The Texas Senate in the early morning hours Thursday passed a package of election bills that would put new restrictions on voting in the state.
The final version of the Senate Bill 7 is not yet online for review, but the original version of the bill banned overnight early voting hours and drive-thru early voting, while restricting how election officials handle mail voting.
Joaquin Gonzalez, an attorney with Texas Civil Rights Project who reviewed a paper copy of the final legislation, said the bill “basically takes away options for voters.”
“The bill would hurt four groups in particular: communities of color, voters who don’t speak English, disabled voters, and voters over the age of 65,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez, whose group is advocating against the legislation, told NBC News that the final version of the bill bans drive-thru voting and overnight early voting, while adding restrictions to how officials handle absentee ballot applications and how other people assist disabled voters.
The bill also requires large counties to allocate polling places based on a formula, which Gonzalez said was confusing. He also argued it would lead to white areas getting more polling locations at the expense of communities of color where voter registration rates are lower.
The bill underwent hours of debate and “scores” of proposed amendments before passage, according to the bill’s author, Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes.
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“This bill is about making it easy to vote and hard to cheat,” he said in a social media video posted after 3 a.m. in Austin.
Advocates and Democrats have slammed the state Senate bill as unnecessary and a major threat to voting rights.
“This bill is so terrible, I would have thought it was an April fool’s joke,” tweeted Democrats’ top election attorney, Marc Elias, on Thursday.
The bill now heads to the Texas House of Representatives, which is considering its own omnibus package of restrictions, House Bill 6, later Thursday. The Texas legislature leads the nation in restrictive voting bills, according to the Brennan Center for Justice; 49 bills have been introduced to add restrictions on access to the ballot box.
In an interview with NBC News last month, Hughes said that the 2020 election increased interest in legislation Texas lawmakers were already keen on passing.
“This was already in process, but then the 2020 election was so in the national spotlight, and so many people have questions, so many people have concerns,” he told NBC News last week. “I would say that has raised the profile of the issue.”
Former President Donald Trump’s stolen election lie has inspired an avalanche of election-related bills nationwide, as GOP lawmakers around the country seek to add restrictions to mail voting and other electoral practices that they say are needed to improve public confidence in the results. By all accounts, the 2020 election was secure and the results accurate. Trump’s own attorney general, William Barr, said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and the president’s legal efforts to overturn the results failed in courtrooms around the country.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
