Election Bills obstructed by the Texas House
May 21, 2023 | Austin, TX
Without a secure election system, there is no ‘by the people’ or ‘for the people’. Election Integrity may be a Legislative Priority for Republican voters, but it certainly does not seem to be a priority for many of our Republican legislators in the Texas House.
“The Senate has done the heavy lifting,” said Republican Party of Texas Legislative Chair Jill Glover. “The House must act.”
Chairman shuts down Elections Committee
According to Glover, the backlog of election bills passed by the Senate was stalled in the House when Elections Committee Chairman Reggie Smith effectively shut down the committee. In what appears to be a calculated move to kill Senate election bills supported by the Republican Party of Texas, Chairman Smith refused to hold a House Elections Committee meeting from May 10-17 during the final push of the legislative session, and no other meetings are currently scheduled.
Chairman Smith has blocked the following bills by shutting down the House Elections Committee:
SB 921 by Hughes - Referred to the House Elections Committee on April 3. Bans ranked choice voting in Texas.
SB 990 by Hall - Referred to the House Elections Committee on April 25. Eliminates countywide voting on election day and returns voting back to the precincts to help better detect fraud in the system.
SB 397 by Hall - Referred to the House Elections Committee on April 27. Requires early voting closing tapes to be printed out immediately after closing the polls for consistency with the requirement that tapes be printed on Election Day.
SB 220 by Bettencourt - Referred to the House Elections Committee on May 12. Provides an immediate avenue for addressing election crimes under the Secretary of State, creates the position of an election marshal from the Department of Public Safety to train others on election crime violations, and provides for emergency judges to hear violations within three hours of reporting during early voting and within one hour on election day.
Bills referred to House State Affairs Committee
SB 1910 by Bettencourt - Placed on General State Calendar for May 23. Elections information must be subject to a personal information request.
SJR 35 by Birdwell - Placed on Constitutional Amendments Calendar for May 23. Proposes a Constitutional amendment clarifying that a voter must be a US citizen.
SB 1846 by Creighton - Placed on General State Calendar for May 23. Prohibits a manufacturer of a voting system from entering contracts with companies/individuals in certain foreign countries.
Texas GOP High Priority Bills
Glover said the Republican Party’s highest priority bills are:
Senate Bill 397 (in House Elections Committee, see above)
Senate Bill 921 (in House Elections Committee, see above)
Senate Bill 990 (in House Elections Committee, see above)
Senate Bill 1070 - by Hughes to remove Texas from the ERIC interstate voter registration crosscheck program. This bill has had a tumultuous ride since being brought to the House floor for the first time on May 16.
The rocky road of SB 1070
Why would a Republican legislator kill his own election integrity bill? That is what seemed to have happened on May 16 when SB 1070 came to the House floor for a vote. SB 1070 by Senator Bryan Hughes passed through the Senate without delay, but then languished in the House for a month before finally being sent on for a House vote.
In short order, Democrats submitted a point of order and the usual cadre of members convened to discuss. But before it could be ruled upon, Representative Jacey Jetton of District 26 moved to postpone his own bill for discussion until July 28, effectively killing it.
Angry election integrity activists immediately made their voices heard. The bill was sent back to the House Elections Committee on May 17. “Not much time but now they’ll say they tried,” Erin Anderson of Texas Scorecard told us immediately after the bill was sent back to committee.
But surprisingly, the House Elections Committee reported the bill back out of committee without amendments on the same day and SB 1070 was placed on the General State Calendar for May 20 but has not yet received a vote.
According to Texas Scorecard, “The legislation effectively bars Texas from participating in a controversial voter roll interstate crosscheck program, known as ERIC, by setting new cost limits and security requirements for any program used by the state. Texas law requires the state to participate in a crosscheck program, but some GOP officials and election integrity advocates want the state to withdraw from ERIC due to concerns about the program’s costs, data security, and possible partisan access to voter data.”
House cleaning needed
What exactly is going on in Austin? Are our own Republican Representatives trying to derail the Republican Party of Texas Legislative Priorities that were selected by more than 5,000 delegates at the state convention back in June 2022? We must put more attention than ever to Get-Out-the-Vote efforts so we can clean out the RINOs in the Texas House and elect conservative Republicans who will keep their promises.
View current status of Election Integrity bills »