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With the Texas Legislature gaveled back in for legislative overtime, the House and Senate have each revealed their opening bids in the GOP’s push to enact new voting restrictions, finding common ground on proposals to narrow local control of elections.
Unlike during the spring’s regular legislative session, Republicans from both chambers appear more closely aligned in their starting approaches to the priority voting legislation that Gov. Greg Abbott put on the agenda for the special session that began Thursday. In Senate Bill 1 and House Bill 3, both chambers have revived proposals to further clamp down the state’s voting-by-mail rules, and rein in initiatives that Harris County — the state’s largest county that is home to Houston and a diverse population — attempted in 2020 to widen access to voting.
Both bills carry over measures from the regular session to bolster protections for partisan poll watchers and embrace new ID requirements for voting by mail that were added at the last minute to the sweeping voting bill, known as Senate Bill 7, that Democrats doomed in May when they staged an 11th hour walkout to break quorum.
