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      State Election Officials Are Under Attack. We Will Defend Them.

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      Tucked into many of the election laws Republicans are pushing or enacting in states around the country are pernicious provisions threatening punishment of elections officials and workers for just doing their jobs.Laws like those already passed in Republican-controlled states like Georgia and Iowa, no matter their stated intent, will be used as a weapon of intimidation aimed at the people, many of them volunteers, charged with running fair elections at the local and state levels. By subjecting them to invasive, politically motivated control by a state legislative majority, these provisions shift the last word in elections from the pros to the pols. This is a serious attack on the crucial norm that our elections should be run on a professional, nonpartisan basis — and it is deeply wrong.It is so wrong that having once worked together across the partisan divide as co-chairs of the 2013-14 Presidential Commission on Election Administration, we have decided to come together again to mobilize the defense of election officials who may come under siege from these new laws.Bear in mind that this is happening after the 2020 election, run in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic, went off much better than expected. Voter turnout was the highest since 1900. A senior official in the Trump administration pronounced it the “most secure election in American history,” with “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.” Multiple recounts, contests and court cases brought by former President Donald Trump and his allies failed to persuade any courts or state officials to overturn the results of any election.The new laws establish civil penalties for technical infractions and subject officials to threats of suspension and even criminal prosecution. Iowa state election officials are now subject to fines of $10,000 and suspension for any actions that “hinder or disregard the object of the law.” They are also subject to criminal penalties when seeking to address disruptive conduct by partisan poll watchers. In Georgia, an election official threatened with suspension may appeal, but the law restricts state-financed support for the individual’s legal defense. The Georgia secretary of state, the chief election official, has been removed from the chairmanship of the State Elections Board, demoted to nonvoting ex officio status.Other states are considering laws containing similar threats to the impartial administration of elections. It can be no surprise that officials around the country are also experiencing threats and harassment ranging from physical confrontation to social media postings of personal information from their Facebook pages. And this dangerous behavior is spreading throughout the electoral process. Last month, election officials in Anchorage, Alaska, issued a report describing the “unprecedented harassment of election officials” during the conduct of a mayoral runoff election.The partisan efforts to control election outcomes will result in the corruption of our system of government, which is rooted in fair, free elections. We say this as longtime election lawyers from opposing political parties. In jointly leading the presidential commission, we worked with numerous local and state elections officials. We saw firsthand the dedication and professionalism they brought to their jobs. They work hard with inadequate resources and are rarely praised for what goes well and are quickly blamed for what goes wrong.In 2020, after the pandemic struck, these officials performed the near-impossible task of locating replacements for thousands of poll workers, reconfiguring polling places to offer safe voting spaces for voters and poll workers and ramping up effective mail voting where allowed under state law.Now their nonpartisan performance of their duties is under attack — even to the point of being criminalized. So we are committed to providing these officials a defense against these attacks and threats by recruiting lawyers around the country, Democrats and Republicans, to establish a network that would provide free legal support to election officials who face threats, fines or suspensions for doing their jobs. This national network will monitor new threats as they develop and publicly report on what it learns.The defense of the electoral process is not a partisan cause, even where there may be reasonable disagreements between the parties about specific voting rules and procedures. The presidential commission we led concluded that “election administration is public administration” and that whenever possible, “the responsible department or agency in every state should have on staff individuals who are chosen and serve solely on the basis of their experience and expertise.” To serve voters, those officials would require independence from partisan political pressures, threats and retaliatory attacks.These state laws, and the blind rage against our election officials that they encourage or reinforce, will corrode our electoral systems and democracy. They will add to the recent lamentable trend of experienced officials’ retiring from their active and vitally needed service — clearing the way for others less qualified and more easily managed by partisans. Early surveys show that in our nation’s larger jurisdictions, up to a quarter of experienced election officials are planning to leave their jobs. A primary reason they cite: “the political environment.”No requirement of our electoral process — of our democracy — is more critical than the commitment to nonpartisanship in the administration of our system for casting and counting of ballots now being degraded by these state laws. This challenge must be strongly and forcefully met in every possible way by Democrats and Republicans alike.Bob Bauer, a former senior adviser to the Biden campaign, is a professor at New York University School of Law and a co-author of “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.” Ben Ginsberg practiced election law for 38 years representing Republican candidates and parties.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      George P. Bush, Jeb's Son, Runs For Texas Attorney General

