The Texas Observer

Bill Clinton’s spending the weekend in Austin for the second Clinton Global Initiative University conference. Check the boots!

He gave a speech yesterday, a press conference this morning, will speak again this evening, and will pitch in tomorrow on a community service project at Rosewood Park & Community Center in East Austin.

A quick summary of today’s 45-minute press conference at the Austin Convention Center:

• - The biggest problem in the short term is the global economic crisis; the biggest long-term problem is climate change. It would be a shame if we destroyed each other with WMD before we have a chance to save the planet.

• - Energy efficiency rocks and so do green roofs. Mexico, Indonesia, China, India and other influential developing nations won’t get on the save-the-planet bandwagon unless we offer cost-effective strategies that pay back pretty quickly.

• - A major problem with international development work is that organizations give people stuff they can’t use. More and more, we will see non-profits and foundations influencing policy. Idealistic students shouldn’t try to take on projects that couldn’t possibly get funding.

• - Lance Armstrong is a good friend, and Hillary’s speech yesterday went well.

If you haven’t done it yet, click on over to Floor Pass, our new page for everything from Planet Legislature. We’re blogging updates from the floor, keeping up on bad bills, profiling Capitol people – all while posting hard-hitting commentary on the whole spectacle as we endeavor to keep our legislators honest during the session.

We’ll still be posting here, whenever we cover something other than the Lege, so don’t get rid of your bookmarks. Just add another one.

“There’s no empirical evidence that there’s fraud, but there is empirical evidence that voter suppression works,” said Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, during our conversation last week about Texas’ Voter ID bill.

Is that so?

The Observer did a little digging around to find out if Coleman was singing his party’s tune or a truer melody – and we started close to home.

From 2006 to 2008, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott spent $1.4 million establishing a special unit and conducting a showy search-and-destroy mission to put an end to the “epidemic of voter fraud.”

At the end of his two-year investigation, however, voter fraud looked more like a rare genetic disorder affecting one in 3 million than an epidemic.

In their May 18, 2008, analysis, the Dallas Morning News reported that Abbott’s efforts produced only 26 prosecuted cases. In 18 of the cases, the voters were eligible and the votes were legitimate, but the people collecting and mailing their ballots were prosecuted. The remaining eight cases were true voter-fraud cases, where individuals voted twice or where the deceased or non-existent cast votes.

Still, voter fraud may not be the kind of phenomenon best measured in prosecuted cases. Another way to get at voter fraud is to find out how many non-citizens are called for jury duty and found ineligible because of their citizenship status. (Courts generally use voter registration rolls to pull names for jury duty.)

For a 2005 report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office surveyed 14 U.S. district court administrators to find out how many of the registered voters they tried to select as jurors claimed to be non-citizens. Their responses were mostly estimates, and their estimates indicated low numbers of non-citizens registered to vote.

Of the 14 court administrators:

- 6 had no data

- 4 said no one had been disqualified from serving on a jury because they were non-citizens

- 1 estimated 1 to 3 percent were non-citizens

- 1 estimated less than 1 percent were non-citizens

- 1 estimated 0.15 percent were non-citizens

- 1 estimated 0.01 percent were non-citizens

The estimates above are still not an ideal indicator of voter fraud, however, because though some district courts may come across non-citizens on voter registration lists, it doesn’t mean those individuals have actually attempted to vote. For the same GAO report, Federal Elections Commission officials said some non-citizens may register to vote to meet employment eligibility requirements. (A voter registration card is one of the documents accepted on form I-9 to prove the ability to work in the U.S.)

Our conclusion on voter fraud? Murky. Voter fraud is hard to measure because . . . you know, it’s fraud.

Even conservatives agree it’s slippery. In a legal memorandum for the Heritage Foundation, Hans A. von Spakovsky wrote, “There is no reliable method to determine the number of non-citizens registered or actually voting because most laws to ensure that only citizens vote are ignored, are inadequate, or are systematically undermined by government officials.”

Though Spakovsky was arguing that non-citizen voting is a threat to democracy, his paper does support Sen. Coleman’s assertion that there is no empirical evidence of the existence of voter fraud. And certainly no evidence of an “epidemic.”

Stay tuned for Empirical Evidence, Part II: Voter Suppression.

The passage of the two-thirds resolution Wednesday in the Texas Senate means that a Voter ID bill will almost certainly pass in the Senate. To become a law, of course, it will also have to pass in the House.

Here’s some early speculation on how it might go down.

WHAT HAPPENED LAST SESSION:

Make-up of the House in the 80th Legislature:

Republicans - 81

Democrats - 69

The Voter ID bill introduced in the House last session (HB 218) passed by a vote of 76 to 69.

YEAS: All 76 representatives voting for the bill were Republican.

NAYS: Among the 69 who voted against the bill, 67 were Democrats. The two Republicans were Rep. Tommy Merritt, R-Longview and Rep. Delwin Jones, R-Lubbock.

WHAT COULD HAPPEN THIS SESSION:

Make-up of the House in the 81st Legislature:

Republicans – 76

Democrats – 74

Assumptions:

- All Democrats will vote no.

- All Republicans except 2 will vote yes.

- House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, will not vote.

If Republicans Merritt and Jones vote against the bill as they did last session, the vote could be 76 against the bill and 73 for it. So, will Merritt and Jones vote with their party or with their consciences?

