With proposed voter identification bills, they say their overriding concern is ballot security, and they say it’s a serious problem. They talk of illegal aliens voting and voter fraud undermining democracy.

In the last Legislature session, those pushing a voter ID bill were asked for evidence of a crisis. They couldn’t produce it.

[...]

Republicans promoting this say the state could provide photo IDs for voters without drivers’ licenses. Of course it could. But some people — namely the oldest and poorest Texans — would be unreachable, out of the loop and facing obstacles as they exercise their right to vote.

Texas has no compelling reason to pass a voter ID law. The legislation promoted is part of a national effort by the Republican Party. It knows that most of the voters who would be picked off through voter suppression measures like this would be sympathetic to Democrats.

Last year, minority Democrats blocked such a measure in the Texas Senate, where a rule requires two-thirds support to bring a bill to the floor.

At one point, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst attempted a vote on the bill when one Democratic senator was home with the flu and one was outside the chamber, leaving too few Democrats to block it. After a procedural stall, the two senators got back in time to avert the maneuver.

This had the taint of the Legislative imbroglio in 2003 when Republicans tried to sneak a congressional redistricting bill through the session. The Democrats stopped it by denying both houses a quorum. The rest of the session, and three subsequent special sessions, then became consumed by a purely partisan pursuit.

Texas lawmakers have much more important things to do, like financing highways, dealing with prison overcrowding and addressing problems in Texas’ school accountability system.

Kudos to the Waco Tribune-Herald on this editorial. Finally, a Texas daily newspaper sees the light.

It’s just common sense. But don’t try to tell that to some people. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court wisely ruled states can require photo identification before allowing someone to vote.
The justices voted 6-3 to uphold an Indiana law requiring proof of identity from voters. The decision also impacts about 25 states across the U.S. that have such laws. It is likely more states will pass the requirement now that the Constitutional issue has been settled.

For most of us, the idea of showing photo identification at the polls is nothing to get excited about. We value the right to vote and don’t want to see those who are not eligible cast ballots.

But there are some out there who view laws requiring voter identification and the court’s ruling as terrible impositions on society.

The main argument is poor and minority groups are less likely to have photo identification. Critics, especially Democrats, claim the laws disenfranchise millions.

We suspect their arguments are self-serving. Democrats benefit most at the polls from poor and minority voters.

First, whoever wrote that editorial needs to be fired by the good folks at Palmer Newspapers.

Second, the folks at the Gazette should, perhaps, pick up some of the more than half dozen studies and academic papers written about voter identification requirements in the past several years and read for themselves what kind of hardship Voter ID will cause.

And, if they somehow magically think that only minority Democrats and elderly Democrats will be effected, then they should listen to Republican consultant Royal Masset:

Anyone who says all legal voters under this bill can vote doesn’t know what they are talking about. And anyone who says that a lack of IDs won’t discriminate against otherwise legal minority voters is lying.

The Gazette also says: “It is not too much of a burden for every citizen to make the effort to obtain photo identification so they can vote.”

That is a prime example of exactly the type of arrogance that emanates from the editorial boards of “regional” daily newspapers who have somehow talked themselves into believing they are as learned as an above-average genius college professor and use that arrogance and sense of self-importance to spew forth garbage related to the supposed “conservative” values of their community. I seriously doubt the writer or writers of this editorial are in-touch with reality enough to know what a gallon of milk costs.

Evidently, the editorial board members of the Texarkana paper don’t know anything about what it is to be poor and working at McDolands or what it is to be elderly and on a fixed income–and not be able to afford to spend $50 to $100 to gather up birth certificates and other documents (and pay the hefty fees to get them) to be able to go out and obtain a photo ID.

