Interesting CLE course on voting rights in Texas from members of Texas Democrats in DC
The Harris County Democratic Lawyers Association had a good CLE on voting rights with four members of the Texas legislature who are camped out in Austin to break quorum Mrs. T was supposed to be on the panel but she was testifying before a congressional committee. These Democrats are fighting the good fight. They were told that voting rights is moving up on the priority list now that the Senate is moving on the bipartisan infrastructure bill. A new voting rights bill is being drafted based on the proposals from Manchin with a few additions that Manchin is okay with. The original For the People Act was a wish list of everything that a Democrat could want to change the voting system including dealing with black money and trying to legislatively overturn Citizens United. Manchin has pared that down to the key things to stop the immediate threat to voting rights including dealing with partisan gerrymandering.
Due to their first walkout and this walkout some of the worst provisions of the bill that was pending in May have been taken out including gutting Souls to the Polls and the ability of a court to declare an election void without proof of sufficient fraudulent votes to change the election. The Texas GOP have been refusing to make further changes and so these Texas heroes will be staying in Washington.
We discussed some of the worst features of the proposed Texas voter suppression bill including removing the right of the election judge to stop partisan poll watchers from being able to intimidate voters. Back in the 1960s, former CJ Rehnquist got his start in GOP politics as a member of goon squad of poll watchers who brought armed guards to polling places to intimidate minority voters. Now the Texas GOP want to bring in Three Percenters, members of the KKK and Proud Boys to be poll watchers in minority voting locations. These partisan poll watchers cannot be thrown out until their second violation of the election code.
Due to his veto of the funding for the legislative branch, all of the legislative staff in the Texas legislature will be in effect fired on September 1 and will not be paid. One of these heroes (Ann Johnson) is planning on paying her staff out of her own pocket or campaign funds. There are evidently some clear provisions in the Texas constitution that say that Greg cannot not defund the Texas legislature and there is a lawsuit pending before the Texas Supreme Court. Unfortunately , the Texas Supreme Court consists of 9 republicans including assholes like Nathan Heck.
According to this panel there is a provision in the Texas constitution that the boundaries for the Texas state house and senate seats can only be redrawn at the first regular session of the Texas legis founding receipt of the census data. The regular session ended in May and so the Texas GOP may not be able to redraw state house seat boundaries or Texas senate boundaries until the next regular session in 2023 but will have to do the congressional seats in a special session in the fall.
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