The only “problem” Texas Republicans “fixed” with their new vote suppression bills is the problem of too many eligible, legal voters in the big cities voting for Democrats. That’s it. There was no fraud and they know it.
In the course of several hours Saturday and early Sunday, Senate Republicans hurtled to move forward on a sweeping voting bill negotiated behind closed doors where it doubled in length and grew to include voting law changes that weren’t previously considered.
Over Democrats’ objections, they suspended the chamber’s own rules to narrow the window lawmakers had to review the new massive piece of legislation before giving it final approval ahead of the end of Monday’s end to the legislative session. This culminated in an overnight debate and party line vote early Sunday to sign off on a raft of new voting restrictions and changes to elections and get it one step closer to the governor’s desk.
Senate Bill 7, the GOP’s priority voting bill, emerged Saturday from a conference committee as an expansive bill that would touch nearly the entire voting process, including provisions to limit early voting hours, curtail local voting options and further tighten voting-by-mail, among several other provisions. It was negotiated behind closed doors over the last week after the House and Senate passed significantly different versions of the legislation and pulled from each chamber’s version of the bill. The bill also came back with a series of additional voting rule changes, including a new ID requirement for mail-in ballots, that weren’t part of previous debates on the bill.
But instead of giving senators the 24 hours required under the chamber’s rules to go over the committee’s report, including those new additions, state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, moved to ignore that mandate so the Senate could debate and eventually vote on the final version of the bill just hours after it was filed.
Around 6 p.m. Saturday, Hughes acknowledged the Senate would consider the report “earlier than usual” but tried to argue he was giving senators “more time” by alerting them about his plan to debate the final version of SB 7 at 10 p.m.
“That’s a nice spin,” state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, shot back.
The Legislature is up against a Sunday night deadline to approve conference committee reports, like the compromise version of SB 7. Had the Senate waited until later Sunday to consider it, it could have left it in reach of a filibuster that could’ve killed the bill. The House is expected to vote on the final version of the bill later today.
Senate Democrats raised concerns that they had not had sufficient time to review the 180-page conference committee report, including a 67-page bill and a lengthy analysis of the negotiated changes. Roughly 12 pages of the bill contained additions that hadn’t been previously considered as part of the legislation and were added by the committee out of the public eye. The truncated schedule also left them without the opportunity to check in with local election officials in their districts or voting rights groups monitoring its passage, they said.
After Senate Republicans voted to suspend the rules, Hughes opened debate on a resolution to approve those 12 pages of additional changes, with Democrats questioning the origin of those changes and the lack of public input in tacking them onto the bill.
“I couldn’t in good faith vote to pass a bill the size of this one, that will affect the voting rights of every single Texan of voting age, when they’ve been deprived of the opportunity to voice their opinions on the final package of this bill,” state Sen. Beverly Powell, D-Burleson, said.
Throughout the debate, Hughes argued SB 7 was striving for “common sense” solutions that secured elections from wrongdoing and fraud.
“We want elections to be secure and accessible,” he said.
That’s the kind of unctuous double speak that makes me want to scream. The gall! There was no fraud!!!!!
The new provisions include language from separate Republican bills that failed to pass that would set a new voter ID rule for mail-in ballots, requiring voters to provide their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number, if they have one, on their applications for those ballots. For their votes to be counted, voters will be required to include matching information on the envelopes used to return their ballots.
Other changes, including a new window of 1 to 9 p.m. for early voting on Sundays, hadn’t come up until they were added to the conference committee report outside of public view. State Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, raised the possibility that change could hamper “souls to the polls” efforts meant to turn out voters after church services and questioned the justification for 1 p.m. start time.
There is no justification for any of it. They just want to make it harder, in any way they can, for people to vote.
I have to say, though, that they may not realize they are shooting themselves in the foot. They obviously believe that by making voting more complicated and arduous they are suppressing the Democratic vote because Democrats are more lazy and stupid than Republicans.
Are they really so sure about that? Have they been to a MAGA rally?
Update: I have been unable to determine if the late added provision allowing a judge to overturn the election results if some wingnut claims they have “a preponderance of the evidence” that there was voter fraud. For some reason the news reports I’ve seen don’t spell that out. I’ll update when it’s cleared up.
All the vote suppression stuff is horrible, undemocratic, Jim Crow bullshit. But these new laws that allow Republicans to simply steal elections legally is really, really scary. Texas was the first to propose something like this:
Texas Republicans just released the text of its voter suppression bill, SB7
Votes will be held before midnight Sunday
The bill includes a NEW PROVISION that allows judges to OVERTURN AN ELECTION “WITHOUT DETERMINING HOW INDIVIDUAL VOTERS VOTED”
Follow along if interested
This section appears to validate Trump’s claims that he won various states because a certain number of people voted “illegally” without any other details
Now people like Guiliani can take these absurd allegations to court and, with a sympathetic judge, OVERTURN AN ELECTION
3. Texas is poised to adopt this unprecedented and radical legal provision without ANY DEBATE IN EITHER CHAMBER
It was negotiated in a secret conference committee and released on a Saturday of a holiday weekend
This is another NEW PROVISION of the law straight from the right-wing fever swamp. It requires the Texas Secretary of State to ensure no county has more registered voters than people eligible to vote.
This is a favorite tactic of far-right orgs alleging voter fraud
Since the number of voters in a given county who are eligible is constantly changing, right-wing groups like to point to counties with “too many registered voters” as “proof” of voter fraud
Under the bill, this can be used to force counties to engage in voter purges etc
I think this provision about “too many registered voters” should be read along with the provision allowing judges to overturn the election
It opens the possibility to judges overturning the election based on flawed data on how many voters were eligible to vote
Originally tweeted by Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) on May 29, 2021.