Texas election bill close to passage in state legislature as session nears end
A GOP-backed election bill that’s prompted multiple quorum breaks by House Democrats appears to be nearing Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.
The bill has been at the center of tensions between members after more than 50 representatives fled to Washington, D.C., in July to block the bill that critics say would disenfranchise voters and to advocate for federal voting rights legislation. Weeks before that in late May, as the regular legislative session came to a close, Democrats too broke quorum to kill the bill.
They successfully derailed the legislation in both cases, but several Democrats returned to the floor for the second-called special session that started in August. A quorum was restored with about two weeks left in the special session, clearing the way for the passage of Senate Bill 1.
The House gave final approval to the legislation on Friday, but the bill’s author, Sen. Bryan Hughes, found one amendment — dealing with alleged voter fraud cases like Crystal Mason’s in Tarrant County — objectionable.
After a committee formed made up of members from both chambers, it appears a compromise has been reached. The legislation must be approved again in the House and Senate before heading to Abbott, who has made the legislation a priority.
What’s in the bill?
Lawmakers who support the election bill say it’s intended to create uniformity in Texas elections “to reduce the likelihood of fraud in the conduct of elections, protect the secrecy of the ballot, promote voter access, and ensure that all legally cast ballots are counted.” But opponents believe it would limit access to the polls, particularity disenfranchising voters of colors and voters with disabilities.
One provision of the legislation bars drive-thru voting and prohibits 24-hour voting, voting methods used in Harris County during the COVID pandemic to increase poll access.
The legislation states that polls can’t operate before 6 a.m. or after 10 p.m. on weekdays of early voting and that polls generally have to be open for at least nine hours. In counties with 55,000 people or more, polls would be open for at least 12 hours in the last week of early voting. That 55,000 threshold is set at 100,000 under current law. On the last Sunday of early voting, polls would be open for at least six hours compared to five under current law, but specific polls can only be open between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m.
The bill includes protections for partisan poll watchers. It would be a misdemeanor for an election officer to intentionally or knowingly refuse to accept a watcher for service. Critics fear watchers will be empowered to intimidate voters. The bill does state that a judge could call law enforcement if there’s a breach of peace or law. Training is also required for watchers.
The bill precludes a public official soliciting the submission of an application to vote by mail by a person who didn’t request an application. The bill notes that applications could still be posted online and that officials could still share general information about voting by mail.
A person who assists a voter and isn’t an election worker would have to complete a form explaining their relationship to the person they’re helping and if they received any compensation from a campaign, candidate or political committee. Assistants would also have to take an oath under the penalty of perjury that they’ll limit their help to assistance reading and marking the ballot.
Amendment on cases like Crystal Mason’s not backed by Senate
An amendment aimed at preventing cases like that of a Tarrant County woman convicted of illegally casting her ballot is what pushed the election bill into a conference committee — a group of lawmakers from the House and Senate tasked with coming up with a compromise version of the bill.
Crystal Mason, who is from Rendon, cast a provisional ballot in 2016 while she was on federally supervised release. She later said she didn’t know she wasn’t allowed to vote at the time. Her ballot wasn’t counted. Still, in March 2019 she was sentenced to five years in prison for illegal voting. The case has gone through the appeals process and is pending in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
“We’re just ensuring that people who do innocent things... they’re not harmed from their past mistakes,” said Briscoe Cain, a Deer Park Republican who authored the amendment.
The amendment said that in order to face a Class A misdemeanor, a person must know of “particular circumstances that make the person not eligible to vote” and “that those circumstances make the person not eligible to vote in the election.” The language was removed from the conference committee version of the bill.
“It was put in there to help people like Crystal Mason,” Hughes told independent reporter Eva Ruth Moravec, according to a tweet. “But what we learned is it is also going to affect the prosecution of folks who are non citizens who vote.”
This story was originally published August 30, 2021 at 7:09 PM with the headline "Texas election bill close to passage in state legislature as session nears end."
