AUSTIN - Ghost voting in the Texas House — when legislators cast electronic machine ballots for absent members — is not uncommon, even though it's definitely against the rules.

But rarely does the practice get the attention it did when the ghost votes of two absent members nearly derailed a major tax bill this week.

Ghost votes cast Wednesday on behalf of state Reps. Craig Eiland, D-Galveston, and Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, were decisive in killing House Bill 3, the statewide property tax cut bill.

But when a verification was held, House clerks discovered the two were not even in Austin, providing a one-vote victory for the bill. In a verification, a verbal roll call is taken to determine if each House member who voted is present.

Eiland, who returned to Austin on Thursday, said he has no idea who voted on his behalf. He said it is not right but it does happen.

"People punch people's voting machine all the time. You don't always know if that person is here or in the restroom or eating lunch or back at their office. But usually they are here in the building and can be back for verification," he said.

The 150 House members sit at desks that have green, red and white buttons for voting "yes," "no" or "present not voting." The results are posted on a giant scoreboardlike sign at the front of the chamber.

In the Texas Senate, the 31 members cast votes orally or on a visual roll call.

House rules explicitly forbid one member from voting for another on the voting machine. The punishment is "discipline deemed appropriate by the House." The rules say a "possible serious consequence" of such voting is that a permanent record could be created for a member that is "contrary to the intent of the absent member."

One of the more notorious instances of ghost voting in the House was in 1991 when Rep. Larry Evans, D-Houston, was repeatedly recorded as voting on amendments to a congressional redistricting bill. Evans, however, had died in his apartment several hours before the voting began.

House Speaker Tom Craddick said Thursday that ghost voting is not unusual and he has no intention of investigating the Wednesday incident.

"Members shouldn't be voting for members who aren't here. But if they do that, everyone's got the right to ask for a verification, and that's what happened last night," Craddick said.

Eiland was on his way to a legislative conference in Rhode Island and had just landed in Boston when he discovered how narrow the vote was on the tax bill late Wednesday.

"When I landed, my cell phone had seven messages on it," Eiland said Thursday. "When I landed and found out how close the vote was I decided to turn around and come back so I could be here for the final vote today."

Eiland caught a 5:45 a.m. flight from Boston back to Austin to be present for the final vote on whether the tax bill should be sent to the Senate for consideration. He voted against it, but the bill passed anyway.

Eiland is president of the National Conference of Insurance Legislators.

He said he decided it was safe to leave for the conference about 5 p.m. Wednesday because votes on amendments to the tax bill made him think "the votes were certainly there to pass the bill and it wouldn't even be close."

The major vote on the tax bill was taken about 8 p.m.

Eiland said he thinks if he had been present Wednesday, Craddick would have delayed the vote until some of the Republican opponents to the tax bill could have been persuaded to change their votes.

r.g.ratcliffe@chron.com.