LWVTX Blog

We have now reached the point in the legislative session where legislators are quickly jockeying their bills through their respective chambers of the legislature. We are now seeing election bills being voted out of the Senate and referred to the House Elections Committee, and the House Elections Committee is just starting to vote bills out of their committee.

Unfortunately, committee substitutes are being filed on bills that have already been heard by the committee, meaning that the public will not have the opportunity to provide testimony on the proposed changes before the bill gets voted on by the full legislative chamber. What's concerning is that several of the bills that have been substituted are now substantially different than the ones that were originally heard by the committee. These closed-door, legislative practices are very troubling. If legislators aren't doing anything 'funny' then there is no reason to go behind closed doors and prevent these changes from receiving public scrutiny. The public has the right to be a part of the legislative process and to provide input on how these bills will impact their communities.

Last week, the Senate managed to pass several bills that threaten make our elections less efficient and less accessible. While each of these bills target a different part of our elections process, it is their potential collective impact that is breathtaking. Here are some of the bills that were passed:

• SB 260 - would allow voter registrars to mail voters an address verification form after being inactive for 25 months. This would allow more voters to be added to the suspense list and possibly purged from the voter rolls.   
• SB 1060 - would remove the state from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which is the interstate cross-check program that cleans up our voter rolls and prevents voter fraud.
• SB 1933 - would grant the Secretary of State the ability to take administrative control over a county's elections, including counties that still rely on the tax assessor and county clerk to register voters and administer elections.

We are waiting to see if these bills get a hearing on the House side. In the meantime, please be sure to use our Take Action Center to send your elected officials an email opposing these bills. 

We also provided testimony last weeks to the House Elections Committee on three separate bills:

• We supported HB 1208, which would allow children ages 14-17 to enter their parent's choices on voting machines during an election.  
• We opposed HB 1243, which would increase the penalty for illegal voting from a Class A misdemeanor to a second degree felony.  
• We opposed HB 5180, which give members of the public access to voted ballots and other forms of election data 61 days after an election, contrary to federal law.