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      George P. Bush — son of Jeb Bush, nephew of George W. Bush and grandson of George H.W. Bush — is running for attorney general in Texas, and away from the legacy of antipathy to former President Donald J. Trump embodied by his own last name.The new campaign beer cozies handed out to supporters this week featured the Lone Star flag on the front, and, on the flip side, a quote from Mr. Trump — who relentlessly mocked Mr. Bush’s father in 2016 — that read:“This is the only Bush that likes me! This is the Bush that got it right. I like him.”The younger Mr. Bush, who currently serves as commissioner of the Texas land office, a statewide post with a wide range of development and education functions, is taking on Ken Paxton, the ferociously pro-Trump incumbent who filed an unsuccessful lawsuit contesting election results in four states that the former president lost last November.The Bush swag tells the story of a Republican primary challenger treading a narrow and perhaps unforgiving path between Mr. Trump and a center-right family philosophy now far out of step with the party’s base.The primary takes place in March, followed by the general election in November. Two Democrats — Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney from Dallas, and Joe Jaworski, the former mayor of Galveston — have said they will run. In 2018, Mr. Paxton defeated the Democrat Justin Nelson by around three points.At his Wednesday kickoff at a beer garden in Austin, Mr. Bush accused Mr. Paxton of corruption while emphasizing his own support for Mr. Trump. The attorney general was indicted on securities fraud charges five years ago; he has repeatedly denied the charges and claimed the case is politically motivated.In a follow-up interview with Fox News on Thursday, Mr. Bush praised “the Trump days,” and criticized President Biden for reversing many of the previous administration’s policies at the border. He went out of his way to describe the details of a chat he initiated with Mr. Trump, seeking his support.“We had a great conversation a few days ago, he sent me his best — he had great words of encouragement,” Mr. Bush said of the man who delighted in taunting his father as “low energy.” Mr. Trump, who commands the overwhelming support of Republicans in Texas but who won the state by only five points, has basked in the empowering glow of the candidates’ praise. “I like them both very much,” he told CNN earlier this week. “I’ll be making my endorsement and recommendation to the great people of Texas in the not-so-distant future.”The low-key Mr. Bush, a Florida native whose mother is Mexican-American, has also been adopting an increasingly confrontational posture with local Democrats.Last week, Mr. Bush’s land office — which has broad discretion in doling out federal aid to localities — denied disaster mitigation aid to several cities with large minority populations, including Houston. He reversed course a few days later under pressure from the state’s congressional delegation, announcing he would release about $750 million in funds allocated in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in 2017. More

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      Texas governor threatens to defund state legislature after Democrats block voting bill

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      Voting rights advocates on Tuesday excoriated Texas governor Greg Abbott’s bizarre threat to defund the state legislature after Democratic lawmakers thwarted an 11th-hour attempt to pass his priority bill that would have made it even harder for the public to cast a ballot in elections.“At the end of the day, it’s so embarrassing that our governor can’t take a setback without throwing a tantrum about it,” Emily Eby, staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, told the Guardian.In Texas and across the United States, Republicans have tried to roll back access to the polls after last year’s election, when their rightwing supporters bought into unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud.Texas’s Senate Bill 7 would have imposed felonies on public officials for certain activities related to boosting mail-in voting, banned 24-hour and drive-thru voting, emboldened partisan poll-watchers and made it easier to overturn election results, among other provisions.The legislation went through a dizzying rash of iterations and revisions to reconcile both chambers’ priorities, even as advocates and experts warned that its bedrock proposals could disproportionately disenfranchise communities of color, city dwellers, voters with disabilities and elderly people.But even after pervasive condemnation of what critics dubbed “Jim Crow 2.0”, SB7 seemed primed to clear the state legislature just before the session’s end – until Texas Democrats walked off the House floor Sunday night.“No pay for those who abandon their responsibilities,” Abbott tweeted Monday. “Stay tuned.”As Texas’s chief executive, Abbott can veto individual line items in the budget, and he said he intended to do away with Article X funding the legislature, including lawmakers, staff and adjacent agencies.But the budget he’s considering won’t go into effect until September, the Texas Tribune reported, rendering his retributive plan largely ineffective while potentially hurting future legislators.“This might be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard a politician suggest,” said Wesley Story, communications manager for Progress Texas. “But there is pretty stiff competition in that department when it comes to Texas Republicans.”For pundits and lawmakers alike, a giant question mark loomed over Abbott’s incendiary wielding of power as he tried to exercise the authority to punish a whole government branch.“He didn’t get his voter suppression bill so he’s withholding pay from not only the entire legislature, but the staff and aides who rely on it to survive,” political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen wrote online. “To their core, Republicans despise democracy.”“This would eliminate the branch of government that represents the people and basically create a monarchy,” tweeted state representative Donna Howard.Meanwhile, Abbott said he’s also planning to call a special session – what amounts to legislative overtime – in part to address the specious talking point of “election integrity”, which he still considers an emergency despite the legislature’s failure to pass SB7.When that rapid-fire round will take place remains unclear, though Republican leaders are already presenting it as an inevitability.“We will be back – when, I don’t know, but we will be back,” Texas house speaker Dade Phelan told his colleagues. “There’s a lot of work to be done, but I look forward to doing it with every single one of you.” More

