Texas House passes final version of voter ID bill
AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas House passed hotly debated legislation Monday requiring voters to show photo identification before casting ballots, sending to Gov. Rick Perry’s desk a measure he declared an “emergency” item for the legislative session.
The 98-46 vote adhered to party lines, with Republicans largely saying the measure is necessary to prevent voter fraud and Democrats countering that it could make it harder for the state’s poor and minority voters to go to the polls.
Perry’s signature will mark a victory for Republicans on an issue that has split along partisan lines for years. It requires voters to present a valid state or federal photo ID. A driver’s license, personal ID card, military ID, passport or concealed handgun permit would be accepted.
Republicans pushed a voter ID bill through the Senate in 2009, but it stalled in the House in the final weeks of that session. Senate Republicans again got the bill through that chamber back in January.
Full Story Here:
Texas House passes final version of voter ID bill
I can almost hear the lamentations of the ACLU, the NAACP, La Raza, the DNC and every Libertarian in Texas as I post this.
I can see them now, skulking in their lairs, sweat pouring from their fevered brows as they gnash their teeth and wring their hands, dreaming up new ways to demand that their minions go out and make protests against this Conservative debacle and hope that their minions obey their marching orders.
How DARE the state of Texas require a voter to have a picture ID. How DARE Texas to imply that there may be ILLEGALS voting in Texas races! How DARE Texas have the GALL to believe that there may be election irregularities and that it’s possible for an unregistered, and undocumented person VOTE in an election in Texas.
The outrage! The horror! The…uh…wait, is it just me or does anyone else see where this voter ID thing is just what the doctor ordered?
There WILL be some that cry about the passing of this law, but that’s just too bad. We have to have a VALID identification to get by in this modern world. Everything we do is tied to us being able to verify that we are who we say we are, and when voting, that should be just as important as having ID to cash a check or a drivers license to drive a car.
The Senate and House had already approved similar versions of the bill and spent the last month working out a compromise on minor provisions. The last version approved by the Senate last week and the House on Monday allows the state to issue free IDs to be used specifically for voting if someone does not have another acceptable form of identification.
The biggest objection I have heard was that ‘poor old Lupe, Luz and Pepe, they just can’t get a drivers license, but they SO want to vote…’
Now that little argument has been rendered null and void. Actually, it already HAD been rendered invalid, Texas has a State ID Card. It’s not a drivers license, it’s an ID card only, and to get one you have to go to a Texas DPS station and apply, show proof of citizenship, ie: a social security card, a birth certificate or the like, and voila, you have a universally accepted form of LEGAL identification.
Now, Texans don’t even have to pay for an ID card that allows them to prove themselves as eligible voters. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Those expected to require new IDs are mostly people who have religious objections to having their picture taken or have lost their IDs in a natural disaster. Voters without IDs could cast provisional ballots but would have to show identification within six days to have their votes counted.
Religious objections? To having your picture taken? Does that come under the same line of religious freedom that Islamic females demand when they want to have their drivers license pictures made with their faces fully covered? 
The proposal also makes illegal voting a second-degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison, and up to $10,000 in fines, rather than the current third-degree felony.
And WHO, exactly, will enforce the law on this?
Make no mistake about it, I am all for enforcing the law. I simply wonder who is going to be at the polls to check and verify, as well as enforce the law. I don’t know how it is where YOU vote, but here in Rowlett we have people working the elections that are barely able to get around the room. Are they going to be charged with ferreting out the wrong-doers?
Final approval did not come without more than an hour of discussion on the House floor, with opponents noting that the proposal will cost the state between $1 and $2 for each new ID issued exclusively for voting — but that officials aren’t sure how many Texans will actually require the new cards.
That led to a bit of a role reversal. Democrats argued against the unnecessary spending, with the bill’s conservative supporters maintaining that those getting new IDs will be too few to make a major fiscal difference.
The cost of these cards could disappear, Texas could just say, ‘OK, you want to vote? YOU pay for your own ID and prove your eligibility, or don’t vote‘, it’s really that simple.
You can’t make everyone happy, but this voter ID bill makes ME happy! 
Jesu Christi, people, get a grip! I need a fucking photo ID if I want to — like the Luddite I am — rent a video at BLOCKBUSTER!
I need a photo ID to purchase something with my credit card!
I need a photo ID to enter where I WORK!
I need a photo ID to get healthcare at Kaiser for EVERY visit!
I need a photo ID to pick up my DRY CLEANING at a business!
And — mostly — we need to make this a NATIONAL MOVEMENT in order to — and let me make this pointedly clear — ELIMINATE illegal MEXICAN INVADERS from voting in AMERICAN elections!
No, not Canadians, but — MEXICANS — from ILLEGALLY casting votes in American elections!
No FELONS should vote! No ILLEGAL INVADERS should vote!
Can’t make it any more simple than that.
