Texas Legislature sends sweeping GOP voting bill to governor
Source: AP
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas Legislature sent a sweeping rewrite of the state’s election laws to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday, dealing a bruising defeat for Democrats after a monthslong, bitter fight over voting rights. Abbott has said he will sign the changes into law, which could happen in the coming days. Even the final vote did not escape a parting round of confrontation after Senate Republicans scuttled one the few areas of bipartisan agreement at the last minute: language that would have shielded voters with felony convictions from prosecution if they cast a ballot without knowing they were ineligible to vote.
It had been included following backlash over the arrests of two Texas voters, both of whom are Black, which intensified criticism amid a broader fight over voting restrictions that opponents say disproportionately impact people of color.The rest of the far-reaching legislation, spurred in part by former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, had set off a heated summer in Texas of walkouts by Democrats, Republicans threatening them with arrest, Abbott vetoing the paychecks of thousands of rank-and-file staffers when the bill failed to reach him sooner, and accusations of racism and voter suppression.
“The emotional reasons for not voting for it are that is creates hardships for people because of the color of their skin and their ethnicity, and I am part of that class of people,” said Democrat Garnet Coleman, a state representative whose return to the Capitol earlier this month helped end a 38-day standoff. Texas will limit voting hours and empower partisan poll watchers under the nearly 75-page bill. It is largely similar to the one Democrats first walked out on 93 days ago, underscoring how Republicans, who have overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate, held their ground in the face of months of protest and escalating brinksmanship.
That acrimony is unlikely to end with Abbott’s signature. The Texas Capitol is set to immediately shift into another charged fight over redrawn voting maps that could lock in Republican electoral advantages for the next decade. Texas added more than 4 million new residents since 2010, more than any other state, with people of color accounting for more than nine in every 10 new residents. Democrats criticized the voting bill as an attempt to suppress the turnout of an ascendant and more diverse electorate as Republicans, who are used to racking up commanding electoral victories in America’s biggest red state, begin to lose ground.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/health-texas-voting-coronavirus-pandemic-election-2020-770f916d1d3743fbdc791ae7da502d58
I know people like Marc Elias are on the case to go to court...
ETA and here it is -
Link to tweet
TEXT
@marceelias
As soon as the Gov signs it, Texas will be sued. Stand by…
Democracy Docket
@DemocracyDocket
🚨ALERT: Texas PASSES and sends voter suppression bill #SB1 to the governor. The bill
❌CRIMINALIZES officials for sending out proactive mail ballot applications
❌BANS drive-thru & 24hr voting
❌EMPOWERS partisan poll watchers and more. #txlege https://democracydocket.com/2021/08/texas-house-and-senate-pass-voter-suppression-bill/
5:22 PM · Aug 31, 2021
(I know this past month, he spun off his group as an independent focused legal organization from his original firm)
= new reply since forum marked as read
1. Date of federal elections, electoral votes..process etc...(Is there anything there??)
2. After the civil war (14th amendment 1866) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Protection_Clause
3. Women's Right to Vote
4. Lower the voting age to 18
Here are the relevant amendments -
Amendment XV
Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2.
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxv
19th Amendment
Amendment XIX
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxix
Amendment XXIV
Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
Section 2.
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxiv
Amendment XXVI
Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age.
Section 2.
The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxvi
Each Amendment indicates that Congress can then promulgate laws to uphold/enforce the Amendments, which is what the various Voting Rights Acts that were created over the years, were designed to do.
The last "big" Voting Rights Act was the famous one that we hear about - the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - has continually been pummeled and and challenged and skirted and picked at since it became law.
The "Voter ID" nonsense was often deemed to be in direct violation of the 24th Amendment because there was a cost involved in obtaining one. Here in PA, it originally required a birth certificate, which for those born in this state, cost something like $9 to get a certified (raised seal) copy of at the time. The 2012 attempt at that here was eventually dropped after a lawsuit put it on hold. But they have been attempting to try again (their last effort was vetoed by our Democratic governor thankfully).
Although I haven't combed through the 1965 Act, I expect the "Poll Watcher" intimidation stuff is probably addressed in there somewhere. We had the ridiculous antics of that happen here in Philly when they were canvassing the 2020 election results with GOP goons trying to be "poll watchers" who wanted to stand right over the shoulders of elections staff as they were pulling the inner envelopes out of the outer ones, removing ballots and stacking them, and then feeding them into the machines, getting the printouts of results to add to the stacks that were then labeled, and boxed up.
In the case of this abortion legislation, right now there is no federal "law" regarding the "right to abortion" in a literal sense. I believe "Roe v Wade" was based on an argument that it was in violation of multiple Amendments including the 4th ("right to privacy" ), 9th (" non-enumerated rights belong to the people" ), and the 14th ("equal protection clause" ) Amendments.
In a simplified way - telling a woman what to do with her body was an invasion of her "privacy" (4th Amendment) and deprived her of "life and liberty", and did not giver her "due process" or "equal protection" (the latter parts in Section 1 of that 14th Amendment).
yet they still violate it. 
Soon we'll be back to this sort of thing - but only for "select" people because "thems was the "good 'ole days" -
Blood pressure meds:
