Texas Republicans Want Florida Style Election Police Force - Ring of Fire

[TexasTowelie]

Republicans in the state of Texas are working on multiple pieces of new legislation that would increase the penalties for voter fraud, with one bill aiming to create a Florida-style election police force controlled by the Republicans at the top of the state. These changes are all aimed at suppressing the vote, NOT at addressing real problems with the voting system. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Shifting demographics in the state of Texas for many, many years now, have convinced Democrats that the next election cycle, who, boy, we're gonna flip Texas. We're gonna turn it blue. We've talked about it here. We've been optimistic about it. And every single time we get proven wrong, Texas is not on the verge of turning blue, especially not be, uh, uh, with what Republicans in the state are trying to do to the state. Multiple different bills have been filed by Republicans who control the state of Texas to basically make sure that, uh, we don't get more Democrats coming here and voting. One of the bills, of course, is modeled after Florida's bill that would create an election police force controlled by the Republican Texas Secretary of State. And it would have the ability, just like the one here in Florida to go investigate all of the voter fraud, to make arrests so that Greg Abbott could do a grand press conference like, uh, Ron DeSantis did here in Florida.

Boast about all the people that they arrested, and hope that nobody pays attention when it's revealed that all of those, uh, charges have either been dropped or completely fallen apart. Which, yes, that is what has happened here in the state of Florida, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. And honestly, compared to some of these other measures that they are pushing the election police force might be the least of our concerns. Another piece of legislation that Georgia repo, uh, Texas Republicans, excuse me, are pushing right now would increase the penalty for voter fraud instead of it being a misdemeanor. Now, it'll be a felony if this legislation passes and we have no reason to think that it's not going to pass. Uh, so here's other things again, terrifying. Actually. They've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 different bills, five bills that would raise the penalty from a misdemeanor to a felony.

A bill called HB 1 25 would allow the State Attorney General to issue civil penalties against local prosecutors who do not enforce or prosecute election and voting crimes of up to $25,000 per violation. So that means if a local prosecutor, somebody comes in, say, Hey, I've got a a, you know, this guy may have committed voter fraud here, prosecutor looks at it and says, nah, I don't see anything here. I'm not gonna worry about it. The state can then go to that prosecutor and say, cool, we're gonna find you $25,000. Give us $25,000 because you don't wanna prosecute this guy on flimsy evidence. So of course what this does is it intimidates the local prosecutors essentially forcing them to go on these witch hunts for

Voter fraud, wasting time and resources out of fear that they'll have to pay $25,000 to the state. If they don't, that is terrifying. It's not even the most terrifying. Another pair of Texas bills would require the slate of electors for the winning presidential and vice presidential candidates to vote on whether those candidates are willing and able to serve under the bill. If a majority of electors finds that the candidates are not, they could then vote for candidates other than those chosen by Texas voters. So you're okay. Okay. Okay. Lemme put it this way. In the state of Texas, they're trying to make it more difficult for people to vote, and then they come forward with this legislation saying, oh, and by the way, your vote doesn't even matter because at the end of the day, if all these electors based on your votes, then look at the candidates and like, no, this dude's nuts.

[bronxiteforever]

1. in this election both Patrick & Abbott won with a 10%

margin over Democratic opponents. That pretty much tells you where Texas sits on the the competitive scale for us.

Sure this is outrageous but Florida and Texas may be lost causes for us for the foreseeable future since we have no power in the legislature which is controlled by Rs.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. Texas Attorney General can't unilaterally use phony prosecutions of "voter fraud"

Paxton tried this last cycle and a GOP controlled court ruled against Paxton

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