Another Republican state uses the excuse of Donald Trump’s Big Lie to suppress votes. They have to do it, you see. Republicans who believe Trump’s Big Lie have “lost faith” in the system and the only way to restore it is to make sure that Democrats can’t win elections. Perfectly understandable.
The Texas Senate in the early morning hours Thursday passed a package of election bills that would put new restrictions on voting in the state.
The final version of the Senate Bill 7 is not yet online for review, but the original bill banned overnight early voting hours and drive-thru early voting, while restricting how election officials handle mail voting.
The bill underwent hours of debate and “scores” of proposed amendments before passage, according to the bill’s author, Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes.
“This bill is about making it easy to vote and hard to cheat,” he said in a social media video posted after 3 a.m. in Austin.
The bill now heads to the Texas House of Representatives, which is considering its own omnibus package of restrictions, House Bill 6, later Thursday.
The Texas legislature leads the nation in restrictive voting bills, according to the Brennan Center for Justice; 49 bills have been introduced to add restrictions on access to the ballot box.
Advocates have slammed the Senate bill as unnecessary and a major threat to voting rights.
“SB 7 is the most dangerous threat to voting rights we’ve seen in years,” Joaquin Gonzalez, an attorney with Texas Civil Rights Project, said in a statement. “The biggest threats to election integrity are codified racist attacks on voters, unequal access to the polls, and harassment by partisan poll watchers who would seek to disrupt safe and fair elections.”
In an interview with NBC News last month, Hughes said that the 2020 election increased interest in legislation Texas lawmakers were already keen on passing.
“This was already in process, but then the 2020 election was so in the national spotlight, and so many people have questions, so many people have concerns,” he told NBC News last week. “I would say that has raised the profile of the issue.”
These people don’t even try to hide the fact that they simply don’t want people voting. The only thing that could justify all these actions would be proof of systematic voter fraud as a result of expanded opportunities to vote. There is none. So we know why they are doing this: to suppress the vote of Democrats and pander to Donald Trump and his ignorant cult.