Texas

Texas election officials concerned about software vendors’ financial scare | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

A company that makes software used by Texas’ largest counties to manage voter registration data has thrown election officials for a loop again with the departure of two top executives and mixed messages about its financial viability, just months before a critical statewide election. The latest word from Votec Corp.’s chairman is that the company has secured enough funds to continue operating for now. But the California-based company’s dire warnings about a shutdown just days earlier spooked some county election officials, who must now consider whether to try to switch to a new commercial vendor, migrate to a state-run system that they have concerns about, or stick with an unsteady partner in Votec. The uncertainty follows a similar scare last year, when Votec demanded a 35% surcharge from its customers to help it stay afloat. And it comes as election officials prepare for a constitutional amendment election Nov. 4, a potential redrawing of legislative districts and next year’s primary election. Read Article

Texas: Appeals court upholds law requiring ID numbers to cast mail-in ballots | Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney/Politico

A federal appeals court has ruled that Texas may enforce a state law that invalidates mail-in ballots submitted without a voter’s state identification number or partial Social Security number. A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the requirement the Texas Legislature enacted in 2021 as part of an election-integrity bill known as SB1 did not violate a federal law preventing states from imposing voting requirements “not material” to the validity of ballots. Civil rights groups and the Biden administration sued to block enforcement of aspects of the election-integrity measure, arguing that the bill had the potential to disqualify large numbers of ballots that were cast by legitimate voters but might contain minor errors. Read Article

Texas Senate once again tries to give the attorney general authority to prosecute election crimes | Eleanor Klibanoff/The Texas Tribune

The Texas Senate voted 17-12 Wednesday to preliminarily approve a bill that would allow the attorney general to independently prosecute election crimes without waiting to be invited by a local district attorney, a long-standing priority for the office’s GOP incumbent, Ken Paxton. A similar proposal stalled out just before the finish line during the regular session, with the House and Senate unable to agree on how quickly the attorney general should be allowed to take the case from local authorities. This time around, both chambers are starting from the same spot on that issue, directing the attorney general to immediately step in and take over election fraud cases. But a potential new line of disagreement has opened. In setting the agenda for the Legislature’s ongoing special session, Gov. Greg Abbott asked lawmakers to grant this authority to the attorney general with a constitutional amendment, after Texas’ highest criminal court ruled in 2021 that the state constitution bars the agency from unilaterally inserting itself into criminal cases. Read Article

As Texas embraces federal immigration database to verify voter citizenship, some experts are worried | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texas election officials are praising a revamped federal immigration database that they’ve begun using to validate the citizenship of registered voters. Texas is one of the earliest states to start using the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ overhauled SAVE database to check voters’ eligibility. That comes after the Trump administration, in its campaign to eliminate the risk of noncitizen voting, made the database free for states to use and easier to search. But some experts and watchdogs warn that the changes haven’t necessarily made the system more reliable. They say the administration hasn’t publicly released enough information about it, which makes it difficult to assess how complete and accurate the search results are, and whether there are enough safeguards to protect people’s privacy and voting rights. Read Article

Texas Attorney General Ken investigating “potential” noncitizen voters | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Tuesday that he is investigating “more than 100 potential noncitizens” suspected of casting more than 200 ballots during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles. Paxton’s news release said most of the cases involve Harris County voters. His office is also investigating possible instances in Guadalupe, Cameron, and Eastland counties, using information obtained from the Texas Secretary of State, the news release said. In Texas, about 11 million voters cast ballots in Texas in the November 2020 presidential election, and more than 8 million in the November 2022 general election. The more than 200 ballots Paxton cited for the two full election cycles would amount to around one-thousandth of 1% of the ballots cast in just the two general elections combined. Read Article

Texas lawmakers failed to pass a proof of citizenship law but made other changes to elections | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

