LWVTX Blog

Extreme Elections Bills Make their Way Through the House and Senate

Last week proved to be a very challenging week for voting rights advocates. The House Elections and Senate State Affairs Committees cued up a barrage of bills which would reshape how our elections are administered and who would be responsible for them.

On short notice, the Senate State Affairs Committee heard nearly a dozen election bills at the same time as the House Elections Committee. The good news is that dozens of witnesses showed up to testify, mainly against these bills. And almost 25,000 of emails were sent or calls made via our Take Action Center! The bad news is they couldn’t be in two places at once, although quite a few managed.

Here are some of the bills that were heard in committee last week...

Bills Adversely Impacting Election Administration:

• HB 2020 / SB 823 – Allow the Secretary of State to remove an election administrator. The bills fail to adequately define the standard or circumstances under which the SOS exercises this power nor do they provide any due process to the election administrator in the county affected. You can read our testimony on this bill here. 
• SB 1039 – Allows certain people or entities (including PACs) to request an audit by the Secretary of State.
• SB 1907, SB 1911, and SB 1950 – Create criminal penalties for election workers who make administrative mistakes at a time when official retention rates are already stressed. According to data from the Secretary of State’s office, nearly a third of Texas election officials have quit or retired since 2020.
• HB 5153 – Allows any violation of the election code to be tried in counties adjoining the county in which the offense occurred, creating the risk of multiple simultaneous prosecutions.
• SB 1070 – Withdraws Texas from the interstate crosscheck system known as ERIC, or the Electronic Registration Information Center. ERIC is used to clean up our voter rolls. 
• SB 220 – Creates the office of Chief Election Marshal and regional marshals to train and deploy law enforcement during elections to enforce election law.
• SB 1993 – Empowers the Secretary of State to order a new election in counties of more than 1 million people based on "good cause to believe" that supplemental ballot paper was not delivered to at least 2% of the total number of polling places.

Bills Adversely Impacting Voters:

• SB 1600 – Would require individuals to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote, which would require permissions under the NVRA and HAVA. The Attorney General is directed to sue if those permissions are not given.
• SB 260 – Would allow a county voter registrar to send an address confirmation notice to a voter after only 25 months of inactivity. If the voter does not confirm their address, then they will be placed on the suspense list. 
• SB 2 – Increases penalties on ineligible voting and makes changes to the language of the statute that could result in convictions for mistaken voting.