The problem with people like whomever wrote this editorial is that they have no idea what it is like to be a disenfranchised minority, an elderly person, or poor in America. To them, getting an ID means going down to the DPS office every four years and renewing their driver’s license. They don’t have to worry where the $36 to pay for the ID will come from and, even if they had to pay for copies of birth certificates and the like, they probably wouldn’t be too concerned about paying for it and, chances are, could delegate the work to a secretary. They don’t have to worry about taking three hours off from a minimum wage job at Burger King and driving–on $3.45 a gallon gas–down to the courthouse to get a birth certificate only to be told they’ll have to drive over to another building and another building and another building to get that document, all in the name of being able to vote.

And, if the editorial author was born out of state, chances are he won’t have to worry about paying long distance charges to call the state he was born in to get his birth certificate, like a financially disadvantaged person might.

Of course, the person who wrote this editorial probably bought into the argument that many people do–that voter ID will prevent illegal immigrants, namely Mexicans, from voting. This could not be more of a lie. There are scant few–if any–instances of illegal immigrants from Mexico voting in Texas elections. The voter ID scam is simply another tool used by the Radical Republican Religious Right to make it look like our “way of life” is under attack. It is one of the most bogus arguments in their arsenal, and fits right up there with the old anti-desegregation argument about black boys being in classrooms with white girls. It is, in short, garbage.

We could go on and on, but you get the point. It’s time for Texans to speak up and let the pseudo-intellectual neo-conservatives sitting on their asses in padded chairs in the editorial offices of medium-sized daily papers across the state that they could not be more out of touch with their communities–or with reality.

It appears, now that the majority of those cases have been dismissed, that the AG has little or nothing to crow about:

Criminal charges against two politiqueras accused of tampering with ballots in the 2005 McAllen mayoral election were dropped Tuesday, the same day their case was scheduled to go to trial.

Hidalgo County Court-at-law Judge Jaime Palacios dismissed the case against Maria Helena Belasquez and Alicia Liscano Molina at the request of prosecutors who did not feel they had enough evidence to convince a jury of wrongdoing.

The decision comes five days after a similar case was dismissed against another politiquera, Gloria Barajas.

Most amusing about this situation is that the local District Attorney, left to prosecute the case in the wake of Abbott’s swoop-in-and-indict-them episode, has no problem throwing Abbott under the bus and telling the world what he thinks of the prosecutions:

“They were not our investigations, and I didn’t feel they would stand up before a jury,” Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra said.

[...]

In this case, the investigation was conducted by the Texas attorney general’s office but did not produce specific evidence linking the women to any crime, Guerra said.

[...]

“There’s a very high standard of proof required by jurors (in voter fraud cases),” he said. “You can’t just show evidence of irregularities. You have to show that the defendant was responsible.”

This, after Abbott held up these prosecutions as a shining star:

In 2006, Attorney General Greg Abbott held up the Hidalgo County voter fraud case as an example of a successful voter fraud investigation that produced results.

And the Texas AG’s office has spent how much on these prosecutions, 99 percent of which lead nowhere?

Among other things (I didn’t have a pen handy to write down the script), Dewhurst harps on the issue of illegal immigrants voting, and says that we need to make sure that only “Americans are voting.”

Since Dewhurst isn’t required to file any reports with the Texas Ethics Commission until later this year because he isn’t up for re-election this year, it is unknown how many markets the ad is running in or how much money he spent on it.

There is no doubt the purpose of Dewhurst’s ad is two-fold: he wants Voter ID to pass and he wants to raise his statewide name identification in anticipation of a run for governor in 2010.

Even so, Voter ID is a hell of an issue to pick–and the whole “illegal immigrants voting” thing is a terribly asinine thing to use in a Voter ID ad since that allegation has been debunked time and time again.

To boot, Dewhurst is running it in the midst of the most important Democratic primary race that Texas has seen in decades. That in and of itself is bothersome.

The problem is that the brief [.pdf], written by Abbott and his staff at the AG’s office is riddled with errors and outright lies.