After considering a number of bills that would significantly reshape election administration and voting access in the state, Texas lawmakers ultimately approved only a few, including legislation that would alter the schedule of the 12-day early-voting period to increase access. They also passed measures aimed at reducing rejections of mail-voting applications and ballots, and added new restrictions on curbside voting, but held off on some more controversial proposals. Among the bills that didn’t advance were Senate Bill 16, one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s priority bills, which would have imposed a strict requirement for voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship, and a measure that would have given state Attorney General Ken Paxton more authority to prosecute election crimes. Bills that would have permitted online voter registration, audits of hand-count results, and guns in polling sites also stalled. Read Article

Texas bill creating more weekend early voting could boost turnout, but delay election results | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texans will have a new schedule for early voting in coming years under new legislation that starts the voting period later but slides it right up to Election Day, eliminating the three-day break in between. Experts say Senate Bill 2753, which lawmakers approved this week, will likely boost turnout, as it includes more time for voting on weekends. The author of the bill, Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, told Votebeat that the change also “simplifies the process” and would reduce the cost of election operations and equipment. But local election officials said they aren’t so sure of that, and are still determining how it will work and what it could cost counties. The bill doesn’t allocate any funding for counties to implement the changes. Read Article

Texas to expand voting on weekends for next presidential election | Jeremy Wallace/Houston Chronicle

Texas will no longer have a three-day gap between the end of early voting and Election Day under a bill passed by the Texas Legislature that is heading to Gov. Greg Abbott. Currently, Texas ends in-person early voting on the Friday before Election Day and restarts voting on Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. for Election Day. But under the new changes, the gap is gone and Texas will essentially have one voting period that runs for 13 days. The bill by state Sen. Bob Hall, a North Texas Republican, had big support among Democrats too. “What it means is we’ll now have two weekends of early voting instead of just the one,” said State Rep. John Bucy, a Williamson County Democrat. Read Article

Texas: Study Reveals the Lasting Voter Suppression Effects of Restrictive Voter ID Law | Kevin Morris and Coryn GrangeBrennan Center for Justice

New research shows that a restrictive voting law in Texas made people less likely to vote for at least two years after having a mail ballot application or ballot rejected. As we showed in 2022, the voters directly harmed by this law were more likely to be nonwhite, raising important questions about the long-term consequences of laws that fall more heavily on minority voters. The state enacted Senate Bill 1 in 2021, ostensibly to reduce widespread voter fraud — which in reality does not exist. The law made casting a ballot by mail more difficult, and it ended practices adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic to make voting easier, such as 24-hour and drive-thru voting. Read Article

Texas bill requiring voters to prove citizenship stalls | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

A high-profile bill that would have required documented proof of citizenship from Texas voters appears likely dead after it missed a key House deadline Tuesday, an unceremonious outcome for a Republican legislative priority. Senate Bill 16 had 50 Republican co-sponsors in the House, and supporters widely expected it to sail through the chamber. The bill passed the Senate last month along party lines and with little debate. Republicans and allied groups around the country have been aggressively pushing for such citizenship proof measures at the state and federal level. SB 16 and its companion, House Bill 5337, were among the most sweeping proof-of-citizenship proposals introduced anywhere in the country, applying not only to new applicants for voter registration but also retroactively to 18.6 million voters already registered in the state. Voting rights advocates warned that the bill would have disenfranchised eligible voters, and discouraged future voters by making registration and voting more burdensome. Read Article

Texas lawmakers want penalties for local governments’ campaign finance posting failures | Lexi Churchill/The Texas Tribune

Texas lawmakers are pushing to impose steep penalties on local governments that don’t post campaign finance reports online, after an investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found some school districts weren’t doing so. The initial posting requirements, designed to make election spending more transparent, went into effect nearly two years ago. Most of the school district leaders said they had no idea they were out of compliance until the newsrooms contacted them. Even after many districts uploaded whatever documentation they had on file for their trustee elections, reports were still missing because candidates hadn’t turned them in or the schools lost them. “I was surprised and disappointed,” said Republican state Rep. Carl Tepper, who authored the online posting requirement. “I did realize that we didn’t really put any teeth into the bill.” Read Article

