Voting Rights

The decision to politicize our elections by conducting a partisan ballot review will only continue to foster distrust in our democracy and leave Texan taxpayers to foot the bill. This is nothing but a craven, partisan scheme meant to distract and divide us.

A special session of the Texas legislature began today and right away Republicans in leadership are showing a blatant disregard for the democratic process.  Omnibus voter suppression bills have been filed in both chambers. HB 3 and SB 1 are both highly complex 40+ page bills that were only posted within the last 24 hours.   Committee hearings in both chambers have been set for Saturday, at 8am in the House and at 11am in the Senate. If the bills are heard in order of posting in the House, it is highly likely both election bills will be being heard at exactly the same time, making it difficult to impossible for Texans to testify on both. 

Last week, Common Cause Texas released this deeply alarming video in which we hear the presenter call for volunteer poll watchers who will have the "courage" to go from the predominantly Anglo Harris County suburbs to the Black and Brown communities in the urban core.  The video has now been viewed over 100k times on Twitter, and has been the focus of national news stories on NBC, CNN, the Washington Post and many others.  With SB 7 voted out of the state senate, and HB 6 voted out the house elections committee, both are a path to soon be eligible to be brought up for debate on the floor of the state house.  Today, Common Cause Texas launched a pressure campaign aiming to make sure Speaker Phelan sees this video and rejects the dangerous expansion of poll watcher powers by keeping the proposed bills from being brought to the floor.

Last month, Governor Abbott designated “election integrity” an emergency item, allowing the legislature to prioritize bills within that topic. After weeks of vague reports of an omnibus bill being in the works - Senate Bill 7 was introduced late last night.

"Voter suppression doesn't get much more blatant than this outrageous attempt to invalidate the votes of nearly 127,000 Texans," said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, in response to the decision. "We hope this ruling eliminates some of the anxiety and confusion so many Houstonians were feeling. This should allow the election to be decided by Texas voters and not by a small group of people trying to disrupt our democracy through litigation, suppression and confusion."