Texas

The Texas GOP is still furious about Harris County’s drive-thru voting | Abigail Rosenthal/Houston Chronicle

Texas Republicans aren’t going to let drive-thru voting go anytime soon, it seems. Several legislators have filed bills targeting drive-thru voting during this legislative session. The heftiest of the GOP’s “election security” bills, Senate Bill 7, bars tents, parking garages, parking lots or any “similar facility designed primarily for motor vehicles” for voting—venues many Harris County residents used to vote from their cars during the 2020 presidential, state and local elections. The bill also completely bans voting from cars unless the voter is “physically unable to enter the polling place” and only allows the voter and someone assisting the voter in the car. The assistant must also sign forms confirming the voter is unable to enter the polling place and explaining his or her relationship with the voter, why assistance was necessary, and what specific assistance was provided to the voter. Harris County implemented drive-thru voting during the 2020 election to expand voter participation during the coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of residents were able to vote from their cars.

Full Article: The Texas GOP is still furious about Harris County’s drive-thru voting

Texas ballot paper trail bill advances to elections committee | KTRE

A bill requiring electronic voting machines to produce a traceable paper ballot has moved forward to its committee assignment. Filed by Rep. James White (R-Woodville) in February, H.B. 1708 advanced to the Elections committee on Wednesday. If passed as-is, White’s bill would require the disclosure of ownership interest with voting devices. Now, the legislator has filed a measure to require a paper record after voting on electronic machines. “There are times when we have very hotly-contested elections, and they come out very close results,” White said. “That’s not a problem. Instead of just hitting a button and having some program just spit out the same data, we want to be able to have, throughout the state, paper ballots; a paper trail.” House Bill 1708 authored by District 19 State House Representative James White (R) calls for a voter-verifiable paper record from electronic voting machines. “When our laws allow for candidates to call for recounts, there’s something to recount,” White said. “There’s a paper ballot trail where our county clerks and other stakeholders can do a recount.”

Full Article: Rep. White’s ballot paper trail bill advances to elections committee

Texas Republican Lawmakers File 7 ‘Election Integrity’ Bills That Could Limit Voter Access | Andrew Schneider/Houston Public Media

Republican lawmakers have filed seven bills that would change voting access in Texas, including a law to limit the hours counties can keep ballot locations open during the state’s early voting period. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, who authored the bills, argued they’re necessary to force local governments to comply with the Texas Elections Code. “The seven bills themselves really represent my ideas to make sure that we have integrity in the voter roll as well as in the election system,” Bettencourt said. One of the proposed laws filed Friday, SB 1115, would require all counties to observe the same early voting hours and days, prohibiting counties from expanding their hours as Harris County did last fall with the state’s first-ever 24-hour voting sites. “In Harris County’s case,” Bettencourt said, “you have code that allows people to have very extended hours in early voting, but not on Election Day. When you look out in some of the counties surrounding Harris County, they don’t even go to 7 p.m. So, I think that the concept here is to have a standard 12-hour voting day, regardless of whether it’s early voting or Election Day.” Another measure, SB 1111, would requires the voter to provide documentation that the voter lives at the address where they are registered when they receive a confirmation request from the registrar. Bettencourt said this is specifically aimed at barring people from registering using a private P.O. box.

Full Article: Republican Lawmakers File 7 ‘Election Integrity’ Bills That Could Limit Voter Access – Houston Public Media

Texas Republicans were the most likely to use mail-in voting four years ago. Here’s how that flipped in the last election. | Karen Brooks Harper/The Texas Tribune

Democratic voters in Texas were more likely to cast their ballots by mail than Republican voters in the last election. Today, that may sound like a forgone conclusion, but that wasn’t the case four years ago. Absentee ballots, which only certain groups of Texans are eligible to use, have traditionally been a tool utilized by the GOP, and in 2016, counties reported that higher percentages of Republican voters cast absentee ballots than Democratic voters. The reason for the swap? It came from the top. Experts and political operatives note that President Donald Trump spent months attacking the credibility of mail-in voting to his Republican base while national and state Democrats launched their largest-ever push to support the method as a safe option to vote in the pandemic. Other factors at play this election season in Texas included an increase in participation by younger voters who lean Democratic, many of them college students living out of state. Democrats also were more likely to take coronavirus risks and precautions more seriously, leading them to look for ways to stay out of the polls during the pandemic, experts on both sides of the aisle said. In total, Texans cast 1 million absentee ballots before Election Day, up from less than 500,000 in 2016, according to the Texas secretary of state’s office. Martha Griffin, an Austin science educator who supported Joe Biden, said she voted absentee by claiming a disability caused by a chronic condition doctors said was brought on by COVID-19, which makes her dizzy easily and unable to stand for long periods, among other issues. She was also afraid of being contagious or contracting the virus again after being diagnosed in May. “When it came time to think about how to vote, I was kind of terrified,” said Griffin, 61, who was still suffering symptoms of COVID-19 in November, which qualified her for mail-in balloting.