Texas Legislature approves bill to ease polling place requirements for countywide voting | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Both chambers of the Texas Legislature have passed a bill intended to roll back a 2023 law that required certain counties to drastically increase the number of polling locations — even in areas where buildings were scarce and funding wasn’t available to fully equip them. The bill is now headed to the governor’s desk and set to become law. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican, championed the bill, and it was supported by the Texas Association of Election Officials and the Texas Association of County and District Clerks. Read Article

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Announces Voting Fraud Charges | Edgar Sandoval/The New York Times

A half-dozen people, including a county judge, two City Council members and a former county election administrator, were indicted in Texas on Wednesday for “vote harvesting” and tampering with evidence, elevating Attorney General Ken Paxton’s charges of voter fraud by mostly Latino Democrats to a criminal level. The charges surprised Latino voting rights activists, who had insisted that a series of law enforcement raids on political operatives and voting organizers, some who were in their 70s and 80s, appeared to have been political. The raids last August by Mr. Paxton’s office were part of a sprawling voter fraud inquiry in Latino enclaves near San Antonio and in South Texas, conducted by Mr. Paxton’s “election integrity unit.” Read Article

Texas House OKs bill allowing election judges to carry guns | Stephen Simpson/The Texas Tribune

Texas House lawmakers debated gun rights and voter protections Wednesday afternoon related to a bill that would allow election judges to carry a weapon inside a polling place at any time. House Bill 1128, by Rep. Carrie Isaac, R-Dripping Springs, allows an election judge, early voting clerk, or deputy early voting clerk who is serving as an election judge to carry a concealed handgun at an early voting or Election Day polling place as a means of protection for themselves and others. House lawmakers passed the bill 85 to 57 on Thursday, advancing it to the Senate. This bill would codify a decision made by Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2018, where he ruled that since district judges can carry firearms to polling places and election judges had been given the authority of district judges, they should also be able to. ​​Paxton’s opinion explains why a court would take his side in the decision, but it was not legally binding. Read Article

Texas attempts to revive voter assistance restrictions | Gabriel Tynes/Courthouse News Service

Parties on opposite sides of Texas’ strict new election access law appeared before a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday, attempting to resolve claims the measure violates Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act. After presiding over a six-week bench trial in October 2024, U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez determined that it does, declaring that Texas’ restrictions on voting assistance unlawfully narrow voters’ federally protected rights. As a result, several provisions of Senate Bill 1 were struck down or enjoined. On Wednesday, three attorneys for state defendants argued the lower court wrongfully struck down the rules by misinterpreting Section 208, which they say permits reasonable, generally applicable regulations and does not preempt Texas’ safeguards against fraud, coercion and abuse in the voting process. Read Article

Texas election officials wary of shift to centralized voter-registration system | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

An effort to force all of Texas’ 254 counties onto the state’s central system for managing voter registration has some election officials concerned about the system’s history of technical problems, its capacity to handle larger volumes of data and the potential for new security risks. Thirty-two Texas counties, including some of the state’s largest, currently use private vendors for software to handle voter registration and election management tasks. The software helps counties manage information including voters’ addresses, voting history, registration applications, images of signatures for verification, images of mail-ballot envelopes and other personal data. Pending legislation, Senate Bill 2382, would require counties to exclusively use the state’s system, called Texas Election Administration Management, or TEAM. Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston, filed the bill after many counties last year faced a surprise surcharge from one of the private vendors, Votec. Read Article

Texas bill makes verifying hand-counted elections easier | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

A year after Gillespie County Republicans hand counted thousands of primary ballots, a bill from a Republican Texas lawmaker whose district includes parts of the area could make it easier to verify the accuracy of hand-counted election results. State Rep. Ellen Troxclair of Lakeway filed House Bill 3113, which would require counties opting for hand counts to use a ballot that is capable of being scanned and tabulated by voting machines using optical scanning technology. By law, Gillespie County Republicans were allowed to design their own ballots, and they didn’t choose to use ballots that could be scanned. That meant their primary results could only be verified manually. Read Article

