Texas' proposed voting laws are intended to ensure election security, not to disenfranchise any voters, according to one conservative observer.
That’s the view of Chad Ennis, a senior fellow for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation Election Protection Project and attorney for the Center for the American Future. The proposed bills currently on the table — Senate Bill 1 and House Bill 3 — in a special session called by Gov. Greg Abbott are not unlike laws already in place in several other states, Ennis told Lone Star Standard.
“Texas is similar to many other states. We prefer in-person voting,” he said. “In that vein, if SB1 passes in its current form, Texas will allow 222 hours of in-person voting over two weeks. As examples, that compares to 133 hours in Delaware, 132 hours in New York, 117 hours in Maryland, and 14 hours in Connecticut. By design, the legislature has made it easy for Texans to find a convenient time to vote in person.”
In terms of population, Delaware, Connecticut and Maryland are far smaller in population than Texas.
Connecticut is among a number of Northeastern states that limit the time in which opponents can rally a base through policies that prevent most early voting.
“Democrats who have won election after election in states such as New York, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island have had little incentive to change the rules that helped them win,” The Atlantic noted.
According to the Hartford Courant, Connecticut has some of the most restrictive voting laws in the country, including no early in-person voting, extremely limited absentee voting, and no voting for incarcerated individuals or those on parole.
Monte Frank, an opinion writer at the Connecticut Post, recently wrote that Connecticut’s voting laws are far more restrictive than those being passed by Georgia. Connecticut has very restrictive voter ID laws, in that the state does not allow early voting, and it only allowed no-excuse absentee voting during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Connecticut's population is less than 4 million compared to nearly 29 million in Texas.
The bills introduced during the Texas special session are far less restrictive, Ennis said.
“They make several changes to the code but there are four key things,” he said. “One, ban vote harvesting. Two, provide uniform, standard hours for voting. Three, make ID requirements consistent for in-person and mail-in voting, and four, ensure that the poll watchers cannot be ejected from polling places for no reason.”
Empire State Today reports that Senate Bill 7, which was originally proposed during the spring legislative session, will offer two weeks of early voting. SB7 will also roll back drive-through and 24-hour voting, mandate a state ID or Social Security number requirement for all mail-in ballots, and change the legal burden for voter fraud from “beyond a reasonable doubt” to “by a preponderance of the evidence.”
According to The Wall Street Journal editorial board, the proposed Texas election integrity law has been reintroduced for consideration in a 30-day summer special session, and will promote the same reforms as its previous iteration.
President Biden recently argued in an official White House statement that Texas election reform efforts were “wrong and un-American.” Biden further stated that Texas election laws were an “assault on democracy” and that they were “disproportionately targeting black and brown Americans.”
Most Americans disagree with Biden. According to a NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll of 1,115 adults, 79% of respondents believe voters should be required to show government-issued photo identification whenever they vote.
Almost all Texas House of Representatives Democratic members fled the state and traveled to Washington, D.C., in an effort to prevent passage of the bills. This is “unfortunate,” Ennis said. Democrats say the bills would make it more difficult for some people to cast ballots, but Ennis said this is an unfair and inaccurate characterization.
“Democratic suggestions, like additional training materials for poll watchers, have been added to SB1 because the Democrats participated in the process. And the bills are better because of it,” Ennis said. “These bills do nothing to make it harder to vote but plug obvious holes in the election code. Texans want their Legislature to be in Austin doing their jobs instead of engaging in political stunts and fundraising.”
The reality is, he said, promoting election security benefits voters.
“People have to be confident in the outcome of elections. Democrats had doubts about election security in 2016,” Ennis said. “Lack of confidence is a bipartisan issue. Both sides need to be confident that, win or lose, the process was fair.
“If you read the Texas Election Code, obvious loopholes jump right off the page,” he said. “And we have seen multiple instances over the years of bad actors utilizing those loopholes. From ballot harvesting to using the assistance provisions of the code to influence voters to utilizing the lack of an ID to take advantage of mail-in ballots. We see the holes and we see the exploitation. Why would we allow these holes to remain? Of course, we should fix them.”
Ennis was in private practice with a focus on complex intellectual property disputes before joining TPPF. He earned a degree in chemical engineering, graduating cum laude from the University of Missouri before changing his focus to earn a law degree with honors from the University of Texas School of Law.
