Election Legislation Preview

 Just months after traveling to Pennsylvania to help the Trump campaign challenge the results of the 2020 election State Rep. Briscoe Cain was named chair of the Texas House Elections Committee. That appointment doesn’t give me a lot of confidence that we’ll see real improvement in our election laws. Nevertheless there are plenty of good bills that if passed would make it easier for eligible voters to register and vote. There may be others filed later in the session and it often happens that the text of a bill is added to another so even though the original bill isn’t passed its goal is achieved. The following are bills I found using the Texas Legislature Online website’s Bill Search function. Using that site you can lookup any of these that catch your attention and read the full text of the bill yourself as well as find new additions, amendments, or bill status as the session goes on. You can even create an account and arrange to get emails when a bill is assigned to a committee, gets a hearing, is amended or passed out of committee, or will be voted on in the House or Senate.

HB 110 would add to the existing list of acceptable proof of identification any official mail addressed to the person by name from a governmental entity or a copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that shows the name and address of the voter

HB 160 and SB 246 would add any identification card issued by a public institution of higher education located in this state that contains the person 's photograph, full legal name, and is either unexpired or expired no earlier than four years before the date of presentation.

HB 230 would greatly expand the types of documents that would be acceptable voter identification to include documents if they show the name and address of the voter including a copy of a current utility bill; a bank or credit union statement; a government check; a certified copy of a domestic birth certificate among others.

HB 1366 allows voter registration card as sufficient ID for voting, removes requirement for photo ID to vote even without registration card and allows substitution of utility bill or birth certificate etc.

HB 142 / HB 519 / HB 712 / HB 856 would all change state law to all same day voter registration so that new voters could register to vote on the same day they cast their ballots.

HB 161 / HB 595 / SB 107 would restore voting rights to felons once they are released from incarceration.

HB 583 / HB 802 / HB 1232 / SB 95 / SB 303 would allow voting by mail by any qualified voter.

HB 844 / HB 1385 would expressly legalize mail ballot drop off sites as designated by the county early voting clerk.

HB 1036 would create limits on campaign contributions for state office such as $7,000 for each candidate for governor; $5,500 for each candidate for a statewide office other than governor; $4,000 for each candidate for the senate; and $2,700 for each candidate for the house of representatives. Political Action Committees would be limited to $30,000 per year for each candidate or officeholder.

HB 1425 / SB 130 would have Texas join the National Popular Vote Compact which would mean that Texas’ presidential electors would cast their ballots for whoever won the national popular vote regardless of the result in Texas. Think President Al Gore in 2000, and President Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - February 10, 2021

Why are they working so hard to suppress your vote if it doesn't matter?

As this is the week of the 242nd anniversary of the Declaration of Independence it seems appropriate to consider that document in the context of today. In particular I find a phrase from the preamble to be of import; “…Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”. This is one of several concepts related to the founding of this nation which set it apart from most other countries of the time. Sadly the concept of consent of the governed is under attack today and has been for some years.

Texas and other Republican controlled states have been using a variety of methods to prevent voters from getting the governance they would choose. Racial and partisan gerrymandering have received much attention from the courts and had been getting attention of the Department of Justice until the Republican controlled Supreme Court overturned important parts of the Voting Rights Act. Rulings this term have both given hope and caused despair to those advocating for fair districts. In some states the Republican party only gets about 40% of the votes but controls 60% of the state legislature. In Texas 55% of the votes allows control of 65% of the seats.

Gerrymandering isn’t the only method used to prevent the people from getting the government of their choice. The passage of the 15th Amendment, which gave freed slaves the right to vote shortly after the Civil War, and which required the passage in 1965 of the Voting Rights Act to enforce is again being undermined by numerous states. Instead of using outright voter intimidation Republican controlled legislatures like that of Texas have passed draconian voter identification regulations. Republicans in Florida and Houston use control of elections departments to purge voter roles in ways that unfairly target minority and low income voters. A Supreme Court ruling a few years ago voiding parts of the Voting Rights Act has made it difficult to prevent such heavy handed attacks on the right to vote. Now with Republican control of the Department of Justice the federal government has gotten out of the business of even attempting to enforce voting rights.

The Republican Party of Texas 2018 platform specifically calls for the repeal of the Voting Rights Act. Conversely the Texas Democratic Party calls for restoration and aggressive enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.

