Texas Senate Committee to Hear Bill on 2020 Election, Future Election Challenges

At 9am today, the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on SB 47, a bill authorizing political party chairs to demand reviews of the 2020 election. The bill also authorizes political party chairs to demand reviews of future elections, and elevate those reviews to the Secretary of State for further review, with counties paying the entire cost of the processes.

The hearing livestream will be available here.

The bill was first filed on Friday, and added to the Committee’s agenda late Friday afternoon, just after a staffer for former President Donald Trump released a statement urging that the bill be passed.

Trump has personally interfered in other states’ legislative processes, to open partisan reviews of the 2020 election.

•         Wisconsin General Assembly Speaker Robin Vos resisted calls for a partisan election review for months, but after traveling with Trump in a private plane, Vos announced one and said he would keep Trump “updated on our investigation.”  That partisan review will cost Wisconsin taxpayers at least $680,000.
•         Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman likewise resisted calls for an “Arizona-style” partisan election review for months. Then Corman had a conversation with Trump, and announced “I think he’s comfortable with where we’re heading.” The state senator appointed to head the review also spoke with Trump, and then announced Trump was “going to be watching me.” The committee running the review has since subpoenaed personal information of all voters in the state – information that would be ‘a gold mine’ for identity thieves – without any explanation about what they plan to do with it or how they plan to protect the information from disclosure.

A recent partisan review in Arizona cost taxpayers millions of dollars – and then concluded that Biden won the state.

If the Republican-led Texas Legislature begins a partisan review of the 2020 elections, it would be the first such review in a state that Trump won. The bill Trump has focused on was previously passed by the Texas Senate, after a rushed process; but expired at the end of the second special legislative session.

Statement by Common Cause Texas Associate Director Stephanie Gómez

This is getting a bit embarrassing. On Friday, leaders of this great state of Texas dropped everything to respond to a tweet – a tweet from someone who isn’t even a Texas resident, but rather a staffer for a former president who lives in Florida.

And they’re so willing to accommodate, they’re willing to cast doubt on the very elections that they won – and they’re willing to saddle county taxpayers with unknown and unlimited costs not just this year but forever into the future.

Is there a purpose to all this? Trump won the state of Texas. Why are he and his followers so eager to create doubt about our elections?

Texans deserve better than to have our ballots treated like fuel for an election conspiracy. And we deserve to have our legislative leadership focused on our needs – not an out-of-state twitter feed.