Full Article: Texas Democrats were more likely to mail-in vote than Republicans in 2020 election | The Texas Tribune

Texas: Warning of fraud, Republicans seek to further tighten state voting laws | Houston Chronicle

As the country’s political polarization reaches a boiling point — illustrated vividly Wednesday by the violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of the president who believed his false claims that the election was stolen — Texas Republicans are seeking to make some of the nation’s strictest voting laws even stricter. They say the unrest sparked by the events Wednesday is likely to invigorate discussions over the matter in the state Legislature, where the 2021 session will begin Tuesday. Several election-related bills have been filed by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle — though their aims are in direct opposition, with Democrats looking to ease up laws they see as suppressing the vote and Republicans trying to curb the opportunities for the fraud they say plagued the 2020 election. Democrats have filed about two-thirds of the election-related bills, with the other third coming from Republicans. “If this week has highlighted anything, it’s that we need to protect and encourage democracy and that it’s fragile,” said Rep. John Bucy III, an Austin Democrat who sits on the House Elections Committee. “And so these types of bills are worth the investment.”

Full Article: Warning of fraud, Texas Republicans seek to further tighten state voting laws – HoustonChronicle.com

Texas: Ted Cruz accused of abetting sedition and inspiring pro-Trump riot by resisting Biden’s victory | Todd J. Gillman/Dallas Morning News

Although it was clear that President Donald Trump inspired the insurrection at the Capitol on Wednesday, Democrats pinned some of the blame on Sen. Ted Cruz, too, accusing him of promoting sedition and lawlessness by promoting Trump’s lies about election fraud. Cruz had been careful not to directly echo any of Trump’s more fanciful and baseless claims about ballot manipulation and cheating. But he did emerge as one of the two most ardent Senate advocates for blocking Congress from affirming President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory on Wednesday, demanding a 10-day delay. “It is your self-serving attempt at sedition that has helped to inspire these terrorists and their attempted coup,” alleged Beto O’Rourke, the El Paso Democrat who came close to ousting Cruz in 2018. Just before 3 a.m. Thursday in Washington, with the House debating a challenge to the Pennsylvania electors that Cruz himself supported in the Senate – ending up on the losing side of a 92-7 vote – Cruz issued a full-throated rejection of the mob violence.

Full Article: Ted Cruz accused of abetting sedition and inspiring pro-Trump riot by resisting Biden’s victory

Texas: How Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, other GOPers undermined election confidence | Kate McGee/The Texas Tribune

When a federal court tossed U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert’s far-fetched lawsuit asking Vice President Mike Pence to challenge Joe Biden’s legitimacy as president-elect, the Texas Republican appeared to propose violence in response. “Basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you got to go to the streets and be as violent as Antifa and [Black…

Texas Republican Congressman Chip Roy objects to seating 67 lawmakers from states Trump disputes to highlight GOP election hypocrisy | Tom Benning/Dallas Morning News

Austin Rep. Chip Roy, in a dramatic escalation in the GOP feud over whether to challenge Democrat Joe Biden’s White House win, on Sunday night objected to the seating of his House colleagues elected in the six states where President Donald Trump disputes the results. Roy, a conservative firebrand, used the tactic to underscore his opposition to the efforts by some Republicans – including several Texans – to not certify Biden’s victory on Wednesday. The Republican’s point was that if anyone is claiming the presidential election in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin was marked by widespread fraud, then the same would have to hold true for the down-ballot candidates elected in those states. “Those representatives were elected through the very same systems — with the same ballot procedures, with the same signature validations, with the same broadly applied decisions of executive and judicial branch officials,” he said.