What is consent if not choice? How can you give consent if your right to choose is suppressed?

It’s unfortunate that too many Texans don’t even bother to vote which just makes the job of those seeking to suppress their votes easier. It’s been said many times that Texas isn’t a Republican state it’s non-voting state. I will be the first to admit that Democrats aren’t all angels and that far too many have not lived up to their promises or the values of the party they claim. On the other hand that’s why we have elections and in fact why we have primaries. I believe that if everyone voted in primaries we’d get better Democrats in office when we do elect them. For that matter if more Republicans voted in their primaries we’d probably seen fewer extremist Republicans in office.

So I ask those who think their vote doesn’t matter or that elections aren’t important to their daily lives to consider this; if their votes aren’t important why are Republicans working so hard to prevent people like you from voting?

Published in the Seguin Gazette - July 6, 2018

John Kuempel Touts Distractions From Real Issues

Recently our state representative John Kuempel mailed out a flyer touting he presumably considers accomplishments from the recently completed 2017 legislative session. In this piece of tax payer funded propaganda Kuempel expounds on the value of SB 263 which substantially lowers the cost of handgun license as assisting lower income folks in their quest to take advantage of their Second Amendment rights. I won’t argue the meaning of the Second Amendment or its value in a modern society. Instead I would ask if reducing the fee by over $100 leaves other tax payers subsidizing the cost of administering the licensing program? If it doesn’t, then why were we being gouged by the state in the first place?

On “Election Integrity” Kuempel claims that the smattering of marginal issues addressed in several house ethics related bills is somehow meaningful reform. In reality one of the bills he touts, SB 5 which is another attempt by the legislature to pass a voter ID bill was immediately challenged in court where U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos found it was passed with discriminatory intent and is therefore invalid. The legislature made no attempt to deal with redistricting even though both the state House map and the Congressional district maps have both been found to have been drawn with discriminatory intent. There was a bill filed which would have taken the entire redistricting process out of the hands of the state legislature and put in the hands of every day people but Republicans couldn’t even be bothered to give it a hearing.

Public Education has been considered a top priority of the state since it was enshrined in the state constitution in 1845. Once again Kuempel and his Republican colleagues gave it short shrift. Admittedly they did right by shoring up the retired teachers’ health care plan known as TRS Care but the pittance the provided for educating our precious children barely covers the increase in enrollment across the state. Once again many districts across the state will fund their public schools on the back of property taxes. The problem is that no all districts have the same average taxable real estate values so kids in low taxable value districts don’t get the best teachers or facilities.

Kuempel’s pro-birth stance belies the fact that the legislature placed an undue burden on women whose pregnancies fail by forcing them to pay for burial or cremation services instead of disposing of the remains the same way as an amputated foot or arm. The same bill no forces women to purchase separate coverage for abortions that were once covered by their regular health plans. Regardless of how you feel about abortions most Americans understand that there are some medical circumstances involving either the health of the mother or the viability of the fetus where the only safe thing to do is to abort and now those mothers who haven’t recognized the need for a separate policy will be forced to pay for the procedure out of pocket.

All the purported advances in Kuempel’s missive simply distract from his failure to actually do something to improve the lives of his constituents or in some cases made them worse off. Texan’s whose homes suffered damage in the recent hurricane and haven’t filed a claim with their insurer yet lose some of their rights to compensation due to legislation he voted for. Texas has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world and no substantive action was taken to address it. I don’t think John Kuempel has much to be proud of, do you?

Published in the Seguin Gazette, September 29, 2017

Wealthy Use Law to Maintain Their Wealth

Anti-drug laws, voter suppression and gerrymandering, and tax policy are all used by the wealthiest among us to maintain a fractured society. It’s in their interest to keep us at each other’s throats so we don’t turn our attention to their hoarding of assets and work together to develop a more equal and just society.

Using wedges to keep people with common interests separated has been a trait of the wealthy here since colonial times when plantation owners noticed that indentured servants were fraternizing with and sometimes escaping with slaves or running off to live with the Indians. In order to stop losing their enslaved workers the planters developed programs for the indentured servants wherein they would receive what was essentially a large bonus at the end of their servitude, assuming they lived through it. In addition they were made the supervisors of the black slaves and given the privilege of beating and otherwise abusing them.

