Legislation reforming Texas' election law could be headed to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott as early as midweek, an elections analyst with the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) told the Austin Journal.
“Now that the conference report has been agreed to by the conferees, it needs to go back to each chamber for approval,” Chad Ennis, senior fellow with TPPF wrote in an email. “We hope that it will be sooner rather than later. My guess is that both chambers will approve it by the middle of this week and then it should be headed to the governor.”
He said that the final product is worth the wait and they will make Texas elections safer and more secure.
“We are happy with the movement of the bill,” Ennis said.
The foundation describes its mission as "to build and promote conservative public policies."
The House amended the legislation, Senate Bill 1, the Election Protection Integrity Act, on Aug. 27, setting it up for consideration by a House/Senate conference committee. The 80-41 vote came after enough House Democrats had returned to the floor to give the chamber the quorum it needed to move legislation. In July, most of the members of the Democratic Caucus left the House and flew to Washington, D.C. on a charter flight, stranding election reform and other bills Abbott had selected for action in a special session. The governor promised to keep calling special sessions, which last for 30 days, until enough House Democrats returned to constitute a quorum.
Democrats argued that parts of the legislation would lead to voter suppression of Texans of color.
Among other changes to the voting law, SB1 would curtail some voting practices ushered in during the COVID-19 pandemic. It would eliminate drive-thru and 24-hour early voting. But the legislation would also expand early voting hours in some smaller and medium-sized counties, and add ID requirements for voting by mail. Many of these smaller counties have fewer minority voters than Texas' large urban counties.
“The Texas Legislature has done a great service for the people of Texas in ensuring the legitimacy of our election results,” TPPF’s chief executive officer Kevin Roberts said in a statement. “These reforms will protect voters by improving voter ID requirements, closing opportunities for ballot harvesting and mail-in ballot fraud, expanding voting hours, strengthening the rights of poll watchers, and preventing rogue election officials from changing the rules at the last minute. The Texas Legislature has aggressively moved to protect our most fundamental democratic right by making important fixes that improve how we collect and count votes."
Texas, which hasn't backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976, has not experienced any major problems with voting irregularities in recent years. Many Democrats say the fact that Texas is becoming less white has led to measures that allegedly make voting more difficult for voters of color in the state's larger urban counties.