If You Can't Beat Them, Sue Them: Why I'm Suing Texas Over Its Most Recent Voting Law

Back in May, I wrote an article about voter suppression laws that were being implemented by GOP-led legislatures around the country. Tuesday, after months of delay, two special sessions, and even suits seeking to arrest Texas Democratic House members, Governor Abbott signed into law Senate Bill 1. This law, among other things, bans drive-through voting, eliminates 24 hour voting, bans distribution of mail-in ballots by local officials, enhances protection of poll watchers, and makes it more difficult to assist voters with disabilities. As soon, as Governor Abbott signed the bill, a number of lawsuits were filed, including one where I am one of the listed plaintiffs. Here are some of the reasons I decided to sue Texas state officials over this law.

It Disenfranchises Poor and Minority Voters in Urban Areas

My biggest issue with the law is that its biggest goal is to disenfranchise voters, especially minority voters in urban areas. People always think of Texas as a big red state, but in reality, while the state tends to vote Republican, most of the large counties vote Democrat. As such, there has been a power struggle for a number of years now, between state policies and local ones. In particular, voting initiatives implemented by Harris County in 2020, like 24-hour polling locations and drive-through voting locations, were particularly popular among poorer and minority voters. These initiatives helped achieve a record voting turnout in Harris County last year, but they were specifically banned banned by the new law.

The law also prohibits local officials from sending mail-in-ballots and now requires a form of identification when submitting ballots by mail. This will likely impact the turnout of seniors who are more likely to take advantage of such methods of voting, because they will have to take the step of requesting their own ballot, as opposed to having it mailed to them by their local officials. Additionally, the law creates new requirements for those assisting other voters and now carries potential criminal penalties for those assisting voters, even if they are disabled. This greatly diminishes the likelihood of someone being willing to help assist another voter, because it puts them in jeopardy of being prosecuted by the state, especially if the State decides to make an example out of someone who they deem in violation of the new law (like they went after Crystal Mason, a black woman who was sentenced to 5 years for unknowingly voting while ineligible).

Furthermore, the law sets up monthly reviews of the state's voter rolls to identify noncitizens, which in the past had caused the state to defend actions like requiring voters to prove their citizenship status to keep their voter registration from being removed from the registered voter list. This actually happened to me one election cycle, when I moved between from Harris County to Fort Bend County back in 2008, and resulted in me having to cast a provisional ballot because I ended up not being a registered voter of either county during that particular election.

It Encourages Voter Intimidation

One of the other very problematic elements of the new law is the enhanced protection for poll watchers. For those unfamiliar, poll watchers are volunteers who mainly observe the conduct at a polling location and point out any irregularities to the election judge or clerk. This may seem harmless on its face, but in many instances, such groups have been known to appear as an intimidation of minority voters. Right here in Harris County, a video surfaced earlier this year of GOP leaders discussing the desire to have poll watchers go to places like Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, a predominately black church in the 3rd Ward area that hosted Martin Luther King, Jr. when he visited Houston 1963 (and I have taken my family to on a number of occasions). The new law now emboldens these poll watchers and gives them the ability to move freely about polling locations in minority neighborhoods, which again can be highly problematic because they can be deemed as intimidating to minority voters, especially if they come with the assumption that fraud is taking place in those areas.

Comparisons to Jim Crow Era Laws

In May, my wife and I did an interview with Sky News, and we noted the comparisons of the law the voter restrictions during Jim Crow. We explained how we were glad to be able to take advantage of the drive-in voting made available last year by Harris County, both to avoid being potentially exposed to Covid-19 before we were vaccinated and to be able to allow our children to be able to be a part of the process. We were able to vote in the safety of our car and the entire family was able to be a part of the process. However, the Texas GOP is scrapping it, because they are clearly not interested in more people in a county that is nearly three-quarters minority having more convenient access to the ballot.

A pic of my family immediately after voting in October of last year. My wife and I were sporting our voting stickers on our masks.

During the Jim Crow Era, laws were passed with the specific intent to disenfranchise black voters. Even though the 15th Amendment, which explicitly prohibited any infringements on the right to vote based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude," was ratified in 1870. For nearly the next century, states in the former Confederacy passed laws that did just that...with laws that didn't mention race, but targeted black communities with things like literacy tests and poll taxes. Even today, in most Texas counties the Tax Assessor is also the County Voter Registrar, which dates back to the days of poll taxes.

Many of these practices weren't fully addressed until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which required states like Texas to have all voting laws reviewed by the United States Department of Justice before they would be cleared to be implemented. Unfortunately though, in 2013 the United States Supreme Court held in the Shelby County v. Holder case that the preclearance formula was out of date and thus no longer enforced in places like Texas (see my ABA article where I discuss this case more thoroughly). Texas immediately went back to targeting voters of color. In fact, within hours of the Shelby County decision, then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced that Texas would be implementing its voter ID law immediately, even though the Department of Justice had already deemed the law as having a discriminatory impact on voters of color in Texas and was not planning on allowing it to be enforced.

Senate Bill 1 and similar versions of it that are being passed by GOP legislatures around the country are just a continuation of the effort to suppress minority votes for the purpose of retaining the reigns of political power in the state by creating more and more hurdles for voters of color. Until Congress revises the Voting Rights Act to comply with the limitations noted in the Shelby County decision, there will likely be continued litigation to address all the hurdles that the state legislators continue to seek use to disenfranchise minority voters.

Conclusion

In short, I'm beyond tired of seeing Texas disenfranchise poor and minority voters. As such, I decided to join one of the numerous lawsuits pending against our state officials. You can see the 93-page petition at this link.