While Senate Bill 7 would have wide-ranging effects on voters across the state, it includes specific language that critics say would disproportionately affect people of color — particularly those who live in under-resourced and urban communities.
Republican backers of the measure have denied that it is aimed at disenfranchising voters of color. During debate in the House earlier this month, state Rep. Briscoe Cain dubbed it a voting “enhancement” bill, insisting that it was designed to protect “all voters.”
The legislation was pushed through in the final hours of the Texas legislative session by Republicans who argued it is necessary to reassure voters their elections are secure, a response to former president Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 White House race was corrupted by fraud.
But by all accounts, the 2020 election ran smoothly — and no evidence has emerged of fraud or other irregularities in sizable enough quantities to alter an outcome in Texas or other states.
Frequently Asked Questions
The bill targets voting methods that Black and Latino voters in Houston used widely in the pandemic.
Senate Bill 7 outlaws two kinds of early voting methods established last year in Harris County, home of Houston, to give voters more opportunities to vote safely and crowd-free during the pandemic: drive-up voting and 24-hour voting.
Chris Hollins, the former Harris County clerk who oversaw those programs last year, said that 130,000 voters took advantage of drive-through voting, and an additional 10,000 voters cast ballots during the 24-hour voting marathon the county offered in the final week before Election Day.
An analysis of the Harris County vote showed that voters of color made up more than half of those who used drive-through early voting and the 24-hour early-voting window, Hollins said. That was a higher share than in early voting overall, when Black and Latino voters accounted for just 38 percent of all voters, he said.
The bill would bar Sunday morning get-out-the-vote programs used to mobilize Black churchgoers.
Similarly, the bill’s provision barring early voting before 1 p.m. on Sundays is likely to disproportionately affect the long-standing get-out-the-vote effort known as “souls to the polls,” which aims at encouraging Black churchgoers to cast their ballots right after services.
“Why in the world would you pick Sunday morning to outlaw voting in Texas, but for the fact that they know that a lot of Black parishioners historically have chosen that time to organize and go to the polls?” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) said Sunday.
Another key provision in Senate Bill 7 could further hobble such community voter mobilization programs: It would require anyone who drives more than two non-relatives to the polls to submit a signed form stating the reason for the assistance. That means volunteer van drivers who provide transportation for churchgoing voters would have to jump through the added hoop of submitting a signed document.
Community leaders noted that some voters do not have many options when it comes to getting to the polls — or any transportation.
As senators debated for more than seven hours on the bill, which ended with a vote before dawn Sunday, Democratic state Sen. Borris Miles of Houston gave an impassioned speech about how many Black voters in his district without ready access to transportation cast ballots: They get rides from other people.
“You really have no idea and no realistic vision about how things work in my neighborhood and neighborhoods like mine,” Miles told the measure’s chief patron, state Sen. Bryan Hughes (R), during the overnight debate.
Hughes responded that the provision, like the entire bill, would apply equally to all Texans.
The measure has drawn comparison to Jim Crow laws.
Critics have called voting laws in Georgia, Florida and now Texas ’Jim Crow 2.0′ — a reference to racially discriminatory laws and practices during the 20th century in the American South that proscribed, among other things, where Black Americans could live, eat, work, go to school and ride on a bus or train.
Cliff Albright, a co-founder of the group Black Voters Matter, said the comparison to Jim Crow is even more apt in the case of Senate Bill 7 because the language Republican lawmakers have used to justify it is eerily similar to how Southern racists blocked Black neighbors from voting for decades.
Then, as now, those in power denied racist intent, he noted. Then, as now, they claimed they wanted to protect the “integrity” of elections. Then, as now, they imposed restrictions that they claimed would apply to all voters but that in practice applied overwhelmingly to people of color.
Albright noted that an early version of the voting bill included the phrase “purity of the ballot box,” language that is in the Texas Constitution. Similar references to the word “purity” were used in the South to justify the disenfranchisement of Black voters. “They literally used Jim Crow language explicitly in the bill,” Albright said.
Cain, the lead House proponent, said he was unaware of that legacy and agreed to remove the language after Democrats criticized it during debate. He said he “wasn’t aware of any kind of malicious intent in the use of that term.”
Is Senate Bill 7 unconstitutional?
That will be up to the courts, which are expected to see immediate legal challenges filed by civil rights groups and Democrats. Here are some of the likely arguments we’ll see in those cases, according to Marc Elias, a prominent election lawyer for Democrats.
Voting laws are typically challenged under the Constitution’s First and 14th amendments under a legal test known as the Anderson-Burdick doctrine, which requires the state’s interest in making voting harder to outweigh the burden a new law places on voters. In the case of Senate Bill 7, Elias said, lawmakers have claimed the intent of making elections more secure, but have provided no evidence that last year’s elections were not secure.
Voting challenges also regularly invoke the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits laws that intend to discriminate, or result in discrimination, against minorities. Elias said the lack of evidence for the stated purpose of Senate Bill 7 coupled with the disproportionate effect on minorities of some of the law’s provisions qualify it for these types of claims.
The bill’s restrictions of early voting, mail voting, drop boxes, voter assistance and voter transportation all qualify for such a challenge, Elias said.
Elias also said that the bill’s requirement that anyone transporting more than two non-relatives to the polls is a good opportunity for a First Amendment claim under its provision guaranteeing freedom of assembly. And he said the measure probably qualifies for a challenge under the Americans With Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of the kinds of disabilities that would be subject to Senate Bill 7′s new restrictions on voter assistance.
“The new Texas voter suppression bill violates both the constitutional rights of Texans and the Voting Rights Act,” Elias said. “It places unnecessary burdens on people’s right to vote, without any reason other than adherence to the ‘big lie.’ And it targets Black and Brown voters for particularly harsh treatment.”
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