After a 24 hour hearing, Republicans voted voter suppression out of committee along party lines.

[Shell_Seas]

It was awful, I watched most of it all day and was up late last night. I’ll have a follow up on Living Blue, probably tomorrow. (Today is my daughter’s birthday)

In the senate, they started hearing testimony around 1pm, there were two bus loads of people who came from Senator Miles’ District (which is predominately Black), but their bus was supposed to leave at 5ish. Senator Miles asked for them to be heard before their bus had to go, and at 4:30 they called one Republican witnesses up and questioned him for 45 minutes, so that the two bus loads of Black people had to leave without being heard.

In the House Committee, even though the hearing started at 8am, they didn’t start taking public testimony until midnight.

Over 300 people signed up to speak to the Senate Committee, over 400 in the House Committee.

In both chambers, the speakers overwhelmingly were against the bill, many of them laying out how and why these bills would disenfranchise their ability to vote.

The republicans who did speak for the bill, were unhinged, lacked credibility, and several I recognized from previous scandals. For example, the ex-chair of Bexar County GOP showed up to speak in favor of voter suppression. But Cynthia Brehem was either removed or resigned last year from her post because of a series of racist social media posts.

The Austin GOP Committee guy (I forgot his exact title), was using extremely hateful rhetoric about Democrats and was called out in it by Senator Lucio, of all people.

Overnight, the majority of the republicans on the House Committee were not in the hearing. They left for hours and then trickled back in early this morning, so they didn’t even listen to most of the testimony.

The Senate Committee concluded around 2am and Senator Hughes tweeted about how many people were concerned with election integrity, which was a lie, since overwhelmingly those who spoke, spoke against it.

The House Committee conclude at about 8am, but not before they voted along part lines to advanced the bill to the House Floor.

https://texashousedems.com/hdc-chair-chris-turner-responds-to-hb-3-committee-vote/

[yellowdogintexas]

1. this is getting very old

Prior to the Crystal Mason case, another voter was imprisoned for voting while on parole; now we have this voter.

when Crystal went to vote, she was not on the registry. The Election Judge offered a provisional ballot, which Crystal would have to "cure" within 7 days.
We are told in our training that we never tell a voter they can't vote, yet this election judge .inadvertently caused this voter to be arrested, tried and sent to prison.

We really need a very specific set of instructions for cases like this one. If I can't find a voter I call the main office and have them find out why this voter isn't on the registry. If Elections Central tells me the voter can't vote then I explain the voter's rights. Usually it is because the voter registration card was returned as undeliverable two election cycles in a row; this would purge the voter. I do not know if voters on parole are automatically removed, but it was obvious Crystal was not correctly advised of her rights.

Her parole officer is at fault and should be penalized in some fashion and Ms Mason should not have been sent to prison.

I know that parolees are aware of their voting rights, because I encounter far too many who will tell me right up front that they can't vote because they have served time. My duty as a DVR is to advise the voter of their rights. and tell him/her to contact their parole officer or the Corrections office to verify voting status.

The last I heard, Ms Mason's case was moving up the appeal process. I hope she wins and penalties are assessed accordingly.

[Shell_Seas]

2. This is why Texas Democrat broke quorum and why they're fighting for us.