AUSTIN — The Texas House on Tuesday passed the final version of a Republican-backed bill that would implement strict new voting rules, bringing it one step closer to the governor's desk after months of intense partisan battling over how elections should be conducted in the state.
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The House approved a slightly amended version of the measure by a vote of 80 to 41. The vote was a win for Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who called two special legislative sessions in the long-running attempt to pass the elections bill.
The Senate was scheduled to consider the measure at 1:30 p.m. local time. After it passes that chamber, Abbott is expected to quickly sign the legislation into law.
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“I think it’s a very important day. I think that we set out to do some very important things – to make sure our elections are secure, to correct some things we saw in the last election cycle, and I’m glad that we finally have it passed out after a long delay,” said Rep. Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), one of seven Republicans on the conference committee for the bill.
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Minutes before the House vote, Democratic legislators pressed their argument that the bill would curtail participation in elections.
“I respect the desire to have honesty and integrity in our elections. All of us want that. Democrats and Republicans alike want that,” state Rep. John Turner (D - Dallas) said on the House floor. “But this bill as a whole, in my judgment, has too many provisions that are not only unnecessary but that are actually harmful to the electoral process, and that is not what we should want or expect in a well-functioning democracy.”
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If the bill is enacted, Texas will join at least 17 other states that have tightened their rules for casting ballots and running elections since the 2020 vote, which former president Donald Trump and his supporters have falsely claimed was tainted by widespread fraud.
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Texas Democrats said Tuesday’s action intensified the need for Congress to pass stalled federal voting-rights legislation.
“We knew we wouldn’t be able to hold off this day forever,” Rep. Chris Turner, the House Democratic Caucus chairman, said in a statement. “Now that it has come, we need the U.S. Senate to act immediately to pass federal legislation to protect Texas voters from Republicans’ assault on our democracy.”
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Supporters of new voting restrictions in Texas have argued they are necessary to prevent vote tampering. Opponents argue those claims are a pretext for limiting access to the polls, including for voters who are less likely to support Republicans.
Texas House Democrats fought the elections bill for months, staging two walkouts, including an exodus by dozens of legislators from Austin to Washington in mid-July that led GOP leaders to threaten their arrest. Several state Senate Democrats also left in solidarity, and one senator filibustered the bill for 15 hours.
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Republicans managed to reestablish a quorum in the House earlier this month and fast-tracked the bill when a handful of Democrats returned, citing the coronavirus pandemic and other policy issues they hoped to address.
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Advocates for voting rights have said the bill’s provisions will make it harder to cast ballots in Texas, a state that already has strict voting rules and has historically seen low voter turnout.
Republicans adjusted the legislation as they pushed for its passage over the summer, stripping out some initial provisions that drew sharp criticism — including a rule that would have banned early voting on Sunday mornings.
The final version bans methods for casting ballots that were embraced in predominantly Democratic Harris County in 2020, including drive-through and 24-hour voting. It empowers partisan poll watchers by allowing them to be close enough to hear and see the action, though it also requires them to receive a training manual from the secretary of state. The measure also adds criminal penalties for people who help others vote and election officials who make unintended errors. And it stops local jurisdictions from taking their own steps to expand access to voting, including sending unsolicited applications for mail ballots.
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The Democrats’ protest kicked into high gear at the end of May, when legislators staged a walkout from the House floor to prevent passage of the new voting restrictions before a midnight deadline. Abbott responded by calling a special session that began in July, which prompted Democrats to break quorum again by fleeing Texas for Washington. After the first special session ended without progress on the elections bill, Abbott called another, which continued this week.
Exiled Texas Democrats race to keep up momentum as Republicans in Austin ramp up pressure for their return
The saga strained ties between the parties in the House, with Democrats accusing Republicans of racist policymaking and Republicans sending the sergeant-at-arms to try to arrest absent Democrats in their homes. Tensions erupted again during last week’s floor debate when Speaker Dade Phelan (R) sought to prevent Democrats from using the terms “racism” and “racist.”
On Tuesday, Democratic legislators offered their final arguments against the measure.
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“I cannot support this bill, for a simple reason,” said Turner, one of the three Democrats on the conference committee who did not sign the report. “I believe this bill does more harm than good for our democracy.”
Turner highlighted a contentious section related to people who register to vote or cast a ballot when they are not eligible to do so.
Under the bill, a county registrar has 72 hours to submit an affidavit with the details of the voter’s actions to the state attorney general, the secretary of state and the local prosecutor. Critics say this requirement could encourage the criminal prosecutions of people who vote without realizing they are ineligible, citing the case of Crystal Mason, who was sentenced to five years in prison for casting a provisional ballot that was never counted in the 2016 presidential election. Mason was on supervised release for a federal conviction and says she did not realize she was not eligible to vote.
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State Rep. Briscoe Cain (R) sought to soften the language with an amendment, but it was stripped out during the conference committee with the Senate. The final version of the bill does require courts to tell people who are convicted of a felony how the conviction affects their right to vote.
The Cain amendment “reinforces the core bedrock principle of criminal law — that only a person who acts with criminal intent should be subject to criminal punishment,” Turner said.
“I hope this body will continue working to correct the injustice by which an inherently benign — even a civic — act, the act of voting, becomes a basis for the deprivation of a person’s liberty,” he said.
Viebeck reported from Washington.