If you're one of my fellow Texas Kossacks, and you want to do just one thing today to help strengthen and protect our state's democracy, I'd urge you in the strongest way possible to make that action calling your State Senator immediately and tell them to stop #StopSB9.
S.B. 9 is a radically extreme anti-voter bill that targets minorities, the elderly, and people with disabilities. The people of our great state deserve nothing less than a government that serves the people of Texas and stops pushing a dangerous and extreme anti-voter agenda.
Just how bad is S.B. 9? Let me count the ways. Various provisions in the bill would do all of the following:
- Voters could face criminal punishment for innocent mistakes, such as filling out their voter registration form wrong.
- Voters have a right to a provisional ballot when they sincerely believe they are eligible to vote, but this bill exposes them to possible jail time for doing so.
- Those who drive voters to the polls and assist them while voting will have to fill out burdensome new forms just to “prove” their right to vote.
- It allows partisan poll watchers to follow voters who need assistance into the privacy of the voting booth and watch them have their ballots marked.
- It gives law enforcement complete legal immunity from prosecution for committing election-related crimes, in order to conduct undercover sting operations against community-based organizations.
- Individuals who are assisting voters or exercising their right to free speech face new, confusing penalties for “impeding a walkway, parking lot, or roadway” up to 1000 feet from a polling place, an area larger than a football field (which is a reference every Texan instinctively understands).
- The bill sharply limits the ability to vote by mail to only those who are “physically unable to enter a polling place without needing personal assistance or injuring their health” and fails to fully safeguard the right of pregnant women to vote by mail.
- Attorney General Ken Paxton (who is still under felony indictment for securities fraud) would be given direct access to the electronic voter registration database, which includes Social Security Numbers, Driver License Numbers, and other personal information.
To put it simply:
"SB 9 would sharply escalate an ongoing campaign of voter suppression, by making voting substantially harder for thousands of Texans, and by spreading fear that people may be thrown in jail for honest mistakes while trying to vote."
Texas Observer- Civil Rights Groups Call 'Election Integrity' Bill a 'Dangerous New Assault on Voting Rights in Texas'
So please join with civil rights groups like the Texas Civil Rights Project, MOVE Texas, League of Women Voters of Texas, Common Cause Texas, and scores of other groups and activists in opposing S.B. 9 and let your elected officials know that Texas voters deserve to have a government that helps voters, and not one that keeps finding new ways to keep them from voting. Besides, you don't ever want to be on the same side of history as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the Texas GOP do you?
Please, please, please call your elected state officials and make a stand for Texas voters and the Lone Star State’s democracy!