By James Barragan
Dallas Morning News
(August 11, 2017)
AUSTIN — Gov. Greg Abbott has signed into law a bill that will increase penalties for people who commit election crimes related to mail-in ballots.
“It is a primary function of government to protect citizen’s right to vote, and I will not allow the integrity of the ballot box to be compromised in Texas,” Abbott said in a written statement Friday afternoon. “As attorney general, I prosecuted countless cases of mail-in ballot fraud, and yet this problem continues to persist.”
Abbott, who made the issue one of his priorities for the special legislative session, thanked the bill’s authors for strengthening penalties against those who commit mail-in ballot fraud.
Earlier Friday, the Senate agreed to changes the House made to the legislation this week. The biggest change was an amendment added by the bill’s House sponsor, Craig Goldman of Fort Worth, nixing a change to election law that was approved by both chambers during the regular session and signed into law by Abbott.
That law was a bipartisan attempt to curb voter fraud at nursing homes. It would have created a process for collecting absentee ballots at nursing homes and similar facilities, essentially turning them into polling places and discouraging others from manipulating their votes.
But after it was signed into law, the Republican authors of the mail-in ballot fraud bill said they began hearing from county clerks who said it would be extremely costly and create an “unfunded mandate.”
Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who pushed the nursing home election law in the Senate, said those concerns were based on “misinformation regarding the requirements of the bill.” She said she was upset the bipartisan effort was not going to be law anymore.
“It was a prime example of legislation that practically would have worked to eliminate mail-in ballot fraud,” she said. “We just want to stop this. We want honest voting without fraud, and we want everyone to just vote one time and out of their own accord.”
Still, Huffman was one of 21 senators — including Democrat Eddie Lucio of Brownsville — to send Senate Bill 5 to the governor’s desk. All Democrats except Lucio voted against it.