Contacted by the Observer, Merritt would not say one way or the other, but did say he would concentrate on the issues important to his district, as well as Real ID.

“In my district, I don’t have a Voter ID issue,” Merritt said. “For me, Real ID is way more important along with the budget and education the other [issues]. If we do the Real ID then the Voter ID will be solved.”

(The Real ID Act of 2005, passed by the U.S. Congress and housed at the Department of Homeland Security, requires state-issued licenses and ID cards to meet minimum standards, including additional security features and a more stringent application process to establish a card-holder’s identity and immigration status. The rule should have gone into effect May 31, 2008, but states could apply for a deadline extension, as Texas did. Texas does not yet issue Real ID-compliant identification cards because of the cost of program implementation.)

Jones would not comment on the two-thirds resolution or the possibility of Voter ID coming up again in the House, but spoke briefly about his “nay” vote during the last session.

“I figured [the bill] was not real practical,” Jones said. “You’re putting more restrictions on the people who have to work at the election polls.”

And will any Democrats cross over to the other side and vote for the Voter ID bill?

Unlikely. As Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, put it, “It’s about Republican primary politics. Fighting against illegal immigration, fighting against voter fraud, these are things that resonate with their base.”

Coleman echoed other Democrats’ opposition, saying that a Voter ID bill could reduce the number of Democratic votes in an election.

“This also an issue to affect the outcome of elections by limiting people who actually have the right to vote,” he said. “Voter suppression has always worked for Republicans. There’s no empirical evidence that there’s fraud, but there is empirical evidence that voter suppression works.”

The Texas senators sharpened their claws before they came to work on Day Two to debate an amendment to the Senate rules concerning special suspensions of the “two-thirds rule.”

SR 14, introduced by Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands, would allow a suspension of the two-thirds rule for “a bill or resolution relating to voter identification requirements.” The rule requires the support of two-thirds of the Senate to bring a bill to the floor, allowing the legislators build a consensus before the legislation is debated publicly. SR 14 would permit a Voter ID bill — which Democrats consider an attempt at voter suppression — to reach the floor with the support of only a simple majority.

Williams argued that suspending the two-thirds rule would allow the Senate to publicly debate legislation that would not otherwise be heard.

“There are important issues that our citizens expect us to take action on,” Williams said.

The Democrats argued that allowing the two-thirds rule to be suspended would make it easier for “special order” issues, described during the debate as intractable or partisan, to be passed during the session.

Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, saw it this way: “The new tradition here is as long as somebody has 16 [votes] and can’t get two-thirds, they’ll say this is a partisan issue.”

The debate ultimately degenerated into a discussion of Voter ID, a hotly contested issue during the last legislative session — and a strange conversational direction for a Senate that has not yet adopted its rules.

The Democrats aired their frustration by introducing amendment after amendment, each raising an issue the senators considered to be more important than Voter ID, and therefore more worthy of a suspension of the rules. One by one, Williams successfully moved to table them.

The Senate went into recess at 3:50 p.m. so Lt. Governor David Dewhurst could investigate a point of order raised by Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso.

Williams’ Voter ID resolution seems likely to pass, if Shapleigh is proven incorrect on his point of order. The senators have been voting to table the Democrats’ amendments along party lines, 19 GOP ayes (to table) and 12 Democratic nays (to adopt).

The opening day ceremony in the Texas House of Representatives went smoothly, nearly without a hitch, except for the Texas pledge of allegiance.

Don’t you know it?*

Well, even if you didn’t, you could have read it in several-inch-high capital letters on the leader board above the podium. That didn’t keep the assembled representatives, their families, members of the media and the rest of the audience from collectively screwing it up. (Part of the confusion might be explained by the addition, just last session, of “under God.”)

Otherwise, the House put on an impressive show. As Governor Rick Perry put it, “The first day of a session is a beautiful thing; it’s like a blank canvas,” he said. “Here’s hoping we create a masterpiece together.”

Rep. Diana Maldonado, D-Round Rock, a freshman legislator attending her first opening day ceremony at the Texas House, described it as “a noble and stately ceremony.”

She said she had attended a Kansas opening day ceremony, because her cousin is a state representative there, but that the Texas ceremony was “grander.”

Texas 1, Kansas 0.

*For future reference: “Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible.”

The main event on the floor of the Texas House this afternoon was the swearing-in ceremony for the new speaker, San Antonio Republican Joe Straus.Six representatives gave nominating speeches, seasoning their remarks with plenty of Texas flavor. More than one representative noted that Straus grew up “in the shadow of the Alamo,” and Rep. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, used an extended Alamo metaphor to discuss Straus’ qualifications as speaker.Rep. Jim McReynolds, D-Lufkin, used a livestock metaphor: “We in this chamber want a workhorse, not a show pony.”While everyone spoke highly of Straus’ leadership ability, only Straus himself hinted that his leadership style would be a departure from former speaker Tom Craddick’s heavy-handed approach.“We will create a place where we respect each other’s points of view,” Straus said. “Disagreements are necessary because they will result in stronger and better laws.”Straus was also the only member to recognize Craddick’s service. Craddick stayed seated as the other representatives and the rest of the audience gave him a standing ovation, rising briefly to wave as the applause died down.