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      Texas Republicans plot to resurrect restrictive voting bill after Democrats’ walkout

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      Republicans in Texas are already plotting to resurrect their fight for sweeping voting restrictions after Democratic lawmakers walked out of the state capitol and blocked an 11th-hour attempt to ram through legislation that would have made it harder to cast a ballot.Texas governor Greg Abbott – who leads the state’s domineering Republican majority – has announced he will include the high-stakes issue on his agenda when he reconvenes the legislature for a rapid-fire special session. He called the failure of the bill “deeply disappointing”.Abbott, who says “election integrity” remains an emergency in Texas, now plans to call a special session – essentially legislative overtime, where lawmakers consider issues on a sped-up timeline. When the session will begin remains unclear.But advocates are still painting last night’s historic show of force as an inflection point for the Texas legislature and America, when Democrats shirked business as usual for aggressive tactics that matched the urgency of a teetering democracy.“The fight you saw last night is the fight that will remain and continue,” state representative Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat representing San Antonio, told the Guardian. “That’s our commitment.”Senate Bill 7, an omnibus bill that restricts voter access, seemed almost destined to become law at the start of Texas’s legislative session, as powerful Republican leaders invoked baseless claims of “election integrity” to push for a virtual overhaul of the state’s already notoriously byzantine voting system.SB7 was one proposal among a larger blitz of at least 389 restrictive voting bills introduced across the country this legislative cycle, bolstered by Republicans’ unsubstantiated assertions of widespread voter fraud during last year’s election.The Texas bill drew ire from business leaders, voting rights advocates and left-leaning politicians, some of whom dubbed it “Jim Crow 2.0” and noted the disproportionate impact it would likely have on voters of color. But Republican lawmakers still strong-armed their way through procedural maneuvers and overnight votes, relying on backroom dealings and avoiding public scrutiny while advancing the legislation.“People want a fair system. And they saw what happened, and they know that this is a cynical attempt at holding onto power,” said Charlie Bonner, communications director at the civic engagement non-profit Move Texas.“These are people who are trying to stack the deck, and they’re doing it in the middle of the night.”SB7 has gone through a series of dizzying changes since it first passed the state senate in early April, culminating in a Frankenstein bill that attempted to reconcile both chambers’ priorities, plus add new provisions in the final stretch.The bill would have made it a state jail felony for a public official to proactively solicit or send vote by mail applications, restricted the use of drop boxes, banned 24-hour and drive-thru voting and lowered the bar for overturning an election, among other measures.After months of controversy, it was still teed up to meet a midnight deadline Sunday night, when it needed to clear the House to land on Abbott’s desk. But, after being silenced and boxed out of deliberations, Democrats decided to go nuclear, preventing the necessary quorum for a vote.“The eyes of the nation were watching Texas, and we wanted to make very clear that Texas Democrats would fight tooth and nail to defend voting rights,” Martinez Fischer said.Now, even as the regular legislative session concludes, the fight is far from over as Abbott plans his special session. Texas Lt Governor Dan Patrick has already endorsed Abbott’s plan, and state representative Briscoe Cain, who spearheaded the push for voter restrictions in the House, has tweeted that he was “ready to get back to work”.“They’re gonna want this really, really bad. They’re gonna want this probably even more now,” said Carisa Lopez, political director of the nonprofit watchdog Texas Freedom Network.But the special session also provides an opportunity for more scrutiny, especially after Republicans routinely relied on behind closed doors negotiations during the regular session, evading public testimony and accountability.“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” Bonner said. “And so what we can do in this legislative process is shine a light on these bad actors and voter suppressors, and make them feel the pressure of the entire world watching what’s happening in Texas right now.” More

