AUSTIN - A House Elections Committee clearly divided along party lines heard evidence Friday on the prevalence of voter fraud in Texas.

It's the start of a new battle over a voter identification law, something Republicans say is needed to preserve the integrity of elections, and Democrats say will suppress the votes of the elderly and minorities.

The committee is chaired by state Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler. The question Friday was whether widespread voter fraud exists.

"Voter fraud is a rare offense that we already have the legal framework for dealing with," said Rep. Joe Farias, a San Antonio Democrat. "Today I would hope we move cautiously so that we don't erect any barriers to voter participation."

But Harris County Tax Assessor/Collector Paul Bett-encourt brought boxes of evidence.

"We have had a history of illegal voting, as well as documented fraud cases in Harris County," Bettencourt said. "There shouldn't be a debate in this body - fraud cases exist. Period."

He had files on 381 cases, he said.

"We have examples of people who voted after their deaths," Bettencourt said. "In some cases, they voted twice. A gentleman who died in 1996 voted in the 1998 and the 2000 elections."

Throughout the day's testimony, however, Democrats sought to put the problem into perspective. And most of the cases cited, they added, involved mail-in ballots and therefore wouldn't have been prevented by a voter ID law.

"Math is not my forte, but 23,000 doesn't sound like a very big number, given the population of the state," said Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth.

Rep. Raphael Anchia, D-Dallas, dismissed reports that thousands of people who receive jury summonses, taken from the voter rolls, responded by telling the jury coordinators that they're not eligible to serve, because they're not U.S. citizens.

"The only evidence we have is conflicting information between voter registration rolls and jury summonses," Anchia said. "That's not proof of non-citizen voting."

Rep. Dwayne Bohac of Houston, the committee's other Republican, disagreed.

"If even one person votes fraudulently, that means something to me, because every vote is sacred," he said.

Efforts to pass a voter ID bill last year divided the Legislature along similar party lines. A bill that would have required photo identification for voting ultimately failed in a Senate stalemate. Leading Republicans want to press it again.

Of the 108 potential voter fraud cases referred to the Texas Attorney General's Office since August 2002, 22 were prosecuted, said Deputy Attorney General Eric Nichols. Those prosecutions included 14 for alleged unlawful mail-in ballots and three for alleged polling place misconduct.

Currently, voters don't need a state-issued photo ID to vote. They can show their voter registration card, or, if that's lost, a number of other documents will do - including a driver's license,

Indiana, Georgia and Florida have laws requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, and Arizona has a law requiring those registering to vote to show proof of citizenship, according to a panel of voter ID opponents from out of state who testified.

Committee members agreed, though, that if the federal government made available to the states a database that showed citizenship status, "this problem goes away," in the words of Bettencourt.

Berman says a voter ID law will be considered in his committee in the 2009 legislative session.