Voting Rights Bill Passes The Texas House, Dooming Dems To Defeat

DALLAS, TX —Governor Greg Abbott will soon have the elections security law he has sought for months on his desk and ready to be signed. He'll also have scored a major victory for conservatives in the state and across the country.

The election bill advanced Friday out of the Texas House, finally putting an end to protests from the House Democratic Caucus, who had walked out of the chamber and eventually fled the state to keep the bill from becoming law.

It remains possible that the Republicans in control could made compromises and concessions before sending the bill on for the governor's signature. The current special session is set to end Sept. 5.

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Among key provisions of the bill: to ban drive-through and 24-hour voting, and to make it easier for partisan poll watchers to participate in the process. None of those are considered to encourage people of color to vote. On the other hand, Democrats say that the bill solves a problem of election security that never really existed.

The Texas Attorney General's Office says there were a total of 534 offenses charged against 154 voters (some with multiple offenses) for voting illegalities since 2004. Among those, 189 were for voting illegally, 310 were for fraud through mail-in ballots, and 159 were for assistance fraud.

The A.G.'s report states some 510 total counts are pending prosecution. But, the report also states its own limitations, pointing out that it "does not record or report offenses handled exclusively by local law enforcement, district, county attorneys and federal authorities." Instead, the report "reflects cases investigated and prosecuted by the Office of the Attorney General."

So, in context, and calculating the voter turnout for every state and national presidential election dating back to 2004, there were nearly 94 million votes cast, according to the Texas Secretary of State's website. So 534 illegal acts of voting remain statistically insignificant, according to critics of the new bill.

While legislators were working to pass the measure at the state capital, NAACP President Nelson Linder ruminated on what was accomplished by the 90-day delay the Democrats staged. He says that while the Democrats' walkout did not ultimately kill the bill, their efforts were not entirely in vain, either.

"I believe there was some good accomplished, absolutely," he said. "It raised public awareness and we did see people stand up for what's right and bring a lot of national attention to the issue of voting rights. So Igive them credit for that."

Linder believes that those who find the bill onerous will live to fight another day, and that their best recourse remains the ballot box — no matter how much more difficult it may be to reach.

"It will take a lot of work," he maintains, "but with effort and a comprehensive strategy, I believe that eventually we will win if we can convince people to vote. It helps, I think, if you see these things in cycles, and right now conservatives are riled up and energized."

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