Full Article: Chip Roy objects to seating 67 lawmakers from states Trump disputes to highlight GOP election hypocrisy

Texas Attorney General Paxton urged White House to revoke Harris County COVID relief funds over mail ballots | St. John Barned-Smith and Benjamin Wermund/Houston Chronicle

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tried to get the Trump administration to revoke millions in federal COVID relief funding that Harris County budgeted for expanded mail-in voting earlier this year, newly revealed records show. Paxton wrote in a May 21 letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that Harris County’s plan was an “abuse” of the county’s authority and an “egregious” violation of state law. The letter was obtained and published by the Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “We respectfully ask the department to scrutinize its award of CARES Act funding to Harris County in light of the county’s stated intent to use federal funding in violation of state law, and to the extent possible, seek return of any amounts improperly spent on efforts to promote illegal mail-in voting,” Paxton wrote. “Without implementing adequate protections against unlawful abuse of mail-in ballots, the department could be cast in a position of involuntarily facilitating election fraud.” The letter to Mnuchin illustrates the lengths Paxton went in his efforts to stop Harris and other counties from making it easier to vote by mail during the pandemic, which included later suing Harris County to block its plan to send mail ballot applications to all 2.4 million of its registered voters. Under Texas law, voting by mail is only an option for people who are 65 and older, disabled, incarcerated or out of the county on election day.

Full Article: Texas AG Paxton urged White House to revoke Harris County COVID relief funds over mail ballots – HoustonChronicle.com

Texas: Pennsylvania Lt. Governor Fetterman relentlessly trolls Dan Patrick seeking $3M voter fraud bounty | Benjamin Wermund/Houston Chronicle

All John Fetterman wants for Christmas is the $3 million he says Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick owes him. The Democratic lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania has been trolling his Republican counterpart for weeks to collect on the $1 million Patrick offered in November for evidence of fraud in the Nov. 3 election. Three supporters of President Donald Trump have now been charged in separate voter fraud schemes in Pennsylvania. Fetterman says they should all count for bounty purposes. The most recent charges came this week — against the second Pennsylvania man to be accused of casting a ballot for Trump in the name of his deceased mother. “We hit the jackpot with this last one,” Fetterman said. “There are three documented cases — three.” “All I want for Christmas is my handsome reward from Dan Patrick,” Fetterman tweeted on Dec. 18 with a Christmas tree and pleading face emoji. Fetterman says he’ll donate the proceeds to food banks in the form of gift cards to Sheetz and Wawa, competing Pennsylvania convenience stores with die-hard followings. Patrick has responded to Fetterman just once, in a tweet in November that read: “Faith in the electoral process is a serious issue. Transparency is critical. PA Dems brought this on themselves w/ last minute changes to election laws and counting ballots behind closed doors. Respond to the reports. Answer the questions. Stop the snide put-downs and #getserious” Fetterman says he is serious — about debunking the false allegations being thrown at his state. He has taken the lead in Pennsylvania pushing back on bogus claims of voter fraud circulated by Trump and his allies. Patrick — honorary chairman of Trump’s campaign in Texas — and his million-dollar reward are helping to disprove those claims, Fetterman says.

Full Article: Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Fetterman relentlessly trolls Dan Patrick seeking $1M voter fraud bounty – HoustonChronicle.com

Texas: Ken Paxton’s beefed-up 2020 voter fraud unit closed 16 minor cases, all in Harris County | Taylor Goldenstein/Houston Chronicle

The Texas Attorney General’s office this year almost doubled the amount of time it spent looking into and working on voter fraud cases in 2018 — more than 22,000 staff hours — yet resolved just 16 prosecutions, half as many as in 2018, records show.All 16 cases involved Harris County residents who gave false addresses on their voter registration forms. None of them received any jail time.Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has made the hunt for voter fraud a top priority of his office, between January and October gave the election integrity unit access to eight additional law enforcement sergeants on top of the nine already assigned to it, and doubled the number of prosecutors to four, according to records obtained from the agency by nonprofit government watchdog American Oversight and shared with Hearst Newspapers.In its 15 years of its existence, the unit has prosecuted a few dozen cases in which offenders received jail time, none of them involving widespread fraud. Paxton’s approach to the issue is the same as that of other top Texas Republicans, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott who earlier this month backed the attorney general’s last-ditch election suit at the Supreme Court challenging president-elect Joe Biden’s win in four battleground states — relentlessly insist voter fraud is a major concern while citing no evidence that it is prevalent. As President Donald Trump claimed that the election was stolen from him in early November, Patrick went so far as to offer a $1 million reward for tips leading to voter fraud convictions anywhere in the country.