Anti-drug laws such as the prohibition against marijuana were created expressly to enable the arrest and prosecution of black members of society since at the time of inception it was preferred over liquor and beer due to being cheaper because they could grow their own. The use of anti-drug laws has continued to be used for control as explained by former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman who was quoted in Harper’s magazine saying "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people, you understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities, we could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

Until the Voting Rights Act poll taxes and literacy tests were used to prevent “undesirables” so that the wealthy could continue to prosper at the expense of the lower classes. Now laws like Texas’ Voter ID bill seek to suppress the vote by only allowing forms of ID that tend to be held by wealthier white voters and not by poorer voters of color. Gerrymandering is used to prevent voters of color from electing officials who might be more sympathetic to their plight. Here again Texas is a prime example with a federal judge having found that the 2011 redistricting maps were intentionally discriminatory against voters of color.

Just look at Texas tax policy and the funding of public education. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick claims that property taxes are too high and he wants to set a maximum that cities and school districts can charge. Ironically he’s been instrumental in reducing the share of public school funding provided by the state thus requiring school districts to raise property taxes in order to provide an adequate education. The way this hurts people of color is that their school districts generally have overall lower property values so even if they could afford to raise the tax rates they’d still have less money to spend on educating children in their districts. Most of us would be very angry if our tax deduction for mortgage interest went away so it won’t but the people who get the greatest advantage out of it are the very wealthiest who buy multi-million dollar homes.

Nearly 400 years later and the wealthy still lead us by the nose.

Published in the Seguin Gazette July 14, 2017

Don't miss the opportunity to vote in November because you don't have the proper documents

Recent changes in Texas voting laws may surprise many voters in November when we vote on city council, school boards, bonds and constitutional amendments. Beginning with this election all in person voters must show an approved photo ID which are limited to:

Texas drivers license

Texas concealed handgun license

Texas Election Identification Certificate

Texas personal identification card, United States military identification card containing the person’s photograph

U.S. citizenship certificate containing the person’s photograph

U.S. passport

With the exception of the U.S. citizenship certificate, the identification must be current or have expired no more than 60 days before being presented at the polling place.

Other changes include a requirement that the name on the photo ID and voter registration match so if you’re a woman who has recently married or divorced and changed your name be sure documents match.

Since the legislature failed to fund voter education measures to insure that all voters know the new rules non-partisan organizations have pooled resources and created a web site www.gotidtexas.org to help voters confirm that they have the requisite documents to vote. Common Cause Texas urges everyone to check their documents and tell friends and family about the site so that no voter is disenfranchised in November because they didn’t know what they needed.

JC Dufresne

Common Cause Texas, Vice Chair

Voter fraud fraud

Some of the first bills filed for the upcoming state legislative session would require photo ID to vote. I find it absolutely fascinating that the Republicans in the Texas House are claiming that the Voter ID bill they’re pushing is necessary in order to prevent a serious problem with voter fraud. If voter fraud is really the problem they’ve been claiming it is then the party that won 99 of 150 seats, gaining 23, must be the perpetrators.

How this is really more important than stimulating jobs for the hundreds of thousands of Texans who are out of work I don’t know.

Mixed up priorities

Republicans won a whopping majority in the state house on November 2 and within days the chairs of various committees have released a letter naming their priorities for the coming session. In their top ten they include “passing a photo ID requirement as a protection against voter fraud”, but if voter fraud is really as rampant as they seem to believe doesn’t that call into question the legitimacy of their recent overwhelming victory?

Other topics in the letter include “ensuring businesses are not stifled by over-taxation, excess regulation or unfair litigation.” This should be deciphered as raising fees - which hurt small and startup businesses because they aren’t related to profits, continuing to allow air and water pollution by gas producers in the Barnett Shale – because being able to light your tap water on fire isn’t a problem, and limiting the rights of individuals to seek redress when a business or doctor has harmed them. The chairs claim that these steps will help the Texas economy and create jobs.

The chairs go on to claim that Speaker Straus is “a staunch fiscal conservative in the model of President Reagan”. I can’t say whether or not Straus is a fiscal conservative, but Reagan certainly wasn’t as he raised taxes twice and massively increased the size of the federal government in his eight years as president. Given their failure to know recent history it’s no wonder they have chosen to ignore the states abysmal education record or seek any means to improve it.