Texas GOP puts final touches on sweeping voting restrictions

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Source: AP

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Republicans dug in Saturday for a final weekend vote on some of the most restrictive new voting laws in the U.S., putting the last touches on a sweeping bill that would eliminate drive-thru voting, empower partisan poll watchers and limit voting on Sundays, when many Black churchgoers head to the polls.

The changes would need to be approved before midnight on Sunday, when the GOP-controlled Legislature wraps up a session dominated by Republicans muscling through staunchly conservative measures pertaining to guns, abortion and how race can be taught in public schools.

But none have drawn backlash like Senate Bill 7, which Republicans packed with a raft of new voting restrictions that would alter how the country's biggest red state conducts elections. Democrats have virtually no path to stop it from passing, thereby putting Republicans on the brink of a major victory in their nationwide campaign to impose new voting restrictions driven by former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has said he will sign the measure, which Democrats have said they would challenge in court.



Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/texas-gop-puts-final-touches-on-sweeping-voting-restrictions/ar-AAKw8U3

[Maxheader]

1. Will the last human being leaving texaas..

Please shut the lights out...

[pdxflyboy]

2. I just sent the ACLU

Another $75.00

[ananda]

10. I also just donated to ACLU Texas.

!!!

[Comfortably_Numb]

3. Damn I hate this state...

[bucolic_frolic]

4. TX was suing other states for counting properly, why aren't we suing TX for vote suppression?

Turnabout is fair play.

[EarlG]

5. I wonder if this will backfire

1) They're basically telling Republican voters that the fix is in — they’ve got it in the bag. Is that going to increase or decrease their turnout?

2) At the same time, they’re telling Democratic voters that they’re trying to cheat them out of their votes. Is that going to increase or decrease our turnout?

Seems to me like one really great way to get people to go to the polls is by threatening their right to do so and making them angry.

Of course, if it does drive Dem turnout and Dems get victories in Texas in 2022, the Repugs won’t believe that the victories could possibly be legitimate because they thought they had rigged the election in their favor.

I suppose that’s where the new part of the law that lets them overturn elections apparently on a whim comes in.

[lordsummerisle]

6. Just another nail

in the coffin of democracy.

[Deminpenn]

7. Just to put these restrictions in perspective

Here in Pennsylvania, there are no polls open at any time before 7AM on election day nor have there ever been. There is no such thing as drive-through voting or polls open 24 hours a day. Until 2020 voters had to have an authorized excuse to vote by absentee ballot like a medical condition or being away from your precinct as a result of work or travel.

[LeftInTX]

8. I really don't have problems with those part of the bill

But the most egregious part of the bill is that any judge can overthrow any election for no reason.


Election Workers can be charged with a felony for asking a partisan pollwatcher to leave, no matter what the poll watcher is doing.

People can't drive voters to the polls unless they are related to them.


Polls were not open 24/7 in Bexar County because our elections admin saw it as a logistic nightmare...Polls were open until 10 and by 9 pm no one was showing up. We also did not have drive in here either...

But this bill will prevent voting advocates from obtaining official vote by mail applications. The parties can print their own, but voters might be skeptical that it is a real application. As a precinct chair, I hand out official vote by mail applications. All VBM applications must have a SS# or state ID # (I really don't have a problem with this, as long as they don't require a copy of the ID)

They also cut one hour off of "souls to the polls"...(The hour after church has been cut) This ruins souls to the polls. Maybe they can make accommodations by serving lunch and then going to the polls. Maybe lunch is another reason to get parishioners to stick around!

They left one part of the bill on the floor: The closing of polling sites in counties over 1 million.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

9. A good number of points of order will be raised tomorrow by Texas House Democrats

The Texas House and Senate came up with a new voter suppression bill. Normally when you reconcile a bill in committee, you either accept or delete provisions in either bill. Here the GOP came up with a brand new bill that has a number of new provisions that were not in either of the prior Senate or House bill. The Texas Democrats have been using points of order to kill some nasty GOP bills. For example this young man has been very effective in using points of order

Link to tweet

Tomorrow the House Democrats have identified a good number of inappropriate provisions and will be raising a ton of points of order

Link to tweet

This will be fun to watch

[SouthBayDem]

11. Texas Republicans' sweeping voting restrictions bill passes state Senate

Texas' Republican-led state Senate passed a sweeping voting restrictions bill early Sunday and sent it to the state's House. The legislation was unveiled Saturday amid efforts by GOP-led states to overhaul election laws in the wake of former President Trump's electoral loss.

The bill, S.B. 7, includes several controversial provisions that critics say would disproportionately affect poor and minority voters. It also specifically targets voting practices employed this past year in Harris County, which includes Houston, by banning drive-through voting and 24-hour voting. Those practices were used by 140,000 voters in 2020.

S.B. 7 makes it a state jail felony for local officials to attempt to send mail-in ballot applications to voters who did not request them, a practice Harris County employed in 2020. The bill also limits early voting and implements more restrictions on absentee voting, including adding more identification requirements for those who wish to vote-by-mail.

President Biden condemned the bill in a statement, calling it "part of an assault on democracy that we've seen far too often this year—and often disproportionately targeting Black and Brown Americans."

Full: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-voting-restriction-bill-republicans/