Voter ID circling the drain

By Jason Embry
Tuesday, May 26, 2009, 02:10 AM

Rep. Jim Dunnam of Waco, the brains behind the Democratic stall on voter ID, said he expects the House to vote to suspend the rules after Tuesday and take up bills that don’t pass before the deadline. Of course, the House will not reach the threshold needed to bring up the voter ID bill.

Bills that the House should get to today include federal stimulus money for unemployment insurance, eminent domain, electric co-op reform and a long-awaited property-tax break for disabled veterans.

How much will the chubbing continue? That depends on what Republicans are willing to concede on voter ID, Democrats say. Specifically, Democrats think there is enough on today’s calendar to just go through the regular debate on bills and still run out the clock before a vote on voter ID. What they want is some sort of assurance from Republicans or Speaker Joe Straus that there will not be a motion to call the question, which means end debate on a bill. The fear is that the House could zip through a series of bills by calling the question and then land on voter ID with plenty of time left — and possibly call the question on it, also.

Republicans, meanwhile, continue to say they’re not inclined to help Democrats mess with the traditions and standard operating procedures of the House.

Monday highlights
In the daily news-cycle battle over voter ID, Republicans pointed to a 1997 bill that House Democrats supported requiring photo ID for voters who did not have their registration cards. Their point was that Democrats didn’t seem to mind ID requirements back then.

Fair enough, but here’s the question I can’t get past: Why did it take Republicans so long to bring this up? For three days, there was pretty much no news in the House but the chub-a-thon. (I know because I had to write about it for three straight days). This argument, while not a game-changer, is at least something for Republicans to hit back with, and they didn’t bring it out until Monday, when the news cycle had pretty much moved on to the top 10 debate, TxDOT sunset in the Senate and other topics.

Straus, who has to preside over a chamber where his party has a two-seat majority, stayed pretty neutral in his comments for three days, instead focusing on getting the two parties to talk to each other. Corrie MacLaggan reported that Straus took a different approach on Monday, telling reporters, ““Local and consent calendars has been, until this moment, a matter of trust among members, and that trust has been abused here. Perfectly legitimate and within the rules, but it’s not something that I would like to encourage happen again.â€