BZ
Well I see someone has the balls to tell it like it is. You go guys ! Definitely need an I.D. to vote. Nothing at all wrong with this folks. Biggest problem I see, have you ever been to DPS. I went to renew my D.L. and guess what, I was told there was a 1-2 hour wait. Hello, I have a job too and why were all those workers standing their bull shitting instead of working. Again Hello, our state services in action. Also didn’t see anything that would help us cripples get thru any easier. Sucks.
All the states need to get some of the guts that Sheriff Joe has in Phoenix. Don’t like his rules hit the damned road and if you are illegal screw you, you are out of here.
Go-Joe-Go
Daisy Dogg — Forget the office in Garland, hit the office in Rockwall, in and out… No crowd, and nice people too!
What’s going to happen now is that one (1) lawyer in a black robe with the title “Federal Judge” is going to overrule the Texas Legislature, Texas Governor, and the People of Texas.
Here in Missouri, you not only have to show ID in order to get a drivers license, you have to show a birth certificate, passport, or other form of ID that indicates you’re an American Citizen.
Our voter group here in GBC have always demanded a photo ID, like a Texas Drivers license in order to vote, along with your voters registration card, that has your name and address on it.
And these “old bittys” don’t take no shit off of anyone. Also a Sheriff, or a patrolman is standing by.
I would actually dare any “illegal” to try and vote here. Your signature is required, and checked by a prior list of signatures.
Nope,,,no voter fraud here in Gun Barrel City, TX.
And we seem to have a lot of illegal laborers working here on construction sites, or picked up for a day job from a corner close to Lowe’s.
Most of the illegal population here work on the many farms and ranches around here, where housing is also furnished. This has always been a “hush-hush” topic.
I guess that means DEAD people can’t vote either. OK Fred…now you’ve pissed off the dead folks…lol
extex_cop — Then my work here is done!!
It still amazes me that anyone could opposed voter ID laws; people need ID to do just about anything and to think that a person can go in and note without proving who they are just blows me away. This is good news Fred, it will be interesting to watch the usual suspects line up against this bill but it seems as if they have no leg to stand on.
The New Hampshire legislature is debating a voter ID bill that seems quite a bit like this one, including the state ID and provisional ballots.
I hope this helps curb anyone that cannot vote legally from voting. One should have some photo identification of them anyways…as with anything else we do in the 21st century, why wouldn’t ID be required to vote??
As far as religious reasons for not being photographed, only group I can think of is the Amish, but they wouldn’t be voting anyway…
This needs to be a national law. No ID, no voting.
Well, this Libertarian has no problem whatsoever with requiring people to prove their eligibility before being allowed to vote. Voting is not a natural, inalienable right. In fact, I would go so far as to endorse something along the lines in “Starship Trooper,” and make it an earned privilege.
Think about it folks..? Why wouldn’t anyone want only legal votes to be counted? Sort of like when a few years ago on a forum someone said that they were afraid to move to Texas because Texas has, and uses, the death penalty. I think there was a keyboard race among us asking just WTH he was planning on doing in Texas…
Patrick — You’re not the Libertarian type I am referring to, you’re a Conservative libertarian, as opposed to the Anarchist, dumb as a box of rocks asshole Libertarians I know too much of lately…
South Carolina governor signs voter photo ID bill
CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) – Governor Nikki Haley on Wednesday signed into law a bill that requires voters to show photo identification at the polls, making South Carolina the tenth state to adopt such legislation.
The measure landed on the Republican governor’s desk after state senators voted 26-16 last week to concur with the House of Representatives bill, which requires people to show a driver’s license, military identification or passport along with their voter registration card when they vote.
Those who don’t have a photo ID must obtain a new voter registration card that includes a photo. A birth certificate or passport can be used to prove identity.
“If you can show a picture to buy Sudafed, if you can show a picture to get on an airplane, you should be able to show a picture to make sure that we do what is incredibly inherent in our freedoms and that is the ability to vote,” Haley said at the signing ceremony in Columbia.
Similar legislation died in the state Senate in 2010.
During contentious debate this spring, Democrats called the legislation “voter suppression” and said it was pushed by Republicans soon after Barack Obama was elected president.
South Carolina governor signs voter photo ID bill
Ah, but providing identification is inherently racist. How do we know? Donna Brazile tells us so:
The motivation is political — a cynical effort to restrict voting by traditionally Democratic-leaning Americans. In more than 30 states, GOP legislators are on the move, from a sweeping rewrite of Florida’s election laws to new rules for photo identification in Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina and more than 20 other states.
As a result, 11% of Americans —21 million citizens of voting age who lack proper photo identification — could be turned away on Election Day. And these people tend to be most highly concentrated among people of color, the poor, the young and the old.
Who’d she leave out? Oh, yeah—the rich. Well, to socialists like Brazile, they’re the only people who really need to be identified in the first place.