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Cutting to the chase:
EMPOWERING POLL WATCHERS
- The legislation would make it a crime for an election official to reject a poll watcher who meets the qualifications for the position.
- The measures would make it illegal to obstruct a poll watcher’s view
- Poll watchers are “entitled to sit or stand near enough to hear or see the activity.”
- Texas law still prohibits poll watchers from watching someone actually cast a ballot, however.
- The legislation empowers poll watchers to sue and seek court orders against election officials who get in their way.
- The new proposals would also require poll watchers to swear an oath that they will not harass voters.
- Prevents poll watchers from being removed for violating election law unless they’ve already been warned.
LIMITING OPPORTUNITIES TO VOTE
- They ban the use of drop boxes for mail ballots
- They ban the mailing of absentee ballot applications to all eligible voters
- They ban drive-thru voting and 24-hour voting locations.
- The House bill makes it a felony for any election official to send out unrequested absentee ballot applications.
NEW HURDLES TO MAIL VOTING
- The Texas bill requires mail voters to include identification numbers on their envelopes
- Applications that must match data on their voter registration.
- They’d have to include their driver’s license number — although an expired one would suffice. If they don’t have a driver’s license, they can include the final four digits of their Social Security number.
- Voters who submit ballots before Election Day would be notified of problems and allowed to go to an elections office to fix some issues that can disqualify the vote, such as a mismatched signature. However, voters will not be able to fix problems with their identification numbers — ballots that don’t contain them or don’t match the ones on file can be discarded.
CRIMINAL PENALTIES
- The bills expand an existing mandate that people who help voters with mail ballots provide information on the envelope attesting to their role.
- Anyone who helps a voter fill out a ballot must also submit their signature, name, address, relationship and details of whether they were paid by a campaign or political committee.
- Those who fail to fill out the information can be prosecuted, and the bills remove exemptions from prosecution from caregivers who are not family or nonfamily living in the same home as the voter.
- The bills create a new crime around being compensated to collect filled-out and sealed ballots from voters. The ACLU complains the provision is vague and could criminalize routine get-out-the-vote operations.
- The legislation also requires local election officials to refer all cases of improperly cast ballots to the state attorney general.
- the House bill requires judges to inform people convicted of felonies that they cannot vote.
