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Texas leaders assiduously laid the groundwork after the 2020 presidential election for new restrictions on voting by repeatedly referencing a “lack of confidence” in Texas’s elections—doubts that they generated by whipping up hysteria about “voter fraud,” asserts James Slattery, attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project.
He looks at the impact of SB1, especially on minorities, and pending litigation against it.
Someone attending the first hearing of the Texas House Elections Committee this year would have thought this would be a quiet legislative year regarding Texas elections. The Texas Secretary of State’s office testified that they were “happy to report that Texas Elections are in good shape” and that “[t]he Elections in Texas last year were a success. … Texas had an election that was smooth and secure.”
Yet for the past six months, the Texas Legislature was consumed with baseless allegations of fraud in Texas elections, culminating in passage of Senate Bill 1 (SB1), which is among the most restrictive new voter laws passed in 2021. How did this dynamic change so quickly? What does SB1 mean for Texas voters? And what is being done to limit the damage to Texas elections?
In part, SB1 arose from Texas’s long history of voter suppression.
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