The Republican-led Texas Senate passed an election reform bill.
The legislative body voted 18-13 on SB 7 Thursday morning after over seven hours of debate and several amendments to the legislation. The final language of the bill has not been released publicly.
The House has to vote on the bill before it reaches Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, but he is expected to sign it. It changes the way mail-in voting works, shortens the hours for early voting, and bans drive-through voting.
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“Maintaining the integrity of our elections is vital to preserving public trust so our democracy can flourish, and that’s why I have made election security a top priority again this legislative session,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said in a statement. “SB 7 will strengthen the public’s faith in our electoral process and ensure that every Texan knows that when they cast their ballot, their vote is secure.”
State Sen. Bryan Hughes, who introduced the bill, used a common Republican phrase to describe the bill: that it’s about “making it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
One change mentioned in the version of the bill that passed through the Senate Committee on State Affairs has to do with voting by mail.
If the language remains the same and is enacted into law, it would ban voting clerks from soliciting people to fill out applications to vote by mail, and it prohibits the state from distributing applications for mail-in voting to people who didn’t request one. It also requires individuals who apply to vote by mail on the grounds of disability to provide documentation from the Social Security Administration, the Department of Veteran Affairs, or a licensed physician.
The initial write-up of the bill limited early voting hours from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., ending the extended hours offered in 2020 in certain counties where voting ran until 10 p.m., according to the Texas Tribune.
Implementation of the bill will incur a loss of nearly $35 million dollars over the first year, and would not cost any more money after that, the bill’s fiscal note said. Most of that money, $25 million, would be spent on replacing or retrofitting election voting systems.
Another cost of the bill is that it forces the secretary of state to set up an online portal for voting clerks so that voters can track the status of their ballot application. A user would have to provide identification, either a driver’s license number, a personal identification card number, or a social security number, to gain access.
The bill also requires polling places be located “inside a building” and not “in a tent or other temporary moveable structure or in a facility primarily designed for motor vehicles.” It also bars any voter from casting a vote “from inside a motor vehicle.”
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Texas’s Legislature is one of dozens across the country that are looking to make drastic changes to the way elections are run. In many cases, the Republican-controlled legislatures are looking to tighten election laws in ways that they argue make it harder for fraud to occur.
Democrats argue those efforts are unwarranted and designed to make it harder for people to vote.
Former President Donald Trump, his campaign, allies, and many Republicans on Capitol Hill claimed there was overwhelming election fraud that altered the results of the election.
Democratic activists and lawmakers have accused Republicans of trying to recreate Jim Crow laws with the changes.