Full Article: Ken Paxton’s beefed-up 2020 voter fraud unit closed 16 minor cases, all in Harris County – HoustonChronicle.com

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has had Trump’s back. But his latest gambit has failed. | Arelis R. Hernández and Maria Sacchetti/The Washington Post

Full Article: Ken Paxton has had Trump’s back. But the Texas attorney general’s latest gambit has failed. – The Washington Post

Texas: Carrollton Democrat proposes changing state law to let hand marked paper ballot counties to have countywide vote centers | James Barragán/Dallas Morning News

State Rep. Michelle Beckley wants to bring countywide voting centers to Denton, which would allow residents to vote at any polling location in the county. To do so, she is pushing a bill in the Legislature to allow counties with paper-based ballots, like Denton, to participate in the state’s countywide polling place program. “You run for office and you want to increase voter turnout,” said Beckley, a Carrollton Democrat who considers this bill her top priority for the 2021 session that begins next month. “You just need to make it easier and less confusing.” Currently, to operate a countywide polling program, a county must use all electronic equipment to count votes. Denton County uses paper-based ballots that voters fill out by hand and are then scanned electronically into the voting system. Beckley’s bill would add language into the election code allowing counties that use such technology into the state’s countywide vote center program. “I think that’s a positive development,” said David Jones, president of the nonpartisan Clean Elections Texas. “We’re in favor of anything that makes it easier for people to vote.”

Full Article: Carrollton Democrat proposes changing Texas law to let Denton have countywide vote centers

Texas can’t block votes cast in other states. Absurdly, it’s trying. | Lisa Marshall Manheim/The Washington Post

Full Article: The Texas Supreme Court lawsuit won’t go anywhere – The Washington Post

Texas files an audacious suit with the Supreme Court challenging the election results. | Adam Liptak/The New York Times

Full Article: Texas files an audacious suit with the Supreme Court challenging the election results. – The New York Times

Texas sues over election results in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania | Emma Platoff/The Texas Tribune

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing four battleground states — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — whose election results handed the White House to President-elect Joe Biden. In the suit, he claims that pandemic-era changes to election procedures in those states violated federal law and asks the U.S. Supreme Court to block the states from voting in the Electoral College. The last-minute bid, which legal experts have already characterized as a long shot, comes alongside dozens of similar attempts by President Donald Trump and his political allies. The majority of those lawsuits have already failed. There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, officials in most states and U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr have said. Biden won in all four states where Paxton is challenging the results. In a filing to the high court Tuesday, Paxton claims the four battleground states broke the law by instituting pandemic-related changes to election policies, whether “through executive fiat or friendly lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot integrity.” Paxton claimed that these changes allowed for voter fraud to occur — a conclusion experts and election officials have rejected — and said the court should push back a Dec. 14 deadline by which states must appoint their presidential electors.

Full Article: Texas sues over election results in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania | The Texas Tribune

Texas: Rep. Ron Wright calls for investigation of election amid unsubstantiated fraud claims | Brian Lopez/Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Wright of Arlington is calling for an investigation into the 2020 election after Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Since Joe Biden won the election, President Donald Trump has challenged the result in key states with lawsuits, but Trump has found no success. In a statement Monday, Wright said he urges Barr to appoint a special counsel as it would ensure that allegations of voter fraud are investigated to the fullest extent by the Justice Department. Wright said an investigation would “ultimately restore the American people’s utmost faith in our democratic system.” The statement did not clarify if Wright was talking only about the presidential election or every election, which would include his victory. The Star-Telegram reached out to Wright, but his office did not immediately respond. Wright joins Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick as Texas officials who have at one point refused to acknowledge Biden as the winner and have claimed that all legal votes need to be counted. Political experts have said Republicans don’t want to get on the bad side of the party and Trump, who is still in office, so they still voice support for him.

Full Article: Arlington TTX congressman wants investigation of election | Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Texas could soon enact same-day voter registration on Election Day | Jay R. Jordan/Houston Chronicle

Texas saw record-breaking voter turnout in 2020. Nearly 68 percent of the state’s 17 million registered voters cast ballots in the presidential election, the highest rate in decades. Even with such a massive turnout, there’s always room for improvement. In nearly half of all states, residents are able to register to vote on Election Day. But in Texas, the deadline to register is an entire month before Election Day. A Houston-area lawmaker hopes to change that. State Rep. Ron Reynolds, a Democrat representing parts of Fort Bend County, filed a bill Thursday for the upcoming legislature that, if enacted, would allow anyone to register and vote on Election Day throughout the state starting in late 2021. The bill states that two voter registrars must be present at each polling location to register new voters, according to text of the bill. Voters will cast a provisional ballot and fill out a voter registration form, which will then be corroborated by the registrar and Texas Secretary of State.

