AUSTIN — Senate Democrats led by San Antonio Sen. Leticia Van de Putte on Saturday appeared poised to kill a bill that they said was aimed at deterring minorities and the elderly from voting.

The measure by Rep. Mary Denny, R-Aubrey, would have required voters to show a picture ID before being allowed to vote. Current law requires that a person only present their voter registration card at the polls on Election Day.

Although it easily passed in the House, Denny's proposal drew criticism from minority lawmakers who said it would create a barrier to the election process for certain groups.

Denny and the bill's backers said they simply wanted to insure the integrity of the electoral process by preventing voter fraud.

"They couched it in terms of preventing the dead from voting, from preventing (voter) fraud," Van de Putte said Saturday evening.

She said she had researched the issue "and I was informed that there was not a single verified case of voter fraud in Bexar County, or any other place."

Van de Putte became involved at the behest of the American Association of Retired Persons, who opposed it because it would create a hardship and eventually keep many of the state's senior citizens from voting.

Van de Putte prevented the measure from being considered by raising a technical point — that the Denny proposal was attached to a bill that did not deal with the issue of voter fraud, in violation of the Texas Constitution.

Another senator, Rodney Ellis, D-Houston had been prepared to filibuster through the weekend to prevent the full chamber from considering the bill.

"It is a topic that African-Americans feel very passionately about — the right to vote," Van de Putte said of Ellis' plan to talk the bill to death.

Republicans who favored the bill were attempting late Saturday to revive the proposal in a last-ditch effort to get it passed.