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      in US Politics

      Republican resistance: dissenting Texas leads the anti-Biden charge

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      First it was tighter restrictions on voting. Then stringent limits on abortion. Then a relaxation of gun laws. And that was just May.Texas, a state famed for its independent streak and doing everything bigger, is staking an early claim as the bulwark of Republican opposition to Joe Biden’s administration. It is a mirror image of the previous four years when California, the only state more populous than Texas, emerged as the bastion of Democratic resistance to Donald Trump’s agenda.The defiance of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and then attorney general, Xavier Becerra, in filing more than a hundred lawsuits against the Trump administration over gun control, immigration and other issues was seen as a ray of hope for liberals during some dark years.Now the shoe is on the other foot. Texas – which sued Barack Obama’s administration 48 times during his two terms – became thefirst state to file a suit against Biden’s White House in January, just two days after he took office, successfully blocking a freeze on deportations.Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, has since unleashed a barrage of legal challenges regarding everything from environmental regulations to funding for a healthcare program to tax policy under Biden’s coronavirus relief package.It was also Texas that led a lawsuit in January seeking to overturn the presidential election results in four battleground states that Donald Trump lost. The effort was thrown out by the supreme court but helped establish Texas as a voice of dissent in the Biden era.“I think this is going to be home base for the Republican reactionary forces,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “Federalism in America turns out to be an enclave for increasingly ideological politics and, especially when the out party in Washington is looking for hope and new ideas, they’re turning to these ideological enclaves at the state level.”There is an important difference from the California example, however. The Golden State might have produced Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan but has since become overwhelmingly Democratic: Biden won it with 11m votes to Trump’s 6m. In Texas, however, the Republican advantage has been eroding since George W Bush was president: Trump gained 5.9m votes to Biden’s 5.3m.Jacobs added: “You look at the growing numbers of American ‘immigrants’ coming from California to Texas, the growing number of educated voters who tend to vote Democrat and the potential Latino vote, particularly in the main urban areas, and how long Texas remains a stronghold for the Republican party is something that’s been debated for some time.“You’re seeing this hard-right move in Texas, but it’s not clear that Texas is going to remain hard right.”Republicans’ current domination of the state government, however, is enabling them to embrace Trumpian politics while the going is still good. Like their colleagues in other state houses, party officials in Texas have exploited Trump’s baseless claims of fraud to justify new rules in the name of election security.Proposed legislation includes expanding what poll watchers are allowed to do, creating an oath for people who volunteer to help voters who need assistance, and establishing criminal penalties for election officials for sending mail ballot applications. Activists say the measures will make it harder for poor people and people of colour to vote. The measures failed to pass on Sunday before a midnight deadline, after Democrats staged a walkout. However, governor Greg Abbott has vowed to bring the bill back at a special session. Abbott recently signed a law that bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, possibly as early as six weeks – before many women even know they are pregnant. “The life of every unborn child with a heartbeat will be saved from the ravages of abortion,” he declared.This week a bill that would let Texans carry concealed handguns without any permit passed the state legislature and headed to the desk of Abbott, who has promised to sign it. The move was cheered by the National Rifle Association and Ted Cruz, a Texas senator, who tweeted: “This is excellent news for law-abiding, second-amendment loving Texans.”The Texas Democratic party argues that such policies are the work of one Republican faction, not all of it, and out of step with the wishes of the population and that Republicans will be punished in next year’s midterm elections.Luke Warford, its chief strategy officer, argues this makes the situation different from California during the Trump years. “The California Democratic party and their elected officials are probably doing stuff that’s in line with what the population of California supports and believes,” he said by phone from Austin, the state capital.“All this stuff the Texas Republicans are doing right now is not wildly popular. It’s not in line with the populace writ large. I understand the right wing of the party’s logic in trying to drum up their base and be Trump version 2.0 but I think they’re going to pay for it in [midterm elections in] 2022. When we look at the Republican party of Texas, we see fragmentation.”Warford points to the example of February’s winter storm that killed 111 people and caused one of the biggest power blackouts in American history, when more than 4 million customers lost heat. “Texans are dying in their home and we just had an entire legislative session where they didn’t meaningfully address that. It wasn’t a priority.”He also dismissed Texas Republicans’ attempts to sue the Biden administration as “performative”, adding: “It’s good for a fundraising email and to be able to beat your chest and say, ‘I stood up to the administration’, but I think they’re not going to be successful in a lot of those instances.“The reality is that Texans are not looking at the Biden administration being like, ‘They’re terrible, let’s stand up to them’. I think they’re looking at the Biden administration being like, ‘We all got vaccinated and we all got cheques. This is pretty good. Why are our Republican leaders screaming about them?’”Texas has its fair share of Trump cheerleaders. Cruz has swallowed his pride to become a loyal devotee, while his Senate colleague John Cornyn recently questioned whether Biden is “really in charge”. Dan Patrick, the Texas lieutenant governor, offered up to $1m for evidence of voter fraud after Trump’s defeat. Louie Gohmert, a US congressman from Texas, downplayed the 6 January riot at the US Capitol.And next month Dallas in Texas hosts a spin-off from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a staunchly pro-Trump gathering, under the banner “America UnCanceled”.But the vast state, which like California borders Mexico, faces stiff competition for the crown of Republican government in exile. Florida is Trump’s adopted home and its governor, Ron DeSantis, has gained a higher profile than Abbott as a rightwing populist who might himself run for president.Bill Whalen, a former media consultant for California politicians including former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said: “Governor Jerry Brown got very vocal with Trump, especially on climate change stuff, but Newsom took it to a whole other level when he came into office, I think at one point calling himself the leader of the resistance.“That was about Gavin Newsom having White House aspirations. I look at Florida now because I see DeSantis doing the same as Newsom, really trying to put himself as the vanguard of his party and the lead voice of opposition. I see Florida being held up by its governor as the anti-Biden, anti-Democratic model.”But Texas does retain one advantage, at least for now. Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, added: “Florida is still a swing state. As much as Democrats would like to talk about Texas being a swing state, it’s not there right now.” More