Full Article: Texas could soon enact same-day voter registration on Election Day

Texas GOP lawmakers target voter fraud, despite no proof of widespread problem | Karen Brooks Harper/The Texas Tribune

Fresh off a presidential election replete with accusations of election malfeasance but devoid of evidence of widespread fraud in Texas, local Republican leaders say the state needs more laws to protect the integrity of the state’s elections. To that end, GOP state lawmakers are heading into the next state legislative session with a fistful of anti-fraud bills aimed at an issue that experts — and even some conservatives — acknowledge isn’t much of a problem in the Lone Star State. Nearly a dozen pieces of legislation, all of them filed by Republicans, take aim at mail-in balloting, illegal voting and misbehaving elections officials — inspired by events and talking points from the previous election cycle. “Filing legislation that will prevent voter fraud ensures that we have fair elections,” said Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, a member of the House Elections Committee last session and author of several anti-fraud bills. “If people do not trust in the electoral process, they will not trust those who are elected.” Texas Democrats, who are focusing their efforts on legislation to expand voter access, counter that the bills are being filed as a way to sow mistrust in the process or make it harder to register and vote.

Full Article: Texas GOP lawmakers target voter fraud, despite no proof of widespread problem | The Texas Tribune

Texas: ‘I refuse to be afraid.’ Appeal filed in Tarrant County woman’s illegal voting conviction | Kaley Johnson/Fort Worth Star-Telegram

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas filed a petition Monday to appeal the five-year sentence of a woman who was convicted of voter fraud in Tarrant County. The ACLU and other legal representatives requested that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals review the case of Crystal Mason, whose illegal voting conviction in Tarrant County has become widely controversial. Three justices on the Court of Appeals for the Second District of Texas denied Mason’s first appeal in March, although it agreed she did not know she was ineligible to vote. Now the ACLU will try to take the case — which ACLU legal director Andre Segura called, “one of the most important voting rights cases in modern Texas history” — through the next appeals process. In the 2016 election, Mason submitted a provisional ballot, later saying she was not aware she could not vote while on federally supervised release. Her ballot was not counted — provisional ballots are meant to allow a voter to cast a potential ballot even if their name does not appear on the list of registered voters. The ballot is examined later for validity. Nearly 4,500 other people submitted provisional ballots in Tarrant County in the 2016 election. Of those, 3,990 provisional ballots were rejected, the Texas Tribune reported. But in March 2018, Mason was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for illegal voting. And while she appealed her case last year, the Second District Appeals Court upheld her conviction after a hearing in Tarrant County in September 2019.

Full Article: Crystal Mason’s legal team appeals illegal voting conviction | Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Texas Republicans follow Trump’s lead, spread misinformation about election | Abby Livingston and Shawn Mulcahy/The Texas Tribune

As votes continue to be counted in the presidential race, President Donald Trump used both Twitter and the White House to sow doubts about the integrity of the electoral process. Some of Texas’ most prominent Republican politicians, including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, have joined the president in amplifying misinformation about the election across their platforms. Much of the misinformation has been centered on the vote-counting process in states like Pennsylvania, a battleground territory in the race for the presidency. The count in Pennsylvania was expected to be slow because of the large number of mail-in ballots and because state law prevented poll workers from beginning to process them until Election Day. Cruz appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity” on Thursday night and charged that Philadelphia officials are “not allowing the election observers in, despite clear state law that requires election observers being there.” U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Victoria, said on a local radio show Friday morning that it was disturbing “they won’t let poll watchers in, after a judge’s order, is very telling.”

Full Article: Texas Republicans follow Trump’s lead, spread misinformation about election | The Texas Tribune

Texas Supreme Court rejects Republican effort to toss nearly 127K votes | Jolie McCullough/The Texas Tribune

A legal cloud hanging over nearly 127,000 votes already cast in Harris County was at least temporarily lifted Sunday when the Texas Supreme Court rejected a request by several conservative Republican activists and candidates to preemptively throw out early balloting from drive-thru polling sites in the state’s most populous, and largely Democratic, county. The all-Republican court denied the request without an order or opinion, as justices did last month in a similar lawsuit brought by some of the same plaintiffs. The Republican plaintiffs, however, are pursuing a similar lawsuit in federal court, hoping to get the votes thrown out by arguing that drive-thru voting violates the U.S. constitution. A hearing in that case is set for Monday morning in a Houston-based federal district court, one day before Election Day. A rejection of the votes would constitute a monumental disenfranchisement of voters — drive-thru ballots account for about 10% of all in-person ballots cast during early voting in Harris County. After testing the approach during the July primary runoff with little controversy, Harris County, home to Houston, set up 10 drive-thru centers for the fall election to make early voting easier for people concerned about entering polling places during the pandemic. Voters pull up in their cars, and after their registrations and identifications have been confirmed by poll workers are handed an electronic tablet through their car windows to cast ballots.

Full Article: Texas Supreme Court rejects Republican effort to toss nearly 127K votes | The Texas Tribune