Texas House, Senate reach agreement on divisive elections bill, setting stage for final passage - The Dallas Morning News

Updated at 5:33 p.m. with new information throughout.

AUSTIN — Texas lawmakers reached an agreement on the divisive GOP elections bill, paving the way for its final passage after weeks of stalemate spurred by House Democrats’ walkout.

The Republican-controlled House and Senate must approve the deal before it can be sent to Gov. Greg Abbott, who will almost certainly sign it. The Republican governor named election integrity a priority in the special session, which ends Sunday.

The compromise is almost identical to the bill that came out of the House last week, according to Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, who is on the 10-member negotiating committee.

He tweeted a picture of the signed conference committee report showing all seven Republicans signed off on Monday, but none of the panel’s Democrats. The proposal is expected to come up for a vote on Tuesday.

Broadly, the legislation would bar 24-hour and drive-through voting popular with communities of color, extend protections for poll watchers and add new requirements for assistants who help disabled Texans vote.

Absentee voters would face new ID requirements, but could have a new avenue to fix any problems found with their mail-in ballots.

The only change is the removal of language meant to prevent cases like that of Crystal Mason, a Tarrant County woman sentenced to 5 years for illegally voting in 2016, even though she said she didn’t realize she was ineligible.

The House added the amendment last Thursday without any debate.

Its sponsor, Republican Rep. Briscoe Cain, said he wanted to clarify “that innocent mistakes don’t wind up affecting people’s ability to vote.” Mason is still appealing her conviction, which is now before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

But Hughes said concerns arose that the change was more far-reaching than intended and could “affect more prosecutions than was originally thought,” including those of noncitizens.

“In an abundance of caution the sense is that we should just remove that amendment so we can move forward with the bill,” Hughes told The Dallas Morning News on Monday. He did not name specifically who raised the concerns.

Enrique Marquez, a spokesman for House Speaker Dade Phelan, confirmed the agreement strips Cain’s amendment from the bill, but makes no other changes. Cain did not immediately return a request for comment.

Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, said the final version made strides in the right direction — such as requiring poll watcher training and better notification for ineligible voters — but did not go far enough to earn his support. He was one of three Democrats who did not sign the committee conference report.

Republican lawmakers say the bill is about ensuring election integrity and cracking down on voter fraud, which experts say is rare. Democrats argue the changes will make it harder for Black, Latino, elderly and disabled Texans to vote and was proposed in response to former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a rigged election.

Twice, House Democrats foiled its passage by fleeing the Texas Capitol and denying Republicans a quorum. It remains to be seen whether they will try that a third time.

The first walkout was in May, at the very end of the regular legislative session. The second was at the start of the first special session in mid-July, when a majority of House Democrats fled to Washington D.C. to lobby Congress for federal voting rights legislation.

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Texas House, Senate reach agreement on divisive elections bill, setting stage for final passage - The Dallas Morning News
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