Abbott Fails the People of Texas

Last week Gov. Greg Abbott proved once and for all what a petty, mean-spirited, little man he is by essentially giving notice to several hundred state employees that they’re fired as of September 1^st by vetoing Article X of the budget bill passed by both houses of the state legislature. Abbott announced he would do it in a fit of pique days after House Democrats walked out late on the last day of the session, breaking quorum over the voter suppression bill known as SB7. By vetoing that line item in the budget he is making the workers who clean the capitol, operate the cafeteria, run the parking garage suffer. The veto will hardly be noticeable to the elected members of the state legislature as they only get $500 a month and they all have full time jobs elsewhere. The folks that will hurt the most are the ones that had nothing to do with the politics of the session, they take care of the building and the people, they’re just like you and me.

Abbott also signed two bills into law aimed at strengthening the electric grid and reforming the agencies that regulate it. The bills were a response to a massive winter storm that broke the state’s electric grid, which according to a Buzzfeed investigation, killed as many as 700 Texans. Prior signing the bills, Abbott confidently declared that “everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas.” Last week we learned there are more problems with the grid when statewide notice was sent out requesting that all electricity users take steps to conserve because several generation plants were down with unscheduled repair issues. Nothing in the bills Abbott was so proud of addresses these issues and summer has just begun.

One of the electricity grid bills Abbott signed is SB3 which power generators and transmission line operators to weatherize their facilities. That’s great but the big problem during Snowpocalypse was that natural gas supply disruptions, the law requires only gas facilities deemed to be “critical” to weatherize. The agency responsible for making the determination of what’s critical is the industry-friendly Railroad Commission so we have no reason to be hopeful that they’ll actually select all the necessary infrastructure.

SB3 will take effect in six months so the regulatory agencies have time to work out the details. The catch is that the legislature failed to set a deadline for when regulators must begin actually enforcing the law. House Democrats attempted to remedy that with an amendment to establish a six-month deadline for enforcement after the regulatory agencies create their weatherization rules. The bill’s main author, Representative Chris Paddie, opposed the idea citing “financial and operational concerns,” the amendment was voted down along with another to make penalties mandatory also failed. Does anyone actually believe this legislation will do anything to insure that our electric grid will be better prepared for the next winter storm or hurricane, or extreme high temperatures?

Abbott recently announced that he’s picking up Trump’s ball on the border wall and will use $250 million in state funds to build some of it. He says he’s going to work with the Biden administration to have the previously purchased land returned to the original landowners then negotiate with them to have the state buy that land so he can build his wall.

Greg Abbott has shown he doesn’t care about regular folks, little people, he’s just worried about re-election and his action putting state employees out of work to spite House Democrats last week shows why he must not be.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 23, 2021

Republicans Suppress Votes While Democrats Fight For Voting Rights

The Republican controlled legislature in Georgia passed new voter suppression measures aimed at minority voters a few weeks ago under to the guise of protecting against vote fraud. If that’s really what it was about they wouldn’t have included measures such as criminalizing handing out bottles of water to people standing in long lines to vote. The Texas legislature said “hold my beer” and is poised to pass the onerous SB 7 which included a provision to make it harder for the disabled to vote by mail by requiring that they provide a note from their doctor declaring them disabled and therefore worthy of a mail in ballot, until a last minute amendment to strike that language sponsored by Senator Judith Zaffirini (D) was passed. None of the other amendments to remove restrictions or clarify language were accepted the bill to pass the Senate on a party line vote.

While Republicans claim that the bill is fair and applies equally to everyone in reality several provisions in SB 7 focus on increased voting regulations in only urban areas. There are restrictions specifically targeting Harris County where Democrats have won nearly all seats in local and state offices recently. The legislation also sets specific rules for the distribution of polling places in only the handful of counties with a population of at least 1 million, most of which are either under Democratic control or won by Democrats in recent national and statewide elections.

