Republicans Subverting Our Democracy

Texas Republicans aren’t satisfied that their gerrymandering and other anti-democracy activities have put a lead thumb on the scales of every election. Now they’re working on putting an entire lead hand on the scale. In the last few weeks they’ve advanced several bills through committee that if passed by both House and Senate will further subvert our democracy. One such bill is SB 990 which repeals the highly popular countywide voting program that allows any voter registered in a county to vote at any polling place in that county. Some of us like this option because we can go to a less crowded polling place, some like it because they can more easily get to a polling place on the way going to or from work. I well remember the years ago being at a polling place when voters were turned away because back then you had to vote at the one polling site in your precinct and if you went to the wrong you had to stand in line all over again at the right one. Some folks didn’t even know what precinct they were and got so frustrated they just didn’t vote. Now Republicans are all for going back to the old way just to stir up confusion and suppress the vote. Only Republicans like a representative of the Republican Party of Texas and another from the State Republican Executive committee testified for the bill in committee, good government groups and election administrators uniformly testified against it.

When the Senate scheduled hearings on several other anti-democracy bills they provided less than 48 hours notice, making it very hard, if not impossible for interested parties to arrange to attend and testify. Possibly the most dangerous is SB 1993 which would give the Texas Secretary of State the ability to overturn election results in Harris County without requiring any proof that claims of problems actually occurred. You can tell the legislature is working to hide their intentions because they don’t name any counties in the bill, instead it sets a threshold for population that only Harris county meets.

SB 823 and its House companion HB 2020 would allow the Secretary of State to get rid of election administrators without cause. If there is no cause like illegal or unethical behavior removal would only make sense for partisan control. 

SB 220 and its House companion HB 549 would create partisan-controlled election law enforcement division. Actual cases of voter fraud are a very rare occurrence in Texas and currently investigated by the Texas Rangers and the Attorney General. This new office is part of a coordinated effort already seen in states like Florida to intimidate and scare voters away from the ballot box with the threat of criminal prosecution for inadvertent mistakes.

SB 1070 and its House companion HB 2809 would create a path for Texas to leave ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center), the cost-saving and effective bipartisan and multi-state voter list maintenance tool that has saved tons of money and made cleaning voter rolls both efficient and accurate. The only reason to do this is to provide the opportunity to purge eligible voters from the rolls from behind a partisan smokescreen.

SB 1933 would make it easier to allow sham election audits like the one Arizona held in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. The state already has plenty of power to review elections if there is evidence of impropriety, more power is unneeded and dangerous to assign.

All of these bills make it harder to vote or easier for those in power to steal future elections.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 19, 2023