identification, offered significant testimony and a strong rebuke of Republicans in the chamber for even proffering the bill. State Sen. Florence Shapiro (R-Plano) used the opportunity to promote her 2010 campaign by spewing forth a number of questions about an asinine situation from the 2003 mid-decade redistricting debacle in which Republicans stupidly accused Hebert of stealing a map from a committee room.

State Sen. Tommy Williams (R-The Woodlands) lambasted Dr. Chandler Davidson, one of the nation’s foremost scholars on voting rights, alleging that Davidson hadn’t read the legislation and that Davidson quoted a newspaper article relating to $1.4 million the Texas Attorney General’s Office spent on “voter fraud” prosecutions because Williams claimed the newspaper article was wrong.

We’ll update you more as the morning goes on, but wanted to get those two tidbits on the blog.