Governor Greg Abbott signs the new voting bill into Texas law, September 7th 2021.
The Texas voting law of 2021, aka SB 1, was signed by Governor Greg Abbott on September 7th 2021. Texas is one of 18 states to pass stricter voting laws in wake of the 2020 election. Texas already had the strictest voting laws in the nation. Now they just got stricter.
Three lawsuits have already been filed to block it.
Democratic lawmakers tried to block it in July by leaving the state. That worked for 38 days, but then some of them returned and the legislature had enough members present to continue business – including passing a law that bans most abortions.
What:
- Poll watchers will have new powers.
- Drive-thru voting – is now out for most voters.
- 24-hour voting – gone. The state decides when polls can be open.
- Drop boxes – gone.
- Mail-in ballots can only be given to those who are 65 or older, have a disability or who will be out of the state during voting. And only if they ask for a ballot.
- Early voting before Election Day (a Tuesday) will be extended, but:
- Sunday voting: not before one o’clock.
- Employers must let workers vote on Election Day or during early voting
- Signatures: To vote you must sign your name in ink on paper and supply your driver’s license number, election identification certificate or the last four digits of your Social Security number (so that your signature can be compared to state records).
- Helping someone to vote: If you help someone vote, you must give your name, address, relationship to the voter, say whether you were paid by a political party, and take an oath, under penalty of perjury.
Why: Much of this is fighting the last election, where Republicans saw mail-in ballots as the main threat (they made it too easy to vote. Wait till they hear about the Internet!), and where poll watchers and challenging signatures became two of the main ways to discredit close elections.
When Governor Abbot signed the law, he said:
“Election integrity is now law in the state of Texas.”
Yet, when the state attorney general spent millions of dollars looking for cases of voter fraud in the 2020 election, only a handful of cases turned up – in a state where 11 million voted.
The manifesto of the El Paso shooter, Patrick Crusius, son of Texas, is likely closer to the truth:
“The heavy Hispanic population in Texas will make us a Democrat stronghold. Losing Texas and a few other states with heavy Hispanic population to the Democrats is all it would take for them to win nearly every presidential election. … At least with Republicans, the process of mass immigration and citizenship can be greatly reduced.”
Texas has been a red state since 1980, but it is becoming decidedly purple. In 2016 and 2020, Trump scraped by on 52%. Thanks to the Southern Strategy, the Republican Party has hitched its wagon to the wrong demographic star: Anglos (non-Hispanic Whites). In about 2019 they became a minority among those who could vote in Texas.
States of Change: The Demographic Evolution of the American Electorate, 1974-2060, by the Center for American Progress, the American Enterprise Institute, and William H. Frey of the Brookings Institution. Via Vox.
– Abagond, 2021.
See also:
- Voting Rights Act of 1965
- The Southern strategy
- 2042 and all that
- voter suppression
- The future of race in the US – according to me in 2015
- also Texas:
- The 2020 election for US president
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