Still the only voter ID anyone should need
The ill-fated tenure of Texas Secretary of State David Whitley has come to an end.
The Texas Senate gaveled out Monday without confirming the state’s top election official, who served for less than half a year and whose tenure was mired in controversy over a failed attempt to scour the voter rolls for noncitizens — a review that questioned the citizenship of thousands of legitimate voters.
But minutes before that happened, the Austin American-Statesman reported that Whitley had submitted his resignation. The secretary of state is constitutionally required to leave office immediately if the Senate goes through an entire legislative session without confirming him.
His departure is an unusual end; gubernatorial appointees typically sail through the Senate.
[…]
All 12 Democratic senators went on the record as “nays” on Whitley’s confirmation in February, citing concerns over the fear the review had caused among legitimate voters who were not born in the U.S. and who are more likely to be people of color. During the review, some of those individuals received letters demanding they prove their citizenship to avoid being kicked off the rolls.
“The reality is that Democrats showed solidarity on that issue because of Whitley’s position of voter suppression,” state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, told reporters after the Senate adjourned. “That was the issue.
“It was not that he was not a good person — he seemed like he was a great person — but not the secretary of state, especially concerning the issues the secretary of state has to deal with as it relates to voting.”
You can see Whitley’s resignation letter, and Abbott’s acceptance of it, here. This is what accountability looks like. It wasn’t just that Whitley screwed up, it was that he never owned his screwup or tried to make it right. In that regard, he was not helped at all by Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick, who tried to shenanigan him in rather than help him take responsibility for his actions. It’s arrogance on top of incompetence, and it got what it deserved. Abbott will get to appoint someone else, who one hopes will be good at the job and thus not get humiliated when his or her nomination gets reviewed by the next Senate, and David Whitley can go do something else. This is as it should be.
At least, that should be how it should be. The Lege junkies on Twitter have speculated that since Whitley resigned before sine die, he was not officially rejected by the Senate, since they never voted on his nomination and he left before the end of the session. That means that technically, Abbott could appoint him again. I have no idea if he would do that – I’ll say again, there must be some other Republican ladder-climber out there with decent credentials who could fill this role – but I wouldn’t put it past Abbott, who has already vetoed four Democratic-authored bills, to stick his finger in everyone’s eye. We should know soon if he goes this route.