Extraordinary. Texas Republican legislators are now, officially, the champions of vote fraud.

After Democratic state Senator Wendy Davis' nearly 13 hour standing filibuster of SB5, a draconian abortion restriction bill supported by the state's Republican Gov. Rick Perry, Republicans decided to throw the rule of law out the window, and hold a roll call vote on the bill after midnight, when the special session was officially over, according to state law.

Nonetheless, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst fraudulently announced that the bill, which had supposedly passed at 12:01am, had actually passed at 11:59pm the night before, when the state Senate would still have been legally in session. Making matters even worse, the Republicans then went back and changed the official TX Senate web page to reflect their blatant fraud.

Here's a screenshot from the TX Senate webpage BEFORE the fraud...

...And here's a screenshot AFTER the Republicans' attempt to defraud the people of Texas...

Amazing. More here.

According to some quick research by James Carter IV, however, it looks as though TX legislators may be playing with a felony according to the state penal code in their apparent attempt to "knowingly make a false entry in, or false alteration of, a governmental record".

It's hardly the first time there's been massive vote fraud inside the Texas Statehouse, even as the Republicans there have been attempting, for years, to enact draconian polling place Photo ID restrictions for everyone else, under the fraudulent guise of combating "voter fraud". Take a look at the video below, which we originally ran in 2007, showing blatant voter fraud by members of the TX legislature...

Unfortunately, despite the fraud seen in the video above, and the fraud over the abortion bill earlier tonight, with the U.S. Supreme Court having gutted the Voting Rights Act earlier today, it looks as though Texas will now be able to get away with restricting everyone else's access to legally vote. The state Attorney General announced just after today's ruling that he would now be implementing the state's polling place Photo ID law "immediately", despite the fact that it was rejected last year by both the Dept. of Justice and by a federal court after being found in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The law was rejected after the state's own data revealed that registered Hispanic voters were as much as 120% more likely to be lacking state issued Photo ID as non-Hispanic voters.

But, apparently, it's only voters --- specifically, minority voters --- who must be prevented from committing "voter fraud" (though there is no evidence they are committing any at the polling place), even as Republican legislators are welcome to defraud the system to their heart's content in the Lone Star state.

UPDATE 12:28am PT: Late word now on the Twitters, mostly from Democratic sources, is that Dewhurst may now be revising his revision to put the vote back at 12:03am, after so much public attention to the attempted fraud. If so, that would mean the radical anti-abortion bill in Texas would be officially dead for this session, and Wendy Davis' extraordinary one-woman filibuster would have been a success.

                 

Article Categories: Texas, Rights And Freedoms, Photo ID Laws, Accountability, U.S. Supreme Court, Voting Rights Act