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State Rep. Leo Berman has emerged as a leader to protect the integrity of the state's voting system. The Tyler Republican, who chairs the House Elections Committee, is preparing to champion a voter ID bill in the upcoming 2009 legislative session.

Berman laid out his reasons in a recent essay, co-authored by other conservative lawmakers including Reps. Betty Brown and Dan Flynn.

"Across the country, vote fraud is an all too common part of our elections," Berman says. "This is why we are formulating a plan to win back the public's confidence in elections in our state."

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently examining Indiana's voter ID law.

"It requires voters to present a government-issued photo ID such as a driver's license, passport, or student ID card issued by a public university," Berman explains. "The law is simple, yet bolsters the integrity of elections in Indiana. The plaintiffs in the suit before the Supreme Court make the unsubstantiated claim that the Indiana law is a partisan ploy by the Republican-controlled legislature to disenfranchise Democratic voters. In the absence of proof, the lower courts disagreed, noting that plaintiffs could not find one person who intended not to vote because of the photo identification requirement."

In fact, the opposite proved true, Berman says.

"Jeffrey Milyo of the University of Missouri found that turnout in Indiana increased with the photo identification law in effect, even in Democratic counties," Berman says. "Turnout also increased in Arizona after enactment of a citizenship verification and photo identification law. In Mexico, turnout is up following the implementation of citizenship verification and photo ID requirements that create one of the most secure and sophisticated election systems in the world."

The Heritage Foundation also concluded recently, "voter identification laws largely do not have the claimed negative impact on voter turnout based on state-to-state comparisons," Berman notes.

The problem of voter fraud can no longer be denied or discounted.

"Through open records requests, the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute has found that from 1999 through early 2007, Dallas County canceled the voter registration of 1,889 noncitizens," Berman says. "Before being deleted from the voter rolls, 356 noncitizens voted in Dallas County. In the state's five most populous counties, 6,700 noncitizens have been removed from voter registration lists."

At Berman's recent committee hearing on the issue in Austin, the state's chief elections officer admitted that voters are on the honor system when they claim U.S. citizenship.

"The election integrity crisis in Texas is very real. In 2007, the state auditor identified 49,049 registered voters who may be ineligible to vote, including 23,114 possible felons and 23,576 who may be deceased," Berman adds. "The special investigations unit in the attorney general's office referred 11 cases of vote fraud for prosecution in 2007, and two public officials were convicted on separate charges of vote fraud."

Berman says the threat to the system is real.

"Each illegal vote counted silences the voice of a legitimate voter," Berman says. "Poll taxes, literacy tests, and all-white primaries are a stain on our state history. Yet the effect of those despicable practices is no different from the effect of vote fraud: disenfranchisement."

A ruling from the Supreme Court is expected in June.

"Following the Supreme Court's guidance, we are determined to protect the most basic and important right of our representative democracy, the right to vote," Berman pledges.