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      in US Politics

      Texas Democrats’ late-night walkout scuppers Republican efforts to restrict voting rights

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      Texas Republican have failed in their efforts to push through one of the most restrictive voting measures in the US after Democrats walked out of the House at the last minute, leaving the bill languishing ahead of a midnight deadline.The exodus came at the instruction of Chris Turner, the House Democratic chairman, who told colleagues at 10.35pm to “take your key and leave the chamber discreetly”, referring to the key that locks the voting mechanism on their desks, the Washington Post reported.Democrat state representative Jessica González said after the walkout: “We decided to come together and say we weren’t going to take it.” She said she objected to the bill’s content and the way it was crafted with no input from her party. “We needed to be part of the process. Cutting us out completely – I mean this law will affect every single voter in Texas.”Fellow Democrat Carl Sherman said: “We’ve said for so many years that we want more people to participate in our democracy. And it just seems that’s not the case.”Governor Greg Abbott said the failure of the legislation was “deeply disappointing and concerning” but vowed to bring it back at a special session at an unspecified date.Republicans showed restraint in criticising Democrats for the move. Republican state representative Briscoe Cain, who carried the bill in the House, said: “I am disappointed that some members decided to break quorum. We all know what that meant. I understand why they were doing it, but we all took an oath to Texans that we would be here to do our jobs.”Less than 24 hours earlier, the bill seemed all but guaranteed to reach Abbott’s desk. The bill had passed in the Senate on party lines around 6am on Sunday, after eight hours of questioning by Democrats who had virtually no path to stop it. However, a Democrat walkout prevented a quorum in the House.In closed-door negotiations, Republicans added language to Senate Bill 7 that could make it easier for a judge to overturn an election. They also pushed back the start of Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers go to the polls. The measure would also eliminate drive-thru voting and 24-hour polling centers, both of which Harris county, a Democratic stronghold, introduced last year.Critics say such measures suppress turnout among minorities likely to vote Democratic. On Sunday morning Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a member of Democratic leadership in the US House, called SB7 “shameful”.“Republicans clearly in Texas and throughout the country want to make it harder to vote and easier to steal an election,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “That’s the only way that I can interpret the voter suppression epidemic that we see working its way from Georgia to Arizona to Texas and all across the country.”At a press conference held by the Texas Democratic party, national figures including former congressman Beto O’Rourke, former housing secretary Julián Castro and his brother Joaquin Castro, a serving congressman, sought to raise the alarm.“This is gonna make it harder for the average Texan to get out and cast their ballot whether they’re Republican or Democrat,” said Julián Castro. “But it is clearly aimed at people of colour, at Black and Hispanic Texas.“The Republican party is running scared because they know that this state is changing. Senate Bill 7 is an attempt by the Republican party to hold on to their power at the expense of everybody else. And we can’t let it stand.”Michael McCaul, a senior US House Republican from Texas, told CNN he thought the law “may be more of an optics issue, restoring confidence with the American people. In my state you actually do believe that there was tremendous fraud.”There was not. Texas has only one pending voter fraud case arising from the 2020 election. Nonetheless it is the last big battleground in Republican efforts to tighten voting laws, driven by Donald Trump’s lie that the presidential election was stolen. Joe Biden on Saturday compared the Texas bill to election changes in Georgia and Arizona, as “an assault on democracy”.Since Trump’s defeat, at least 14 states have enacted restrictive voting laws, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. It has counted nearly 400 bills nationwide.The vote in the Texas Senate came a short time after a final version of the bill was made public. Republicans suspended rules that normally prohibit taking a vote on a bill that has not been posted for 24 hours. Democrats protested.The bill would empower partisan poll watchers by allowing more access to polling places and threatening criminal penalties against officials who restrict their movement. Another provision allows a judge to void an election outcome if the number of fraudulent votes could change the result, regardless of whether it was proved that fraud affected the outcome.Election officials would face penalties including felony charges for sending mail voting applications to people who did not request one. The Texas District and County Attorneys Association counted at least 16 new, expanded or enhanced crimes.Republicans are also moving to prohibit Sunday voting before 1pm, which critics call an attack on “souls to the polls”, a get-out-the-vote tactic used by Black congregations nationwide and dating back to the civil rights movement. Asked why Sunday voting couldn’t begin sooner, Texas Republican Bryan Hughes said: “Election workers want to go to church too.”Colin Allred, a US representative from Dallas, told the press conference Sunday was “one of the darkest days” for democracy in America. “This isn’t legislation,” he said. “It’s discrimination.”Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader in the US Senate, has said he will bring the For the People Act, a federal measure to protect voting rights, to the floor next month. But it has little chance of beating the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome the Republican minority. More