You have to look no further than page four to find both the first major error and the first major lie of the brief:

Petitioners’ claim that voting fraud is largely chimerical is belied by the facts. For example, for decades, the State of Texas has grappled with the challenges of voting fraud. Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1946 Senate campaign is only the most infamous instance, but serious allegations of voter fraud have persisted, especially in South Texas, for more than a century.

Can you spot the error? That’s right! The “Ballot Box 13″ affair happened in 1948, not 1946. Evidently, the folks in the AG’s shop are too busy attending Federalist Society meetings to actually do any fact checking. Second, the first lie is about the “serious allegations of voter fraud,” that have persisted in Texas for more than a century.

For voter fraud allegations to “have persisted for more than a century,” that means–at minimum–there would have to have been documented cases of voter fraud going back to 1906 or earlier in Texas. I don’t believe there is much evidence at all about voter fraud until after the 1920s. This is simply a lie.

Abbot immediately goes on to toot his own horn and crow about voter fraud prosecutions his office has been involved in over the last five years [Note: Abbott's folks put some URLs in the text, which I've converted to hyperlinks]:

Over the past five years, the Texas Attorney General’s Office has vigorously enforced the voter-fraud laws, and has obtained numerous indictments, guilty pleas, and convictions. In one case, a city councilwoman was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for registering noncitizens to vote an then facilitating noncitizen voting by tampering with government documents. See Former Port Lavaca Councilwoman Briseno to Serve Five Years in Prison for Voter Fraud, June 25, 2007. [Note: The Free Republic link Abbott lists in the brief actually doesn't work] Another instance of voter fraud involved allegations that a woman escorted voters into polling sites and illegally marked ballots without their consent. See Robstown Woman Indicted and Jailed in Voter-Fraud Case, CALLER-TIMES, June 16, 2006. In yet another case, a man was indicted for double voting in the November 2006 general election. See Five Rio Grande Valley Residents Indicted for Voter Fraud Allegedly from 2006 Election Cycle, June 1, 2007. There was also a Refugio County Commissioner who pled guilty to the felony of tampering with government documents during a primary election, an East Texas former State Senator who was indicted for official oppression in trying to keep two candidates for a water board off the ballot, and a Beeville, Texas resident who pleaded guilty to casting ballots for her deceased mother. And many more instances of voting fraud relating to the illegal possession, handling, and transport of mail-in ballots have occurred. See, e.g., Refugio County Commissioner Pleads Guilty to Election Fraud Scheme, Oct. 9, 2007; Nueces County Indictment in Voter Fraud Investigation; Reeves County Woman Convicted for Voter Fraud, June 28, 2006; Commissioner Given Probation for Voting Fraud [again, a bad link].

What Abbott’s brief fails to note, however, is that none of these cases would have been prevented by voter ID laws and that, in fact, most of these cases have to do with Abbott’s overzealous prosecution of fairly new absentee ballot laws.

Let’s take a look at these case by case. First off, the Briseno case. This wasn’t a case of at-the-polls voter fraud. It was a case in which the defendant allegedly filled out voter registration cards for non-citizens. There is no way Voter ID would have prevented the necessity of that prosecution.

The second case mentioned, that of 65-year-old Maria Dora Flores, is yet another case in which Voter ID would not have helped. Under Texas law, you are allowed to have another voter help you cast or mark your ballot for various reasons. In this case, in the face of new voting machines, Flores simply went too far and marked voters’ ballots for them electronically. Again, this isn’t a case in which Voter ID would have helped. This is the case of a helper allegedly going to far, and is in no way related to Voter ID. Flores’ defense attorney says as much in the August 9, 2006 Corpus Christi Caller-Times [no link]:

Flores’ defense attorney Fred Jimenez said his client was not familiar with the voting process and made a mistake.

“Part of the problem was that on this past election there were some new machines put in place,” Jimenez said. “She would walk somebody to the machine, there was some confusion how to operate it, then she would operate it for them. That was the problem.”

This was a machine operations/helper case, not a case Voter ID would have prevented.

