How It Started/How It's Going: Mid-Session Recap
At the start of this legislative session, we sent a message to lawmakers urging them to champion the Texas vote (as ever we do) and fight for strong voter rights advancements that better voting for Texans here in our home state.
So far it’s been…not entirely that. What we’ve witnessed is the promotion of bills that seek to further criminalize voting and remove key protections for Texans. We've also seen bills that target local control, including bills that want to override local jurisdictions and undermine our elections and democracy itself.
But we’ve also had the opportunity to support good bills that do things like make it easier for disabled voters to receive the necessary assistance for voting in-person and bills that increase accessibility of helpful voter information for Texans ahead of elections and allow for better transparency of the electoral process.
We’ve taken action on 24 of the approximately 163 bills we’ve tracked since the start of the legislative year and sent nearly 1,500 letters to Texas lawmakers advocating for Texas voters.
And it’s not over yet. In these final weeks of session, we’re asking you to continue to speak up loudly with us for Texas voters and for our voting power.
ACTION >> Last week, lawmakers over in the House Elections Committee laid out HB 1243 and since this bill is still pending in committee, you can join the over 250 Texans who have already written committee members urging them to drop this bad bill that would raise the penalty for illegal voting from its current misdemeanor level to a second degree felony (the same as manslaughter or aggravated assault) and would carry a potential 20 year prison sentence. This comes after lawmakers lowered that penalty just last session.
There are plenty of other ways to advocate this session and you can follow along over in our #txlege Action Alerts corner OR sign up for action alerts HERE!