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      in US Politics

      Texas Democrats say Republican voting bill marks ‘dark day for democracy’

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      Texas Democrats called Sunday “one of the darkest days” for American democracy, after Republicans pushed one of the most restrictive voting measures in the US to the cusp of law, rushing the bill through the state Senate in the middle of the night.Senate Bill 7 was passed on party lines around 6am, after eight hours of questioning by Democrats who had virtually no path to stop it. It was due to receive a vote in the House later on Sunday before reaching Governor Greg Abbott, who was expected to sign it.In closed-door negotiations, Republicans added language that could make it easier for a judge to overturn an election. They also pushed back the start of Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers go to the polls. The measure would also eliminate drive-thru voting and 24-hour polling centers, both of which Harris county, a Democratic stronghold, introduced last year.Critics say such measures suppress turnout among minorities likely to vote Democratic. On Sunday morning Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a member of Democratic leadership in the US House, called SB7 “shameful”.“Republicans clearly in Texas and throughout the country want to make it harder to vote and easier to steal an election,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “That’s the only way that I can interpret the voter suppression epidemic that we see working its way from Georgia to Arizona to Texas and all across the country.”At a press conference held by the Texas Democratic party, national figures including former congressman Beto O’Rourke, former housing secretary Julián Castro and his brother Joaquin Castro, a serving congressman, sought to raise the alarm.“This is gonna make it harder for the average Texan to get out and cast their ballot whether they’re Republican or Democrat,” said Julián Castro. “But it is clearly aimed at people of colour, at Black and Hispanic Texas.“The Republican party is running scared because they know that this state is changing. Senate Bill 7 is an attempt by the Republican party to hold on to their power at the expense of everybody else. And we can’t let it stand.”Michael McCaul, a senior US House Republican from Texas, told CNN he thought the law “may be more of an optics issue, restoring confidence with the American people. In my state you actually do believe that there was tremendous fraud.”There was not. Texas has only one pending voter fraud case arising from the 2020 election. Nonetheless it is the last big battleground in Republican efforts to tighten voting laws, driven by Donald Trump’s lie that the presidential election was stolen. Joe Biden on Saturday compared the Texas bill to election changes in Georgia and Arizona, as “an assault on democracy”.Since Trump’s defeat, at least 14 states have enacted restrictive voting laws, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. It has counted nearly 400 bills nationwide.The vote in the Texas Senate came a short time after a final version of the bill was made public. Republicans suspended rules that normally prohibit taking a vote on a bill that has not been posted for 24 hours. Democrats protested.The bill would empower partisan poll watchers by allowing more access to polling places and threatening criminal penalties against officials who restrict their movement. Another provision allows a judge to void an election outcome if the number of fraudulent votes could change the result, regardless of whether it was proved that fraud affected the outcome.Election officials would face penalties including felony charges for sending mail voting applications to people who did not request one. The Texas District and County Attorneys Association counted at least 16 new, expanded or enhanced crimes.Republicans are also moving to prohibit Sunday voting before 1pm, which critics call an attack on “souls to the polls”, a get-out-the-vote tactic used by Black congregations nationwide and dating back to the civil rights movement. Asked why Sunday voting couldn’t begin sooner, Texas Republican Bryan Hughes said: “Election workers want to go to church too.”State representative Nicole Collier, chair of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, was one of three Democrats picked to negotiate the final bill. None signed it. She said she saw a draft around 11pm on Friday which was different than one received earlier and was asked to sign the next morning.Colin Allred, a US representative from Dallas, told the press conference Sunday was “one of the darkest days” for democracy in America.“This isn’t legislation,” he said. “It’s discrimination.”Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader in the US Senate, has said he will bring the For the People Act, a federal measure to protect voting rights, to the floor next month. But it has little chance of beating the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome the Republican minority.In an emotional appeal in support of the For the People Act, O’Rourke cited the example of civil rights legislation under President Lyndon Johnson, a Texan, in the 1960s.Calling the new federal bill “a Voting Rights Act for our day”, he said passing it would “protect the sanctity of the ballot box and make sure that no state legislature can keep us from voting. So I hope after this good fight is fought in Texas, that we direct all of our energy and all of our focus on our friends in Washington DC, who like they did in 1965 can save American democracy.”With centrist Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona opposed to filibuster reform, that seems unlikely. More

