The Texas Legislature was on the verge Sunday of signing off on some of the most restrictive voting measures in the United States.
Austin, Texas — The Texas Legislature was on the verge Sunday of signing off on some of the most restrictive voting measures in the U.S., putting the GOP on the brink of a major victory in their nationwide effort to tighten voting access following the 2020 election. A vote in the state House expected later Sunday is the last barrier to sending Republican Gov. Greg Abbott a raft of election changes that would eliminate drive-thru voting, empower partisan poll watchers and impose new requirements in order to cast a ballot by mail in Texas, which already has some of toughest voting laws in the nation. Democrats dug in for one last and longshot challenge on the House floor but had little means of stopping the bill. Hours earlier on Sunday, the Texas Senate muscled the bill through shortly after sunrise after bringing it up for a vote in the middle of the night on a Memorial Day weekend, when the state Capitol was all but empty. Even before the final House vote, Democrats said they would try to block the measure in court. “It’s an awful bill,” said Democratic state Rep. Jessica Gonzalez, the vice chairwoman of the House Elections Committee. ”But I’m hopeful that this underhanded behavior, the way they undercut the process, will help us when we litigate this.” Under revisions during closed-door negotiations, Republicans added language that could make it easier for a judge to overturn an election and pushed back the start of Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers head to the polls. The 67-page measure would also eliminate drive-thru voting and 24-hour polling centers, both of which Harris County, the state’s largest Democratic stronghold, introduced last year. Texas is the last big battleground in the GOP’s nationwide efforts to tighten voting laws, driven by former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Georgia and Florida have also passed new voting restrictions, and President Joe Biden on Saturday unfavorably compared Texas’ bill to election changes in those states as “an assault on democracy.
