Name: Republican Lawmakers File 7 ‘Election Integrity’ Bills That Could Limit Voter Access | Houston Public Media
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Republican Lawmakers File 7 ‘Election Integrity’ Bills That Could Limit Voter Access | Houston Public Media

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To embed this piece of audio in your site, please use this code:XRepublican lawmakers have filed seven bills that would change voting access in Texas, including a law to limit the hours counties can keep ballot locations open during the state’s early voting period.State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, who authored the bills, argued they're necessary to force local governments to comply with the Texas Elections Code.“The seven bills themselves really represent my ideas to make sure that we have integrity in the voter roll as well as in the election system,” Bettencourt said.One of the proposed laws filed Friday, , would require all counties to observe the same early voting hours and days, prohibiting counties from expanding their hours as Harris County did last fall with the state’s first-ever 24-hour voting sites.“In Harris County’s case,” Bettencourt said, “you have code that allows people to have very extended hours in early voting, but not on Election Day. When you look out in some of the counties surrounding Harris County, they don’t even go to 7 p.m. So, I think that the concept here is to have a standard 12-hour voting day, regardless of whether it’s early voting or Election Day.”Another measure, , would requires the voter to provide documentation that the voter lives at the address where they are registered when they receive a confirmation request from the registrar. Bettencourt said this is specifically aimed at barring people from registering using a private P.O. box.Two other measures in particular are aimed at making it easier for the Secretary of State's office to purge voter rolls. provides the Secretary of State the authority to withhold funds if the voter registrar or elections administrator fails to remove in a timely manner voters who should be canceled from the voter roll. And boosts Secretary of State efforts by requiring registrars to cross-reference voter rolls and motor vehicle records where a person indicated that he or she is not a U.S. citizen, and remove ineligible voters.Republican lawmakers at the state and federal level have asserted, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud took place during the 2020 election. In Harris County, a multiagency, bipartisan election security task force found in the most recent election.But Gov. Greg Abbott has nonetheless identified “election security” as one of his emergency items for the legislative session, making these bills eligible for consideration from state lawmakers within the session’s first 60 days, Bettencourt said.“Clearly, this is going to be a focus,” he said. “It might have been one of the top focuses until Winter Storm Uri…But it’s still, I believe, going to be in the top five focuses of the legislature, just by the amount of interest that it’s creating, really, on both sides of the aisle, both in the state of Texas as well as federally.”Other measures aimed at combating alleged election violations include:Bettencourt's coauthors include state Sens. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, and Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown.Texas is already among the most difficult states to vote, with some of the most restrictive voting laws in the country, . And critics of strict voting laws say they’re intended to suppress voter turnout.Harris County was , opening several overnight locations across Greater Houston, including a site at NRG Park. More than 10,000 Harris County voters cast ballots overnight on Oct. 29 of last year.Out of roughly 2.5 million registered voters in Harris County, a record 1,435,221 ballots were cast during the state’s early voting period thanks to drive-thru voting, mail-in balloting, and 24-hour voting policies put in place by then-Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins.The efforts did not come without controversy.Conservative activist Steve Hotze sued the county to limit early voting, and reject some in-person absentee ballots. He also asked the Texas Supreme Court to throw out 127,000 votes cast via the county’s drive-thru ballot locations.Harris County Election Administrator Isabel Longoria said the move to limit a county’s right to expand voter access makes no sense in a state with 254 counties, all of which are trying to meet the needs of their own residents."We just want the ability to provide the service that Harris County residents want,” she said. “And so, when you create bills like this that create uniform laws, someone out in West Texas is going to have much different hours than 24 hours of big voting here in Harris County."Additional reporting from Paul DeBenedetto.Fill out the form below to subscribe our new daily editorial newsletter from the HPM Newsroom.· Now, two months before early voting begins for the November general election, the county, which is west of Austin, has no elections department.· Here's where to vote and who's on the ballot.· In the state's largest counties, voter turnout was below 5 percent during the first seven days of early voting. Election officials said some Texans could still be making up their minds before Election Day on March 1.· Today, we focus on two big stories, one local and one global: the current primary election happening right now, and the growing tensions among Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S.

To embed this piece of audio in your site, please use this code:XRepublican lawmakers have filed seven bills that would change voting access in Texas, including a law to limit the hours counties can keep ballot locations open during the state’s early voting period.State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, who authored the bills, argued they're necessary to force local governments to comply with the Texas Elections Code.“The seven bills themselves really represent my ideas to make sure that we have integrity in the voter roll as well as in the election system,” Bettencourt said.One of the...

Republican Lawmakers File 7 ‘Election Integrity’ Bills That Could Limit Voter Access | Houston Public Media

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