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      in Elections

      Texas Voting Bill Nears Passage as Republicans Advance It

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      The bill, which includes some of the strictest voting measures in the country, would head to the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott if it passes. He is expected to sign it into law.The Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives is poised to take up a bill on Sunday that would impose a raft of new voting restrictions in the state, moving a step closer to the expected full passage of what would be among the most far-reaching laws in Republicans’ nationwide drive to overhaul elections systems and limit voting.The bill, which passed the State Senate early Sunday, would tighten what are already some of the country’s strictest voting laws, and it would specifically target balloting methods that were employed for the first time last year by Harris County, home to Houston. In addition to banning drive-through voting and 24-hour voting, which were used by nearly 140,000 voters in Harris County during the 2020 election, the bill would prohibit election officials from sending absentee ballots to all voters, regardless of whether they had requested them; ban using tents, garages, mobile units or any temporary structure as a polling location; further limit who could vote absentee; and add new identification requirements for voting by mail. Partisan poll watchers would also have more access and autonomy under the bill’s provisions, and election officials could be more harshly punished if they make mistakes or otherwise run afoul of election codes and laws. The bill, which was hashed out in a closed-door panel of lawmakers over the past week as the spring legislative session neared its conclusion on Monday, was rushed to the State Senate floor late Saturday in a legislative power play orchestrated by Republican lawmakers and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Suspending rules that require a bill to be public for 24 hours before a final vote, they set off hours of debate before the Senate passed the bill just after 6 a.m. on Sunday by an 18-to-13 vote. Democrats denounced the dark-of-night legislative maneuver on a measure that Senator Borris L. Miles, a Democrat from Houston, said people in his largely Black and Latino district called “Jim Crow 2.0.”“They do ask me, every time I’m in the neighborhood, is this 2021 or is this 1961?” Mr. Miles said on the Senate floor. “And why are we allowing people to roll back the hands of time?”The House, which did not move to suspend the 24-hour rule, is set to convene at 1 p.m. local time, and will debate the bill before voting on it. No further changes to the legislation can be made. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, is widely expected to sign the bill. Texas is one of several Republican-led states — including Iowa, Georgia and Florida — that have moved since the 2020 presidential contest to pass new laws governing elections and restricting voting. The impetus is both Republicans’ desire to appease their base, much of which continues to believe former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about a stolen election, and the party’s worries about a changing electorate that could threaten the G.O.P.’s longtime grip on power in places like Texas, the second-biggest state in the country.In a statement on Saturday, President Biden called the proposed law, along with similar measures in Georgia and Florida, “an assault on democracy” that disproportionately targeted “Black and Brown Americans.” He called on lawmakers to address the issue by passing Democratic voting bills that are pending in Congress. “It’s wrong and un-American,” Mr. Biden said. “In the 21st century, we should be making it easier, not harder, for every eligible voter to vote.”Republican state lawmakers have often cited voters’ worries about election fraud — fears stoked by Mr. Trump, other Republicans and the conservative media — to justify new voting restrictions, despite the fact that there has been no evidence of widespread fraud in recent American elections.And in their election push, Republicans have powered past the objections of Democrats, voting rights groups and major corporations. Companies like American Airlines, Dell Technologies and Microsoft spoke out against the Texas legislation soon after the bill was introduced, but the pressure has been largely ineffective so far.The final 67-page bill, known as S.B. 7, proved to be an amalgamation of two omnibus voting bills that had worked their way through the state’s Legislature. It included many of the provisions originally introduced by Republicans, but lawmakers dropped some of the most stringent ones, like a regulation on the allocation of voting machines that would have led to the closure of polling places in communities of color and a measure that would have permitted partisan poll watchers to record the voting process on video. Still, the bill includes a provision that could make overturning an election easier. Texas election law had stated that reversing the results of an election because of fraud accusations required proving that illicit votes had actually resulted in a wrongful victory. If the bill passes, the number of fraudulent votes required to do so would simply need to be equal to the winning vote differential; it would not matter for whom the fraudulent votes had been cast. Democrats and voting rights groups were quick to condemn the bill.