From the Texas Civil Rights Project.
Still the only voter ID anyone should need
Below are some bills to keep an eye on going forward.
SB74: Slashing early voting by seven days
In 2018, early voting in Texas surged, with over 4,514,000 Texans casting in-person ballots. To paraphrase more festive words, the folks down in Texas like early voting a lot. But Senator Bob Hall, who filed SB74 last Monday, apparently does not.
Current Texas law gives us 12 days of early voting in November elections. If early voting were a classic holiday song, it would describe the many types of people who vote early through lyrics such as: five souls to polls!, four frequent fliers, three student voters, two busy moms, and a guy who can’t get weekdays off. SB74 seeks to cut early voting from 12 days to only five for all November elections, getting rid of the only early voting weekend in the process.
Which makes complete sense. If you don’t want Texans to vote.
HB378: Proof of citizenship to register
It’s already hard to register to vote in Texas. Why not make it harder, and also add more racism? That seems to be the idea behind HB378, filed by Representative Mike Lang, which requires proof of citizenship to register to vote. As we know from recent history, the only people who will be asked to show proof of citizenship are people who get profiled as non-citizens. (Okay, we mean Latinx people. And black people. And basically everybody except white people.) Never mind that the Supreme Court declared the Arizona version of this law unconstitutional in 2013 and a district court did the same for the Kansas version just last summer.
HB154: Allows election officials to photograph voters and record voter documentation
The voter ID laws in Texas are already draconian, only allowing you to use a photo-less ID if you absolutely cannot get a photo ID and you swear that you are who you say you are. Representative Valoree Swanson’s HB 154 requires a voter using a non-photo ID—which, again, is 100% legal—to submit to being photographed by election officials. Under this bill, election officials can also act as democracy bouncers, forcing you to stop and pose if they suspect that you’re trying to vote using a fake ID. Nothing screams “Texas loves democracy” like a poll worker with a camera barking, “Turn to the right!”
There was a similar “proof of citizenship” bill last session. It died in committee like most bills do. I’m a little worried about it this session, and a little worried about the cut-early-voting bill, but only a little because both of those things would also inconvenience Republican voters. Nobody likes more bureaucracy, and nobody likes waiting on line. Always be vigilant, of course, but my gut says there will be other bills to worry about more. As the story notes there is also another attempt at doing an online voter registration bill. The good news here is that neither the Harris County Tax Assessor nor the Harris County Clerk will oppose such a bill any more. It’s still an underdog, but the odds are marginally better now. I’ll be keeping an eye on this sort of thing as usual.
The stench coming from Republicans in Austin is nauseating.
Aside from proposed legislative activity related to voting and elections, the stars may have aligned themselves to allow Harris County to actively consider adopting the Elections Administrator approach which has long been in place in other large counties in Texas. With large decisions looming regarding new voting technologies and conversion from voting in individual election precincts to voting in Election Centers under the current umbrella of the County Clerk, and the upcoming re-districting which would be executed by the Tax Assessor-Collector/Voter Registrar, it would behoove Harris County to examine consolidating these and other functions into a single non-partisan office.
Having Harris County consolidate all election functions (voter registration, conducting elections, etc.) may or may not be a good thing. In Bexar County, where they have an appointed Elections Administrator, some controversies occurred regarding the CD 23 election challenge by the Democrat. So having an Elections Administrator may not be all the advocates say it is. Let’s review how other counties that have an Elections Administrator have handled this process and determine if it is a positive in terms of more voters being processed through the system.