Two years after voting rights erupted in Texas, lawmakers are once again pushing through dozens of electoral bills.

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Less than two years after Texas Democrats staged a dramatic battle to prevent sweeping changes to voting laws, the Legislature is poised to once again overhaul how Texas conducts elections.

Before the start of the 2023 legislative session in January, more than 75 electoral or voting-related bills had already been introduced. Both major political parties drafted bills. Democrats are seeking to expand access to the vote. Republicans are focused on improving election security.

With Texas Republicans successfully pushing through a number of their campaign priorities last session, voting-related legislation is unlikely to get the same attention this year as it did in 2021.

That year’s election debate in Texas swept the nation as the state’s Republicans pushed a omnibus election law into force during the 2021 special legislative session. Democratic lawmakers fled the State Capitol and headed to Washington, D.C., hoping to bring more national attention to their opposition. to legislation, forcing the Legislature to adjourn for nearly six weeks to try to prevent the lower house from gaining enough members to pass bills.

They were ultimately unsuccessful, and legislation signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott contained many restrictions on voting and tightened election security, including a ban on mobile and round-the-clock voting, and an expanded role for poll watchers.

However, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said tougher electoral laws are on his list of legislative priorities for this session. Among its goals is to change the punishment for illegal voting from a misdemeanor to a felony after it was downgraded in 2021.

Another Republican proposal would allow the Secretary of State to appoint election officials to investigate election law violations.

“We need election results that we can rely on,” said Rep. David Spiller, a Jacksboro Republican who introduced a bill to increase criminal penalties for election-related crimes. “These laws will ensure safe and secure elections.”

Since 2020, Republicans across the country, fueled by former President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud, have sought to increase barriers to voting. According to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks such laws, more than 3,600 election-related bills have been introduced across the country since the 2020 election, and 368 of them have passed.

Texas Democrats find the new proposals worrisome. State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, who leads the Democratic Caucus of the Texas House of Representatives, said in a statement to The Texas Tribune that House Democrats will fight to protect voting rights.

Fisher was a key player during the 2021 quorum break and is known for using his vast knowledge of the legislative process to strike down Republican bills.

“House Democrats are determined to use every rule of the rulebook, every sentence, every comma, every semicolon of the Texas Constitution to protect voting rights,” Fisher said.

One bill that has already drawn criticism is the proposed election marshals by State Senator Paul Betancourt of R-Houston. The bill is similar to Florida’s legislation to create an electoral delinquency unit, a move that has been widely criticized by voting rights advocates as ineffective and overly aggressive.

Body camera footage released by The Guardian in January shows armed Florida police officers arresting a Miami man at gunpoint in August after the man allegedly voted illegally. He is among at least 19 Florida residents arrested for voter fraud since the state created an office to investigate and prosecute voter fraud.

At least some of the defendants indicated that they thought they had the right to vote.

“Despite the huge expenditure of resources, this legislation is not producing any results,” said Daniel Griffith, senior policy director for Secure Democracy USA, a Washington, D.C.-based non-partisan organization that seeks to improve voter access. “There is no widespread electoral fraud, so it is difficult to understand the need for these law enforcement agencies.”

In Texas, Betancourt said election judges are needed because of “voting violations” in places like Harris County, where some polling stations opened late and reportedly ran out of paper on Election Day in November. In a post-election assessment, Harris County Board of Election Administrator Clifford Tatum said the investigation was “inconclusive.”

Betancourt called the problems in Harris County “absurd” and said the bill he filed would provide resources to investigate and immediately correct administrative problems such as a shortage of paper ballots. He said the bill had nothing to do with Republicans’ allegations of voter fraud following Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.

“This is not about giving up elections; we are talking about electoral violations,” Betancourt said. “If the district election officials are not going to follow the law, we need someone whose duty it is to come and say, ‘keep the law.’

Betancourt introduced a similar bill in the 2021 legislative session, but it stalled in the House of Representatives.

Other proposed bills deal with punishment for illegal voting. In 2021, lawmakers reduced the illegal voting charge from a second-degree felony to a class A misdemeanor. A pair of bills from Spiller and state senator Brian Hughes would reinstate the felony charge.

“This is so that we can have a safe and secure election,” Spiller said. “And it’s nothing new — it’s been around for years.”

In one controversial case in 2016, a woman who voted in advance while under federal supervision was sentenced to five years in prison. At the time, illegal voting was considered a state crime of the second degree. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals asked the lower appellate court to reconsider the case because voter Crystal Mason did not know she was ineligible to vote. This case is still pending before the judiciary.

Voting rights advocates warn that reinstatement of the felony charge could dissuade people and increase voter intimidation.

“Looking back at the last few legislative sessions, we see repeated attempts to find creative ways to prosecute people for what actually looks like an honest mistake,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a non-partisan organization that advocates for politics. . such as online registration to vote and stopping fraud. “There is no infrastructure to tell people what the process is for when you can vote again. [after release from prison] or how you can vote again.”

Two more bills in the Texas House of Representatives would expand Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s powers to prosecute election-related crime, something he has prioritized since taking office in 2015. One bill would allow the office to appoint special prosecutors for cases, and another would penalize local prosecutors who “restrict the enforcement of election laws.”

On the other side of the aisle, Democrats are pushing bills that support their own priority: expanding access to the vote. One bill submitted to the House of Representatives would allow Texans to complete an online voter registration application, which is already allowed in most US states.

“We all want safe and secure elections, and we have them in Texas,” said Rep. John Busey III, a Democrat from Austin, who filed the electronic voter registration bill. “We just need to figure out how to make them more accessible to Texans.”

Bucy also proposed legislation to improve access to the tracker, which he helped implement during the last session for mail-in ballot applications. Overall, Bucy expressed his hope that bills restricting election security will not take center stage in this session.

“These are diversionary bills designed to appease Donald Trump and his faction,” Bucey said. “I don’t think the people from the House would support it.”

The deadline for filing the bill is March 11, the 60th day of the legislative session.

Disclosure: Common Cause and Safe Democracy provided financial support to The Texas Tribune, a non-profit, non-partisan news organization funded in part by donations from members, foundations, and corporate sponsors. Financial sponsors play no role in Tribune journalism. Find their full list here.