- Abbott lets scores of bills, the most in decades, become law without his signature.
Just more than 1,400 bills reached Abbott’s desk in the session that ended June 1, his first as governor. Of them, Abbott signed 1,203 and vetoed 42.
The 163 he let take effect, without signing, accounted for nearly 12 percent.
File these under 'Voting in Texas"
- HC: Texas needs to modernize its registration process to make it easier to cast a ballot.
Imagine a simple voting reform that would drastically cut administrative costs, decrease the possibility of voter fraud and almost surely increase turnout. Who could be against such a reform? Candidates and officeholders who like to pick their own voters through gerrymandering and other tools to tamp down opposition turnout may be opposed, but most folks interested in seeing democracy work more effectively would endorse the reform immediately. We're talking about online voter registration.
- Voting Rights Bill Would Address, Not Invalidate TX Law.
A voting rights bill introduced in Congress last week would subject Texas elections to new levels of federal scrutiny, but it would not invalidate the state’s controversial 2011 voter photo ID law that helped inspire it.
The federal measure is designed to restore and improve protections to minority voters granted by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, provisions that were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2013. The ruling found that key sections of the act unfairly targeted southern states and did not reflect current conditions.