With regard to the Rio Grande Valley cases mentioned in the brief, again they relate to mail-in ballots and voter registration and are not something that Voter ID could have prevented:

According to the Attorney General’s investigation, false addresses and the names of nonexistent Starr County voters were used to illegally obtain voter registration cards. The addresses that appeared on those cards were not actual voters’ residences, but rather were vacant lots and condemned buildings.

Fraudulently obtained registration cards enabled the defendants to complete mail-in ballot applications, which instructed the Starr County elections office to send mail-in ballots to Hidalgo County addresses, presumably where the “voters” would be present during the March 2006 Starr County Democratic primary election. The four defendants picked up the ballots at the Hidalgo County addresses. The ballots were then filled out and mailed them to the Starr County elections office.

Again, this is an absentee voting case, not one that has anything really to do with Voter ID.

And, it’s pretty much the same with the rest of the cases. How about the Reeves County woman listed in Abbott’s brief?

Trinidad Villalobos, 60, of Pecos was found guilty by a Reeves County jury and sentenced to six months probation on each count of illegally possessing and transporting election ballots of several voters.

Once again, this has to do with mail-in ballots. This has nothing to do with Voter ID.

Abbott also fails to mention in any significant way that his office’s mail-in ballot prosecutions have come under significant fire and legal challenges and that this office’s unconstitutional enforcement of a 2003 mail-in ballot statute was actually enjoined for a time.

Even more troubling is that Abbott cites the testimony of partisan GOP hacks Harris County Tax Assessor/Collector employee Ed Johnson and Skipper Wallace, the State Legislative chairman of the Texas Republican County Chairman’s Association, before state House and Senate committees on Voter ID legislation during the 80th Texas Legislature.

Johnson, an employee of Harris County Tax Assessor/Collector Paul Bettencourt (one of the biggest Voter ID shrills in Texas), tells tales but offers no documentary evidence which would show his claims are anything but exaggerations:

Although Johnson claims this to be a widespread “fraud” perpetrated on the voting public, he doesn’t tell the House Committee on Elections who did it and offers not one name of one single voter who was allegedly victimized by it. All he does is claim it was a Democratic candidate in a Democratic Primary, thus painting Democrats as huge proponents of voter fraud. Jones, of course, was serving as an unofficial stand-in for his boss, Bettencourt. Bettencourt is such a polarizing figure his testimony would have caused an unwanted controversy–something the Harris County Tax Assessor doesn’t want casting a pall on his future bids for higher office.

Furthermore, this isn’t a situation that Voter ID could help because it is a situation of voter impersonation and filing of false registrations. If someone is going to file false registrations, they can also create false ID. This isn’t something Voter ID legislation can or would help in any way.

There are far more problems with the brief. Check out this paragraph:

Second, the requirement of a photo ID is becoming all but ubiquitous in the modern age. Photo IDs are required to drive a car; to board an airplane; to travel abroad; to enter many state and federal government buildings; to buy alcohol or cigarettes; to purchase firearms; to obtain a hunting or fishing license; to open a bank account; to purchase medical prescriptions; to obtain most health care or dental care; to rent a hotel room, a car, or a DVD from Blockbuster; and even to watch an R-rated movie at the cinema.

We know that much of this is incorrect. For example, photo ID is not really required to board an airplane. Not only is it not a federal law, there are FAA directives to instruct airport personnel on how to fly passengers without photo ID.

As far as State ID being required to enter many state buildings, they are not required at the Texas Capitol.

They aren’t required to buy alcohol or cigarettes unless the clerk deems you to be too young to purchase them.

As for a Texas fishing license, a photo id isn’t required either. The Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife specifies that an applicant may produce three different forms of identification–but one doesn’t have to be a driver’s license–in order to obtain a fishing license.

And, anyone who has ever opened a bank account online knows that a driver’s license or state ID isn’t required to complete this transaction, either.

