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Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed sweeping voter suppression legislation into law on Wednesday. The bill blocks 24-hour and drive-thru voting. The measure also makes it difficult for voters to mail in their ballots.
“The common-sense reforms in this legislation strengthen our trust in the electoral process, from voter registration through the final tallying of ballots. Texans can cast their votes with confidence knowing that they’ll be counted and reported accurately,” state Senator Bryan Hughes, the author of the bill, said.
“It does make it easier and than ever before for anyone to go cast a ballot. It does also, however, make sure it is harder than ever for people to cheat at the ballot box,” the Governor said.
Republican Governors are pushing restrictive voting bills to restore election integrity but Democratic lawmakers and voting rights advocates say that the restrictive bills hinder people of color and elderly individuals.
“SB 1 is an appalling, anti-democracy effort by Texas Republicans to construct barriers to voting for people they believe will not support them” Eric Holder, former United States Attorney General, said. “What makes this bill and similar ones Republicans are pushing across the country even more un-American is that Republicans are using the ‘Big Lie’ about the 2020 election as a pretext to support them. The reality is that these bills have nothing to do with integrity or security, but rather are discriminatory measures making it harder for all people to vote. These bills will have disproportionate impact on communities of color.”
“I was born in segregation,” Representative Garnet Coleman said. “We think we’ve made progress, and then all of a sudden, there’s a new law that moves us back in time.
In May, Democrats blocked the passage of the legislation during a regular session of the legislature when they walked out of the state Capitol.
Abbott called a special session in July to once again try to pass the bill, but more than 50 Texas House Democrats fled to Washington, D.C., to try to block the bill and push Congress to pass a sweeping election overhaul bill.
Democratic leaders claimed the bill was “dangerous legislation that would trample on Texans’ freedom to vote.
