Texas

Articles about voting issues in Texas.

Texas: DOJ ignores Latinos in Texas voting rights case | Watchdog.org

May 15 2013

» The Voting News

The Department of Justice is blocking a voter-approved plan to convert the board of the Beaumont Independent School District from a system of seven geographic districts to one with five districts and two at-large seats. The $47 million spent on this sports complex raised the first of many questions about the behavior of the Beaumont Independent School District Board. Yet local Latinos say that it’s the Justice Department that’s doing the disenfranchising by insisting on a system that excludes a growing minority group.

Texas: Texas has much at stake in voting rights ruling | Houston Chronicle

May 6 2013

» The Voting News

Nearly four decades ago, Pearsall watermelon farmer Modesto Rodriguez testified before Congress that discrimination against Latino voters was rampant in Texas. He urged the federal government to continue to oversee the state’s electoral process, saying that law enforcement officers in Frio County walked around polling places “brandishing guns and billy clubs” to find reasons to arrest Latino voters. His activism nearly cost him his life. When he got back home, Rodriguez went into the Buenos Aires bar in Pearsall in an effort to recruit Latinos to talk with Justice Department investigators about voting-rights violations. He was severely beaten by agents from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and Department of Public Safety officers, court records show. ”He got beat to a pulp,” said George Korbel, a San Antonio lawyer who was then working with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Chicago on civil rights legislation.

Texas: Beaumont voting rights case sparks heated debate in Washington court | Houston Chronicle

May 6 2013

» The Voting News

Beaumont lawyers are engaged in a bitter legal batter far from home in Washington, D.C. While filing their briefs for a D.C. case alleging voting rights violations, lawyers for some school board candidates have filed a separate suit over the canceled May Beaumont election, alleging the school board did not have legal authority to cancel the election. Due to the D.C. Circuit Court’s decision last week to hear a case on the Beaumont Independent School District (BISD) elections, judges held up an injunction requested by the Department of Justice.

Texas: House erupts in showdown on voter’s rights | San Antonio Express-News

Apr 29 2013

» The Voting News

The Texas House erupted Thursday into a partisan showdown over voting rights when the chamber’s Republicans muscled through a measure they argue will help crack down on mail-in voter fraud. Tensions flared on House floor for more than three hours as Democrats fought Republicans over a measure to criminalize “ballot harvesting” of mail-in votes, a process in which a group or an individual collects and mails completed ballots for other people. House Bill 148 by Rep. Cindy Burkett, R-Sunnyvale, takes aim at the practice by capping the number of ballots an individual can mail in any election to 10. Republicans argued that the mail-in voting system is rampant with fraud in part because of ballot harvesters.

Texas: House erupts in showdown on voter’s rights | San Antonio Express-News

Apr 26 2013

» The Voting News

Texas: Online voter registration bill pushes for modern method | San Antonio Express-News

Apr 26 2013

» The Voting News

It’s a question often posed to Bexar County election officials: Can Texans register to vote online? The answer remains “not yet,” but that would change Sept. 1 under a measure approved by the Texas Senate this week. Sent to the House, the bill authored by Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, aims to modernize the state’s voter registration process the same way Texas has made it easier to complete other official transactions via the Internet.

Texas: Republicans, Democrats clash on redistricting | Abilene Reporter-News

Apr 19 2013

» The Voting News

Texas Republicans proposed legislation Thursday that would adopt the current political maps, but Democrats promised to fight the effort. Amarillo Sen. Kel Seliger offered a redistricting bill to the Senate State Affairs Committee that would formally adopt interim maps drawn by a federal court in San Antonio last year. The maps for congressional, state Senate and House districts were used for the 2012 election while a federal court in Washington, D.C., reviewed maps drawn by the Legislature after minority groups filed a lawsuit to block them.

Texas: Online voter registration bills see support from House, Senate committees | Houston Chronicle

Apr 17 2013

» The Voting News

Texas could become the seventeenth state to allow online voter registration if two bills advancing out of committees receive final approval. House Bill 313, which received praise from committee members in a Monday hearing, and Senate Bill 315, which was voted out of committee Thursday, propose allowing voters to register online and have that application automatically authenticated rather than having to wait on local election officials to reenter the data in their systems and confirm it.

Texas: Bill to aid voters who move before election receives lukewarm welcome | mySA.com blog

Apr 16 2013

» The Voting News

A bill proposing to allow voters who moved to a new county within the month before an election to vote at their old precinct received a lukewarm reception in the House Elections Committee Monday evening. Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, introduced House Bill 3081 to close a loophole that blocks people from voting on election day if they moved to a new county shortly before the election and didn’t have time, or make the effort, to register in their new county.

Texas: Bill That Cuts Early-Voting Period Likely to Be Pulled | Permian Basin 360

Apr 10 2013

» The Voting News

A bill that would slash the number of days allowed for early voting is likely to be pulled after scathing testimony Monday from opponents who said the bill was discriminatory and retrogressive. House Bill 2093, by state Rep. Patricia Harless, R-Spring, would limit the early-voting period in Texas to seven days before general and primary elections. Current law mandates 12 days. Harless initially said the measure was necessary to help elections administrators hire workers and volunteers, saying that a 12-day early-voting period as a possible deterrent. But after testimony at Monday’s House Elections Committee hearing, where critics slammed its intent as little more than an effort to make casting a ballot harder for everyone, Harless said she would not ask the committee for a vote.