By Thomas Gallatin

Texas Dems Walk Out on Voter Integrity

Gov. Greg Abbott counters with special session and a threat to veto funding for the state legislature.

As the Texas legislature neared the end of its session and was poised to pass a new voting integrity bill, SB 7, Democrat lawmakers snuck out of the building, preventing the quorum required for voting on legislation. It was a forgone conclusion that Texas’s Republican-controlled legislature would pass the bill, and Republican Governor Greg Abbott promised to sign it.

Democrats justified pulling the political stunt by falsely charging that the new voter integrity bill is an effort to suppress minority voting. However, as with the charges leveled against Georgia’s voter integrity law, the Texas bill is anything but suppressive. Instead, it works to close potential windows for fraud opened by accommodations during a once-in-a-century pandemic.

As the Wall Street Journal editorial board pointedly observes, “The 67-page bill would roll back Covid-19 innovations like Harris County’s drive-through voting and 24-hour voting. Those options were used disproportionately last year by black and Hispanic residents. But when did emergency procedures amid a 100-year pandemic suddenly become the new baseline? It’s hardly crazy to think polling-place shenanigans might be more likely at 3 a.m.”

Furthermore, the bill sets early voting at a generous two weeks, while creating a new ID number-based system for authenticating absentee ballots rather than the notoriously unreliable system of trying to match signatures.

While not going as far as to call the Texas voter integrity law “Jim Crow,” Joe Biden did ridiculously assert that “democracy itself is in peril.” What may be in peril is the Democrat Party’s scheme to prevent commonsense protections against voter fraud like voter ID laws while expanding their strategy of bulk-mail balloting.

Moreover, as Ben Shapiro aptly noted, “TX Dems walked out to deny a quorum, and then called on the federal Dems to completely override the principles of federalism and take control of voting procedure. This is not, apparently, a threat to democracy. It seems ‘threat to democracy’ just means anything Democrats oppose.”

Fortunately, Texans have a tough, no-nonsense governor who quickly punched back at Democrat shenanigans by calling for a special emergency session. “I declare Election Integrity and Bail Reform to be must-pass emergency for this legislative session,” Abbott declared. “It is deeply disappointing and concerning for Texans that neither will reach my desk. Ensuring the integrity of our elections and reforming a broken bail system remain emergencies in Texas. They will be added to the special session agenda.”

But Abbott didn’t stop there. He also warned Democrats, “I will veto Article 10 of the budget passed by the legislature. Article 10 funds the legislative branch. No pay for those who abandon their responsibilities.”

As with the Wuhan lab-leak theory, the mainstream media and Democrats have teamed up to declare that any suggestion of fraud in the 2020 election is tantamount to spreading misinformation. Ironically, Democrat lawmakers in Washington are the ones who have pushed their partisan election “reform” via HR 1, while at the same time insisting there was no election fraud. The question then obviously arises: If there was no election fraud, then why the insistence on passing their massive election reform bill? Keep in mind that HR 1 was created well before the 2020 election.

Republican-controlled states’ efforts to pass election integrity bills have everything to do with both reining in the sweeping COVID-induced election rule changes and preventing Democrats in Washington from turning the entire nation’s election system into California’s. This also explains why Biden and others continue to disingenuously slander Republican election integrity bills as “voter suppression.” The real voter suppression is diluting the legitimate votes of honest citizens by preventing the enactment of sensible protections against voter fraud. That’s especially true given that Biden has opened the U.S. southern border to record numbers of illegal immigrants now flowing into the country.