Chris Hollins
Texas Republicans have made it clear that voter suppression is a legislative priority, and one of their biggest targets involves Harris County.
State Rep. Jared Patterson filed a bill last week that would restrict voting hours at early voting locations to between 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. On Twitter, Patterson argued that his bill was filed in response to early voting that occurred in Harris County.
“I filed HB 2293 because of irregularities in Harris County polling hours of operation and the opportunity for voter fraud when no one is looking,” wrote Patterson.
Though many Texas Republicans have claimed the 2020 election was rampant with voter fraud, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has produced only 16 cases, which all involved incorrect addresses.
In 2020, Harris County utilized a number of innovations to safely increase voter turnout in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Eight voting locations throughout the city held early voting until 10 p.m. and one day of 24-hour voting. The locations were strategically placed in neighborhoods that were most likely to benefit workers with non-traditional hours.
According to the Houston Chronicle, over 10,000 Harris County residents voted overnight from October 29 to October 30. The former county clerk for Harris County, Chris Hollins noted on Twitter that HB 2293 would impact “first responders, medical professionals, and shift workers.”
Of course, the overnight early voting locations were from the same early voting locations that had operated during the day. Indeed, the ones that had nighttime hours just stayed open past the usual closing times. The allegations of “irregularities” and “fraud” are just shibboleths, meant to demonstrate continued fealty to Donald Trump and the Big Lie of the 2020 election. The purpose of this bill is simply to make voting less accessible. The least they could do is to be honest about that.
This is hardly the only bill to restrict voting – John Coby has rounded up a bunch more, and of course there’s a crap-ton of voter suppression bills in statehouses around the country, with states that President Biden flipped like Arizona and Georgia on the forefront. Democrats can stave off some of this if they can overcome the ridiculous obstacles in the Senate (which include a couple of their own Senators) and pass the two voting expansion bills the House has approved. These bills cover a heck of a lot, and if you want to look at it in a particular way, they’re targeting Texas with these two bills.
“It would be a huge, huge deal for Texas voters,” said Grace Chimene, president of the League of Women Voters of Texas, a group that supports the legislation. “It’s like having a new Voting Rights Act that would protect the rights of voters, make it fair and equal access to voting here in Texas.”
State lawmakers are now pushing a slew of new restrictions on voting, including bills that would make voting by mail more complicated and would scale back hours for polling places.
The federal legislation would stop those efforts, but its changes to how political boundaries are drawn may have some of the biggest effects on Texas, where Republicans control the Legislature and are expected to draw districts that benefit GOP candidates for the next 10 years as Texas becomes an increasingly competitive state. Texas lawmakers will also be drawing boundaries for two to three more seats in Congress.
The bill would take redistricting out of the hands of lawmakers and create independent panels to draw boundaries — something already in place in several states.
The bill also includes provisions to prevent the drawing of districts to break up communities of color, which could have a big impact on Texas’ increasingly diverse — and Democratic trending — suburbs, said Michael Li, an expert on redistricting who serves as senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
The legislation would create a legal framework to test districts for gerrymandering and would expedite the legal challenges that are almost certain to follow Texas’ new maps, as well.
“This is the pushback to all the efforts going on in states including Texas to rollback longstanding voter practices,” Li said.
From your lips to Joe Manchin’s ears, Michael. Still, there’s real work to be done here, which very much includes winning enough state offices to pass our own voting rights bills. We know how hard that’s going to be. On the plus side, passing the two federal bills might make Ken Paxton’s head explode, and that should make anyone want to support them.
I wish the GQP would just cut to the chase and instigate voting rules based on ethnicity and race.
Not sure why the GQP is playing this kabuki dance.
Holy Shit – no one was manning voting locations from 9pm-10pm last November… and/or on one day, there were no voting officials overseeing the process at all ?
Am waiting for Ch. 2’s Mario Diaz to declare that ‘Breaking Newz !’
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