GOP lawmakers are couching their bills as efforts to boost election security even though Texas has some of the most restrictive voting rules of any state. VotingRights VoterSuppression Texas TexasLegislature GregAbbott TexasRepublicans
The new proposals also come as Republican lawmakers across the country continue to double down on former President Donald Trump's repeated lies that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud.
Another would give the officer of Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton — a die-hard Trump loyalist — more authority to prosecute election crimes, while a third would enable the Texas Secretary of State to appoint a special unit of election marshals to pursue election-related criminal charges. But media probes revealed that many caught up in the sweep had been told by government officials that they were authorized to vote. Indeed, some received voter registration cards in the mail, which they read as a signal that they had been legally approved to cast a ballot, according to an analysis by the UK publication the Guardian.
Even in cases where the charges are eventually overturned, they're most likely to be brought against people on the margins, advocates argue. A lengthy court battle to avoid jail time for an honest mistake can yield insurmountable hardship. "It's the sort of thing you'd see in a developing country, not in a country that's had peaceful transfers of power for 200 years," Daniel Griffith, senior director of policy for Secure Democracy USA, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington, D.C., that seeks to improve voter access. During last week's State of the State Address, Gov. Greg Abbott didn't include tightening election laws as one of his priorities for the Texas Legislature to tackle this session.
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