As for purchasing medical prescriptions, no Texas law requires a person to submit ID when picking up their prescriptions, and I’m aware of no instance in my life where I’ve been asked for ID to secure my own prescriptions–or those for anyone in my family, for that matter. If there is such a law on the books, then darned near every pharmacy in Texas could be shut down tomorrow.

As for obtaining health care, federal law requires an emergency room to treat you regardless–and while ID may be sought, it certainly isn’t required.

As for renting a DVD from Blockbuster, a photo ID isn’t required, either. All that’s required is your Blockbuster card. And, depending upon the location, most Blockbusters simply require “two forms of ID,” and prefer that one be a credit card. In fact, a call to my neighborhood Blockbuster to inquire about this resulted in being told that a photo ID isn’t required–a utility bill will suffice.

As for that R-rated movie claim, again, that’s merely if you don’t look old enough.

Tags: Crawford+v+Marion+County+Election+Board, Greg+Abbott, Voter+ID, Paul+Bettencourt

Technorati Tags Crawford v Marion County Election Board, Greg Abbott, Paul Bettencourt, Texas, Voter ID

Across Texas, other counties say they are facing similar difficulties as they adjust to the new Texas Election Administration Management system, a Web-based program the state launched in January to centralize voter registration information.

The system collects basic information about voters — information that must be constantly updated as people reach voting age, die, or change names or addresses. But elections administrators say the system is too slow, and they’re hoping the state fixes the glitches as the May elections approach.

Employees in many counties complain that the system is cumbersome to use and won’t let them correct errors in a new voter file without starting over — and sometimes they have trouble logging on to the system.

They’ve noticed that the system is bogged down the most during business hours. Employees in Tarrant County, the third most populous county in the state, have come to work as early as 5:30 a.m., stayed late or worked weekends to update voter registrations, and the county hired extra temporary workers to help with the backlog, Tarrant County Elections Administrator Steve Raborn said.

The state is aware of the system’s problems and is working to solve them before May elections, said Scott Haywood, spokesman for the Texas secretary of state’s office.

This is very troubling. For one thing, it seems as though it is easier to leave the errors be than correct them, which I suspect some less-than-dilligent employees may be tempted to do. This could ultimately cause a lot of problems when folks show up to vote and find they are in the system in a different manner than they should be.
Of course, SOS Roger Williams tries to downplay things:

“TEAM is not nearly where we want it to be,” Secretary of State Roger Williams said Thursday. But he said he thinks it will eventually set the standard for state voter registration databases.

Evidently, this is just another thing that happens when you make a used car dealer Secretary of State instead of pick someone who might actually be qualified to hold the post. Williams should have already had the bugs fixed with this system.

Republican Reps. Leo Berman (Chair), Dwayne Bohac (vice chair), Kirk England and Charlie Howard cast the votes to send the bills to the floor while Reps. Lon Burnam, Joe Farias and Rafael Anchia—all Democrats—voted to consign the bills exactly where they blog: to the dustbin of the 80th Legislature.

The bills voted out were HB 218 by Betty Brown (R-Terrell) and HB 626 by Rep. Phil King.

Both bills are the biggest disasters that Berman’s committee has voted to the floor all year. We’ve previously told you why 218 is a big mess and why 626 is a huge disaster as well.

Of course, when you have right-wing anti-immigrant, anti-minority Leo Berman chairing the committee, what do you expect. The assignments made to this committee by Speaker Craddick were done in such a way that there is no chance of stopping bad legislation before it gets to the House floor. Of all the Committee assignments Craddick made, these were the biggest disaster of all, save the Democrats.

That Kirk England, the alleged “swing vote” on the issue claimed to be “taking notice” of all the calls his office got on this issue was also, evidently, a farce. He took no more notice than most people do when they pass a penny in the gutter.

Tags: Leo+Berman, Voter+ID, Kirk+England, Rafael+Anchia, Joe+Farias, Dwayne+Bohac, Charlie+Howard