In Austin, the state House is considering an election-reform bill that already has been passed by the state Senate. The bill would impose such purportedly radical measures as ending drive-through voting and prohibiting municipal officials from sending mail-in ballot applications to people who are not eligible to vote by mail. More to the point, it would gently tap the brakes on the practice of “ballot harvesting” by requiring that mail-in voters provide their driver’s-license number or the number from another state-issued ID card, or, if they cannot manage that, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. And if they still cannot manage that, they can include a declaration that they don’t have one of those. The idea is to make it more difficult for paid party operatives to exploit people in retirement homes and mental-health facilities by managing their votes. This is not a theoretical concern: In Mexia, Texas, a social worker has been charged with 134 felony counts of fraud involving the votes of residents in a state facility who were, according to prosecutors, “totally mentally incapacitated.”... It is worth noting that the reforms would also prevent vote-harvesting by Republican political machines in Republican-run Texas. And yet it is only Democrats who are out of sorts about it. Interesting, no?