How the Freedom to Vote Act Can Blunt the Worst of Texas’s Voter Suppression Law – brennancenter.org

As the Senate considers the Freedom to Vote Act, a new Texas law demonstrates the urgency of congressional action to protect voting rights. During anunprecedented yearfor restrictive voting legislation, TexasSenate Bill 1stands out as one of the cruelest and most aggressive restrictive voting bills to become law.

The sweeping voter suppression law makes it harder for voters with language barriers or disabilities to get help casting their ballots, restricts election workers ability to stop harassment by partisan poll watchers, and bans measures election officials adopted to protect voting access during the Covid-19 pandemic, such as drive-thru voting.

TheBrennan Center,Department of Justice, and other organizations have already sued over this targeted attack on Texas voters. In addition to S.B. 1, Texas has also enacted one of the most aggressively gerrymandered congressional maps in recent memory, which is also the subject of aDepartment of Justice lawsuit.

Ultimately, we cannot rely on the courts alone to protect Texas voters. Congress must step in to check state-level abuses, as theConstitution itself envisions. By instituting national standards for voter access and election administration in federal elections, theFreedom to Vote Actwould counteract the worst effects of S.B. 1 and ensure equal access to the vote for all Texas voters. And by strengthening protections against racial discrimination in voting and requiring states like Texas withdocumented histories of racial discrimination in votingto preclear all changes to their voting practices with the Department of Justice, theJohn Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Actcan help stop bills like S.B. 1 and other discriminatory conduct.

After a year in which amore diverse population than everrelied on voting by mail, S.B. 1 restricts mail voting in significant ways. The Freedom to Vote Act contains comprehensive provisions for mail voting that will preempt many of the laws restrictions and ensure all Texas voters have the option to cast their ballot by mail.

The first way S.B. 1 restricts mail voting is by making it more difficult to request a mail ballot. It requires all mail ballot applications to be signed with ink on paper, essentially banning online applications and the use of photocopied signatures. The law also bars election officials from sending mail ballot applications to eligible voters who do not request them and makes it a criminal offense for election officials to even encourage voters to request an application in most situations.

These onerous restrictions seem to be a response to efforts by local officials to make voting easier in Harris County, home to Houston, during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The Freedom to Vote Act would preempt these restrictions by requiring states to offer online mail ballot applications and barring states from prohibiting anyone from distributing mail ballot applications to eligible voters.

S.B. 1 also makes it harder for voters to return their mail ballots, requiring that they be delivered in person and physically received by an election official. This effectively bans the use of mail ballot drop boxes, which many voters relied on in 2020. The FTVA responds to this type of restriction by requiring states to offer voters multiple options for returning mail ballots, including drop boxes, at least one of which must be available 24 hours a day.

Finally, S.B. 1 makes it more difficult to have your mail ballot counted. The law requires voters to provide additional information on their mail ballots and ballot applications, such as the number on their drivers license or the last four digits of their social security number.

While S.B. 1 will allow many voters to correct errors in their mail ballots to ensure their vote is not thrown out, the process relies on election official discretion and relies on weak safeguards for voters. The Freedom to Vote Act requires much stronger protections. It bars states from rejecting mail ballots or applications due to minor errors that are not material to the voters eligibility and mandates a notice-and-cure process that achieves the same accuracy goals but with much stronger safeguards for voters, including requirements that election officials notify voters of errors with their ballots within one business day and allow voters to cure errors for up to three days after the mail ballot deadline.

In 2020, early voting was a rare area where Texas was better than many other states. To protect voter access during the Covid-19 pandemic, election officials in places like Harris County offered additional days of early voting and offered early voting at night. S.B. 1 rolls back many of those efforts to expand access to early voting. It prohibits early voting on state holidays some of whichmay fall close to primaries and limits the maximum hours of early voting election officials can offer on most days.

By contrast, the Freedom to Vote Act sets clear, strong national standards for early voting that would preempt S.B. 1: states must offer at least 10 hours of early voting each day for a period of at least 14 consecutive days before an election.

S.B. 1 empowers partisan poll watchers and restricts poll workers ability to remove them for causing disruptions. In a state with along historyof racially targeted voter intimidation, these provisions are particularly concerning. The law makes it a crime for election workers to refuse to accept credentialed watchers, expands watchers movement and observation rights at polling places, broadens the definition of obstructing a poll watcher, and grants watchers the right to observe the ballot transfer and tabulation processes, and restricts the ability of election workers to remove watchers for violations of certain election laws unless the election workers personally witness the conduct. S.B. 1 also expands poll watchers abilities to observe curbside voting, a process in Texas where voters with disabilities may vote from their cars.

Texas has acentury-long recordof voter intimidation by poll watchers, including several concerning incidents at polling places in 2020. And intimidation of election workers during the vote tabulation process was a major issueacross the countryin the days after the 2020 election. The Freedom to Vote Act blunts the effects of these provisions by curbing the opportunity for poll watchers to harass or intimidate voters and by granting voters, election officials, and election workers specific legal protections against intimidation, including a new, enforceable civil remedy.

In addition to S.B. 1, Texas has enacted one of theworst partisan gerrymandersso far this decade, seeking tolock in a partisan advantageanddisempower communities of colorin the face of rapid demographic change in the state. The Freedom to Vote Act willchange the landscape for redistrictingas well by establishing for the first time clear criteria for the drawing of congressional districts. It also bans partisan gerrymandering and adds new protections for communities of color.

The Freedom to Vote Act will not reach every restrictive provision in every state law due to theingenious natureofrestrictive voting laws, no federal statute could. This is why Congress must alsopass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. This bill would restore the 1965 Voting Rights Acts preclearance requirement with a new coverage formula targeting states withdocumented historiesof racial discrimination in voting, including Texas. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the old preclearance formula, which was one of our countrysmost effective civil rights protections.

The new law wouldstop discriminatory voting changesin states like Texas in their tracks. It would alsostrengthen Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a nationwide ban on voting policies with discriminatory effects that the Supreme Court weakened in 2021.

The ongoing assault on voting rights in Texas demonstrates the urgency of passing federal democracy reforms immediately. Texass primary elections, which are set to be conducted under the restrictive provisions of S.B. 1 and an extremely gerrymandered map, are only four months away.

By setting strong national standards for voter access, election integrity, and redistricting, the Freedom to Vote Act will go a long way towards minimizing partisan malfeasance in the election process. And perhaps more importantly, the provisions of the law that simply make it easier for all Americans to vote such as same-day registration, accessible drop boxes, and early voting remove the incentives for states to come up with ever more creative ways to suppress voters.

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How the Freedom to Vote Act Can Blunt the Worst of Texas's Voter Suppression Law - brennancenter.org