“S.B. 7 is a ruthless piece of legislation,” said Sarah Labowitz, the policy and advocacy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “It targets voters of color and voters with disabilities, in a state that’s already the most difficult place to vote in the country.”But Republicans celebrated the proposed law and bristled at the criticism from Mr. Biden and others. “As the White House and national Democrats work together to minimize election integrity, the Texas Legislature continues to fight for accessible and secure elections,” State Senator Bryan Hughes, one of the bill’s sponsors, said in a statement. “In Texas, we do not bend to headlines, corporate virtue signaling, or suppression of election integrity, even if it comes from the president of the United States.”The bill took its final form after a contentious, monthslong debate; back-room negotiations; procedural errors by legislators; and extended, passionate debate by Democrats, who have tried to stall the bill’s passage through political and legislative maneuvers.Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who has said that an election overhaul is a priority, is widely expected to sign the bill.Eric Gay/Associated PressVoting rights groups have long pointed to Texas as one of the hardest states in the country for voters to cast ballots. One recent study by Northern Illinois University ranked Texas last in an index measuring the difficulty of voting. The report cited a host of factors, including Texas’ in-person voter registration deadline 30 days before Election Day, a drastic reduction of polling stations in some parts of the state, strict voter identification laws, a limited and onerous absentee voting process, and a lack of early voting options.In the preamble to the new bill, the authors appear to pre-emptively defend the legislation from criticism, stating that “reforms to the election laws of this state made by this Act are not intended to impair the right of free suffrage guaranteed to the people of Texas by the United States and Texas Constitutions, but are enacted solely to prevent fraud in the electoral process and ensure that all legally cast ballots are counted.”In March, Keith Ingram, the director of elections in the Texas secretary of state’s office, testified that last year’s election in the state had been “smooth and secure.” He added, “Texans can be justifiably proud of the hard work and creativity shown by local county elections officials.”A day before the Texas bill emerged, a new report pointed to the vast sweep of Republicans’ nationwide effort to restrict voting.As of May 14, lawmakers had passed 22 new laws in 14 states to make the process of voting more difficult, according to the report by the Brennan Center for Justice, a research institute..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new 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(min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}In last year’s election, while Republicans won Texas easily — Mr. Trump carried the state by more than 630,000 votes and the party maintained control of both chambers of the Legislature — turnout soared in cities and densely populated suburbs, which are growing increasingly Democratic. In Harris County, one of the biggest counties in the country, turnout jumped by nearly 10 percent.Republicans’ initial version of the bill put those densely populated counties squarely in the cross hairs, seeking to ban measures put in place during the 2020 election that helped turnout hit record numbers. The initial bill banned drive-through voting, a new method used by 127,000 voters in Harris County, as well as 24-hour voting, which was held for a single day in the county and was used by roughly 10,000 voters.While those provisions were left out of an earlier version of the bill as it made its way through the Legislature, they were reinstated in the final version of the bill, though the bill does allow for early voting to begin as early as 6 a.m. and continue until as late as 9 p.m. on weekdays. It also maintains at least two weekend days of early voting. More than any other state, Texas has also gone to great lengths to grant more autonomy and authority to partisan poll watchers. The observers have been a cornerstone of American voting for years, viewed as a watchdog for election officials, but their role has grown increasingly contentious, especially in Texas. Republican poll watchers have been egged on in particular by Mr. Trump, who implored them to go to major cities across the country and hunt for nonexistent voter fraud.Across Texas during the 2020 election, there was an increase in anecdotal complaints of aggressive poll watchers, often on the Republican side, harassing both voters of color and election officials.The new bill would make it a crime to refuse to admit the observers to voting sites or to block their ability to fully watch the process. It says poll watchers must be able to “sit or stand [conveniently] near enough to see and hear the election officers.”It would also make it easier for partisan poll watchers to successfully pursue legal action if they argue that they were wrongfully refused or obstructed.In addition, the bill would limit who can vote absentee by mail in Texas, which does not have universal, no-excuse absentee voting. The bill states that those with a disability may vote absentee, but a voter with “an illness, injury or disability that does not prevent the voter from appearing at the polling place on election day” may not do so.Amid the new restrictions are multiple provisions that provide greater transparency into election administration. Counties must now provide video surveillance of ballot-counting facilities, and they must eventually make those videos available to the public. Discussions with voting equipment vendors must also be available to the public.During the debate before Sunday’s vote in the State Senate, Senator Royce West, a Democrat from Dallas, raised concerns that a provision barring voting before 1 p.m. on Sundays would limit “souls to the polls” organizing efforts that are popular with Black churches. Mr. Hughes said that clause was intended to allow poll workers to go to church.Mr. West noted that a separate bill passed by the Legislature will allow the sale of beer and wine starting at 10 a.m., two hours earlier than current law permits.“We’re going to be able to buy beer at 10 o’clock in the morning, but we can’t vote until one o’clock,” Mr. West said.Austin Ramzy and Anna Schaverien contributed reporting. More