Texas GOP Unveils Renewed Effort To Pass Restrictive Voting Laws

Gov. Greg Abbott (R) called a special legislative session to pass what could be some of the nation's harshest new voting restrictions.

The Texas legislature began its second attempt to introduce new voting restrictions on Thursday, unveiling a pair of bills that could become some of the harshest election laws passed this year. Both chambers of the legislature unveiled their bills on Thursday, House Bill 3 and Senate Bill 1, which would ban a spate of voting expansions made during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bills would bar 24-hour and drive-through voting, ban election officials from sending absentee ballots to those who hadn’t requested them, expand protections for partisan poll watchers and usher in new, harsher ID requirements for voting by mail. The bills, however, do not include two contentious portions from their prior incarnations. One would have blocked voting on Sundays before 1 p.m., something critics called a veiled attempt to bar “souls to the polls” drives that are common in the Black community. There is also no provision that would make it easier to overturn the results of an election.