Texas GOPers in the state legislature this week introduced a slate of bills aimed at overturning the election and restricting voting rights in the state. One even allows the Texas secretary of state to overturn election results in the largest Democratic-leaning county in the state on the slightest pretext. Via the talking points memo:
On Thursday, Republican state senators introduced the 1993 Senate Bill, a bill targeting Harris County, a diverse region that includes Houston and is also Texas’ most populous county, before a committee. Senate for debate.
SB 1993 would grant Secretary of State Jane Nelson (R) the power to order a new election in Harris County ‘if the Secretary has good reason to believe that at least two percent of the total number of offices in voting in the county did not receive supplement ballots,” according to the text of the bill. Secretary Nelson would have the same power granted to a district court.
The bill “would allow very low thresholds” for ordering a new election, Katya Ehresman, voting rights program manager at Common Cause Texas, told TPM. “Anything from a malfunction in the machine, which may necessarily be the fault of the county or an election administrator stuck in traffic – which in Houston is extremely likely – and having a delay in delivering the results of elections to the central counting office,” she said. .