Texas GOPers in the state legislature introduced a slate of bills this week designed to subvert elections and curb voting rights in the state. One of them even allows the Texas Secretary of State to overturn election results in the state’s largest Democratic-leaning county on the flimsiest of pretexts. Via Talking Points Memo:
On Thursday, Republican state senators introduced Senate Bill 1993, a bill targeting Harris County, a diverse region that includes Houston and is also the most populous county in Texas, to a Senate committee for debate.
SB 1993 would grant Secretary of State Jane Nelson (R) the authority to order a new election in Harris County “if the secretary has good cause to believe that at least two percent of the total number of polling places in the county did not receive supplemental ballots,” according to the bill text. Secretary Nelson would have the same authority granted to a district court.
The bill would “allow really low thresholds” for ordering a new election, Katya Ehresman, the voting rights program manager at Common Cause Texas, told TPM. “Anything from a machine malfunction, which can necessarily be the fault of the county or of an election administrator getting stuck in traffic—which in Houston is incredibly likely—and having a delay in providing election results to the central count station,” she said.