The Texas House, not wanting to be outdone, is working on HB 6 another highly discriminatory bill that drew criticism against it from a number of prominent corporations, including Dell, American Airlines and Microsoft, as well as former House Speaker Joe Straus (R), who tweeted: Major Texas employers are stepping up and speaking out against voter suppression, and for good reason. Texas should not go down the same path as Georgia. It’s bad for business and, more importantly, it’s bad for our citizens. #txlege

It isn’t just Georgia and Texas, nearly all states where Republicans control the state legislatures are working to pass similar voter suppression laws in an effort to stem in-roads by Democratic candidates. This is nothing more than Jim Crow 2.0 using the myth of voter fraud as the excuse. Since they’ve found in many states and localities that they can’t or soon won’t be able to win free and fair elections Republicans are changing the rules to disadvantage voters most likely to vote for Democrats.

Moving in the other direction the U.S. House recently passed H.R. 1, The For The People Act which includes measures such as voter registration modernization, prohibiting partisan gerrymandering, and require candidates for president and vice-president to disclose their tax returns among other measures.

Modernizing voter registration is important since roughly a quarter of eligible Americans are not registered to vote. H.R. 1 promotes internet registration because the current manual transfer of handwritten information to computerized voter rolls is costly and prone to error. The bill requires states to implement automatic voter registration such that when eligible citizens provide information to government agencies like the Department of Motor Vehicles, they are automatically registered to vote or have their existing registration information updated unless they affirmatively decline. The bill also requires same day voter registration for federal elections which helps safeguard against registration system errors, cyber-attacks, and wrongful purges.

Democrats are fighting to make our elections better and increase citizen participation while Republicans are scrambling to suppress voter participation in an effort to squeeze out victories even when their policies are not supported by the majority of voters.

Texas Republicans Attempt Voter Suppression Again

When Governor Abbott designated “election integrity” an emergency item last month anyone who has paid attention to his rhetoric and that of the rest of the Republican Party knew it was a bad sign. Sure enough after weeks of rumors Senate Bill 7 was just introduced and it comes as no surprise that the 27 page bill contains a wide range of voter suppression and anti-democracy provisions.

SB 7 expands prosecutorial powers for the Attorney General over voter registration violations, whether intentional violations or accidental. Given Attorney General Ken Paxton’s predilection for using his office for purely political purposes; like trying to overturn the results of a presidential election, giving him expanded powers to prosecute voter registration mistakes is a profoundly bad idea.

The bill prohibits counties from proactively sending vote by mail applications which some counties did in the 2020 election cycle to encourage eligible voters to stay safe by voting by mail rather than risk infection from the coronavirus at a polling site.

SB 7 prohibits counties from operating early voting poll sites later than 7pm. Only a few counties offered later hours but it certainly helps people who work long hours to have an opportunity to vote.

The bill mandates anyone who wants to vote by mail because they are disabled must provide specific documentation. So now folks who already have a hard time getting along in life face another hurdle exercising their constitutional right to vote.

SB 7 requires that any person in the car with a voter who is voting curbside, including people who transported them there, shall officially be deemed an assistant under law who must sign the form documenting that they provided assistance. So if a disabled person takes a cab to the polls the cab driver must sign in as an assistant. How many cab drivers are going to find that acceptable?

Senate Bill 7 continues a pattern we’ve been seeing throughout the pandemic where county election workers do their best to find ways to let Texans vote safely and securely state officials do everything they can to stop them.

As Common Cause Texas Executive Director Anthony Gutierrez said recently “It’s already harder to vote in Texas than any other state and Senate Bill 7 would make it considerably harder.”

There is a reason we keep hearing so much talk from politicians in Texas about “election integrity”, without any basis in reality, it’s because they need to invent a justification for a bill that drastically limits voting rights. There is one and only one purpose to Senate Bill 7 and that is to help the politicians in charge stay in power. 

The real problem with elections in Texas that we should be addressing is too few people participating in our democratic process. We should be doing things like implementing online voter registration, improving civics education, and investing in our election infrastructure.

You have an opportunity to be a part of the process and stop this truly bad bill by contacting your state representative John Kuempel at (830) 379-8732 and depending on which part of the county you live in state senator Judith Zaffirini at (512) 463-0121 or Donna Campbell at (512) 463-0125. Both senators sit on the State Affairs committee to which SB7 is assigned.