Texas bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote advances | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

In a quick vote after little debate, the Texas Senate approved a bill that would require voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering and would restrict them to voting in congressional races only if they do not. The bill, a Republican legislative priority, still needs approval in the state House before it can become law. It would cost state officials nearly $2 million over the next five years to implement, according to the bill’s fiscal note, which doesn’t include any costs expected to be borne by local election officials. Read Article

Texas: Federal judge strikes down mail ballot ID requirement | Dan Katz/The Texas Tribune

A federal judge in San Antonio has ruled that the state of Texas’ ID requirements for mail ballot applications are unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez on Thursday found that the provisions in the state’s 2021 voter security law SB1 discriminate against voters with disabilities. Mail-in voters are principally people over the age of 65 and people with disabilities. Since the law was enacted, many voters reported having their ballots rejected because they didn’t provide an ID number, or the number they provided did not match the one the state had on file. Read Article

Texas GOP bill would empower AG to prosecute election crimes | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Some Texas Republican lawmakers are reviving a previously stalled effort to expand the Texas attorney general’s power to prosecute election crimes. The long-running push is a response to a 2022 ruling from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which found that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office does not have unilateral authority to independently prosecute criminal cases in trial courts without the request of a local prosecutor. Senate Bill 1026, filed by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, a powerful Republican from Central Texas, would amend the law to require the Texas attorney general’s office to prosecute election crimes if no local proceedings have begun after six months. The bill was approved by the GOP-led Senate Committee on State Affairs Thursday. Similar bills have also been filed in the House. Read Article

Texas: In Guadalupe County, an elections academy aims to strengthen residents’ trust in voting | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Guadalupe County’s Citizens Elections Academy is the brainchild of Lisa Hayes, the county’s elections administrator, who modeled the idea after a similar initiative by local law enforcement. Across the state, counties and cities offer local government citizens’ academies and local law enforcement agencies run police department academies, but Guadalupe County’s academy — launched in the fall of 2023 — is the first to focus solely on elections. The goal, Hayes said, is to increase confidence and trust in the election process. It’s part of a broader effort by Texas election officials to address rampant spread of misinformation following the November 2020 election. Across the state, election officials have hosted open houses, workshops, and additional public testing of voting equipment beyond what’s required by law to try to regain voters’ trust. Read Article

Texas proposal would ease polling place requirements for countywide voting | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texas state senators Thursday held a public hearing on legislation crafted to update a 2023 law requiring certain counties to drastically increase the number of polling locations if they use vote centers for countywide voting. Last year, Votebeat reported that election officials in several counties said they were struggling to comply with the law as written. “Most election administrators and county clerks will tell you they’re struggling to find workers on Election Day,” Bettencourt said during the hearing Thursday. He cited an example reported by Votebeat last year of election officials in Brazos County who said they were struggling to comply with the law. Read Article

Texas supporters of countywide voting on election day fight efforts to end it | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

More than a dozen Texas counties are fighting a push by some Republican state lawmakers to get rid of a program that allows voters to cast their ballots at any county polling location on Election Day, arguing that the option saves taxpayers millions of dollars and makes voting more convenient. County officials say it should be up to local leaders and election officials who best understand the needs of their communities to decide whether to offer countywide voting on Election Day. Two bills have been filed to get rid of the option, which is allowed in 99 counties encompassing more than 80% of the state’s voters. Eliminating it would mean counties would almost certainly have to open, equip and staff more neighborhood voting sites, since Election Day voters would be able to vote only at their assigned precinct. In some counties, available facilities are also difficult to find. Read Article

Texas counties scramble after ES&S pollbook decertified | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

