Texas Legislature Sends Voting Restrictions Bill to Government, Office of Greg Abbott

by



[ad_1]

Abbott’s signing would add Texas – where Republicans seek to retain power in one of the nation’s fastest growing and diversifying places – to a list of states including Florida and Georgia that are trying. to grasp former President Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud. and enact restrictive laws this year.
Democrats had fled the state for weeks to prevent the House from having a quorum to vote on the bill – forcing Abbott to call the legislature into two special sessions to deal with what the second-term Republican called wrongly of “electoral integrity”. even though there was no evidence of widespread election fraud in Texas.

The bill “will strengthen confidence in the outcome of our election by facilitating voting and fraud,” Abbott said in a statement Tuesday after the bill’s final passage in the state House and Senate. “I look forward to signing Senate Bill 1, Ensuring the Integrity of the Texas Elections.”

After several Democrats returned to Capitol Hill in Austin last week, the party was powerless to stop electoral law changes that its leaders say will impose burdens that disproportionately fall on minorities and people with disabilities.

“I was born into segregation,” Democratic State Representative Garnet Coleman told the House Tuesday before the vote. “We think we’ve made some progress, and then all of a sudden there’s a new law that takes us back in time.”

RELATED: America’s Long History of Suppressing Black Voters

Senate Bill 1 targets Harris County, the seat of Houston, which last year proposed a drive-thru and 24-hour advance poll. The bill limits the hours counties can volunteer. early voting between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. a place where residents can vote from their vehicles.

The bill also prevents counties from sending unsolicited postal ballot requests, even to those over the age of 65 who therefore automatically qualify to vote by mail. It also imposes new rules on postal voting, increases protections for supporter election observers and sets new limits on those who help voters, including people with disabilities, vote.

The House’s passage of SB 1 last week was the last major hurdle Republicans faced. Then the House and Senate eliminated the differences between the versions of the bill that they had approved in a conference committee, forcing both houses to approve the final language.

Eighteen states enacted new laws that make voting more difficult

Republicans on the conference committee chose to remove a bipartisan amendment that would have barred accusations of electoral fraud against people who were unaware that their “special circumstances” made them ineligible to vote.

The amendment, which passed the House without any debate, was created in response to the case of Crystal Mason, a Texas woman sentenced to five years in prison for voting while on probation, even though she said she didn’t know she was not entitled to vote and the provisional ballot she cast never counted.

The House passed the final bill on Tuesday with an 80-41 vote, and hours later the Senate approved the bill with an 18-13 vote.

RELATED: 56 Years After 1965 Voting Rights Act, Lawmakers Struggle to Find Common Ground

“The right to vote is too precious, it costs too much, for us to leave it unprotected, unsecured,” said State Senator Bryan Hughes, the Republican author of the measure. “This is a bill we can be proud of. It will help every voter.”

Democrats in Texas – as party members have done in other states – have said the only way to stop Republican laws that restrict access to the vote is for Congress to pass federal human rights protections. vote, which remain stuck on Capitol Hill.

“We knew we wouldn’t be able to delay this day forever. Now that it has arrived, we need the US Senate to act immediately to pass federal legislation to protect Texas voters from Republican attacks. against our democracy, ”said the Texas House Democratic. Caucus chair Chris Turner said in a statement.

[ad_2]

Source link