Texas Republicans passed the bill in the state Senate early Sunday and sent it to the state’s House. The legislation was unveiled Saturday amid efforts by GOP-led states to overhaul election laws in the wake of former President Trump’s electoral loss.
The Texas Senate, voting along party lines, approved a sweeping Republican elections bill shortly after 6 a.m. Sunday after a lively overnight debate led mostly by Democrats that had begun 7½ hours earlier.
The bill is almost certain to pass in the House in Texas as Republican have a GOP majority. Texas Governor Greg Abbot is also a staunch supporter of Donald Trump. The states across the nation that have a GOP majority have been passing similar bills to appease the former president Donald Trump and his supporters who have bought into the idea of “the big lie.” They say that such the bills have been formulated to maintain “election integrity.”
The bill, S.B. 7, includes several controversial provisions that critics say would disproportionately affect poor and minority voters. It also specifically targets voting practices employed this past year in Harris County, which includes Houston, by banning drive-through voting and 24-hour voting. Those practices were used by 140,000 voters in 2020.
On Saturday, President Joe Biden said a few strong words against the latest voting restrictions bill which was expected to be passed by late Sunday, in Texas. This bill, like its predecessors in Georgia, Florida and other Republican dominated states will make it more difficult for voters to vote as it does away with early voting and more. President Biden said that Senate Bill 7 was “part of an assault on democracy.” In a statement he also said called it wrong and un-American. He said that America should make it easier and not harder for every eligible voter to vote, in the 21st century.
Some of the reported restrictions in the bill include:
- banning of drive-through voting
- banning of 24-hour voting
- limiting voting on Sundays
- forbidding election officials from sending absentee ballots to all eligible voters
- banning provision of temporary structures as polling locations
- limiting absentee ballot voting
- making identification requirements more stringent for vote by mail
- empowering partisan poll watchers
- making it easier to overturn the voting results
According to the Brennan Center for Justice more than fourteen states have approved of or passed restrictive voting laws since Trump lost the November 2020 elections. Despite protests from civil rights groups, advocacy groups and a few corporate entities, states which have a majority of Republicans who can ensure that the restrictive bills will pass, have gone ahead and applied restrictions on voting. Lawsuits have been filed against states that have passed restrictive bills.
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