With city and school elections just a few months away, election officials in more than 60 Texas counties are scrambling to replace a key piece of voting equipment that’s no longer in service: the electronic pollbooks they use to check voters in at the polls. The state decertified widely used pollbook software from voting machine company Election Systems & Software in December after several thousand voters in Dallas County received the wrong ballot during the November presidential election, a problem local officials attributed to glitches with the e-pollbook. Now county officials have to decide whether to wait to see if ES&S’s updated software is certified in time to prepare for the May elections, or choose a different certified vendor, which could be expensive. They must also consider whether any new option would be compatible with their existing systems and whether they have enough time to train poll workers to use it. Read Article

Texas: “It kind of sounded biblical”: How a roll of the dice and numbered beads determined a Corpus Christi City Council race | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

A single Corpus Christi City Council seat drew five contenders in November’s election, a level of interest that ultimately prolonged the final outcome until this week — and at some points left officials scratching their heads as they were forced to dig through archaic rules to figure out how to determine the winner. After the November votes were counted, incumbent Everett Roy and former council member Billy Lerma earned the most support. But since neither got a majority of votes, the contest remained undecided. Both men advanced to a December runoff. The second round of voting didn’t bring a resolution. Turns out, voters were deadlocked. The candidates tied, 1,916 to 1,916. By law, that result triggered a recount. At Lerma’s request, the recount was conducted by hand and took city officials roughly four days.

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Texas: Dallas County scrambles to secure voter check-in software before May 3 election | Tracey McManus/The Dallas Morning News

Less than four months until voters return to the polls, Dallas County is scrambling to secure new check-in software after failures during the Nov. 5 general election. And the window for getting it done is tight. The county’s electronic pollbooks from Election Systems & Software malfunctioned during last year’s election, resulting in nearly 4,000 people voting with ballots tied to precincts where they do not live. As a result, the Texas secretary of state decertified that version of the pollbook software in December, said Judd Ryan, ES&S senior vice president of sales. Read Article

Texas: Can these 5 bills to expand voting access win bipartisan support in the Legislature? | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Republican lawmakers in Texas are signaling this year that they will continue pushing for restrictions on voting in the name of combating voter fraud, including ending countywide voting and requiring proof of citizenship to register. But some efforts to expand voting access — including legislation that has come up in past legislative sessions — could gain bipartisan support, some policy experts say. Bills that would expand the acceptable forms of ID voters can present at the polls and one that expands mail-voting access for people with disabilities, among others, have a chance to move forward, said Daniel Griffith, senior director of policy at the Secure Democracy Foundation, a nonprofit research group. They’re not sure bets to become law, of course. Read Article

Texas GOP wants to require citizenship proof from voters | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Republicans are making a big push for legislation requiring Texans to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote, and key lawmakers are signaling that they’ll make it a priority next year. The push is part of a national effort by the GOP and conservative allies who assert that such legislation is needed to stop noncitizens from illegally casting ballots, even though such cases are already very rare. Read Article

Texas election bill aimed at increasing transparency could sow chaos for election officials, experts say | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Key Texas lawmakers are reviving legislation that would require election officials to respond within set time frames to requests to explain “election irregularities” from certain party officials and election workers. If the complainants aren’t satisfied, the bill would let them take their requests to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, which would have to decide whether to investigate further and conduct an audit. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican who authored the bill, said it will help clear up “any misunderstanding” about elections. But experts and local election officials said Texas already has policies in place that have increased election transparency and security. Read Article

Texas ballot secrecy draws attention in Legislature, courts | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texas officials had to issue emergency guidance this year to patch holes in new election transparency laws that threatened to expose the choices people made on their ballots. Now that the 2024 election is over, the issue of protecting ballot secrecy is receiving renewed attention in both the courts and the legislature. A national conservative nonprofit last week filed a federal lawsuit against Harris County, alleging the county isn’t taking steps to protect voters’ right to a secret ballot. Another case involving an activist who claims to have uncovered the ballot choices of more than 60,000 voters is ongoing. Read Article