Brennan Center for Justice

Consensus among Texan legislators
on election issues is becoming - stated generously - vanishingly
rare.  In 2007, a firestorm over voter ID proposals grew so acrimonious
that a State Senator rallied to block proposed legislation, despite
the fact that he was recovering
from a liver transplant
and needed a hospital bed to be kept about 100 feet from the Senate
floor.  Two years later, sparring over a new proposal drove marathon
hearings running for 23
hours straight. 

This general climate makes H.B. 1457 nothing short of a wonder.  It
passed the State House 144-1.  It passed the State Senate 31-0.  Bipartisan, near-unanimous
support - until it was shot
down last week
by Governor "Rick" Perry's veto.  Its demise is a shame, for
Texans of all stripes. 

The bill was a common-sense
attempt to address administrative flaws that cost Texan election officials
time, Texan taxpayers money, and Texan citizens the right to vote. 
The federal Help America Vote Act asks each state to try to match the information on new voter registration
forms to data in the motor vehicles or Social Security systems. 
Under the federal law, when the system can't find a match, voters
who mailed in their forms are flagged, and have
to show ID before
they vote.  Texas
went a bit farther,
requiring every new voter with a failed match (whether registering by
mail or not) to show ID, after required correspondence back and forth. 

The biggest problem with the
system is that the matching system isn't very sophisticated, and simple mistakes
or inconsistencies cause the match
to fail. 
A lot.  When a data entry temp hits the wrong key, the match can
fail.  When a voter has a compound name, like "Mary Ann Smith"
or "Linus van Pelt," the match can fail.  When a voter uses
a nickname, like "Bill," or a middle name, like "F. Scott,"
the match can fail.  The
motor vehicles match does better than
the Social Security version,
and some clerks catch mistakes more often than others.  Still,
the matching problems add up.  In 2008, the match failed, nationwide,
about 30%
of the time. 

Most of these common matching
errors have nothing whatsoever to do with the eligibility of the person
trying to register.  But the errors do take time to resolve, and
cause hassles for both county clerks and voters.  So Rep. Scott Hochberg, an engineer who understands both
the capacity and the limits of technology, tried to reduce the impact
of the mistakes.  His
bill asked the
Secretary of State to come up with reasonable standards for deciding
when the name submitted by a local registrar was actually the same person
on motor vehicle records, and for sending mismatched information back
to registrars to help them resolve discrepancies.  It also asked
the registrar to give rejected applicants as much information as possible,
to help them resolve problems.  Simple, common-sense stuff
- which explains why 99.4% of legislators agreed. 

Gov. Perry, unfortunately,
thought differently.  His primary excuse for the veto was that a slight mismatch
"is a strong indication that the application was filled out by someone
other than the rightful voter."   

"Rick," of all people,
should know better. 

Never mind logic, which points
in exactly the other direction. Attempted fraudsters - many of whom
copy phone book records in
order to get paid
for registration canvassing they don't actually do - have no idea
what a particular voter's driver's license number is, and don't
come close when they scribble something random down.  Slight and
readily identifiable mistakes in a name or birthday, on the other hand,
are a "strong indication" that someone hit the wrong key when typing. 
Like when Gov. Perry discussed "indentifying" information in his veto message. 
The logical assumption is that Gov. Perry's clerical assistant screwed
up - not that some fraudster faked the veto. 

And never mind facts, which
point in exactly the other direction.  In two federal cases now, the overwhelming evidence has
been that, as one election official recognized, "Most times the [voter's
registration] record is unable to be verified because of a data entry
error at the time of input (i.e., misspelled names and number transpositions)."   

No, Gov. Perry should have
recognized that mismatches don't usually indicate fraud, because his
own registration application would likely have been mismatched. 
See, "Rick" Perry is actually "James
Richard" Perry. 
And though I don't know what name Gov. Perry uses on his driver's
license, his Social Security Administration records almost certainly
reflect the name he was first given.   

175 of 176 Texas legislators
thought that their Secretary of State should be able to issue common-sense
rules to decide when it's sufficiently clear that Rick Perry is actually
James Richard Perry.  It is a real shame for Texans that James
Richard disagreed.