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LEGISLATIVE NEWS
BIG WIN FOR CONSERVATIVES
SPECIAL RUNOFF RESULTS:
Lujan Wins San Antonio-Area Texas House Seat
Republican John Lujan will fill the House District 118 seat vacated by Democrat Leo Pacheco. He has reclaimed the Texas House District 118 seat he held in 2016, defeating Democrat Frank Ramirez in a special runoff election Tuesday with 51 percent of the vote and flipping the district from blue to red. Lujan will fill the spot vacated by former State Rep. Leo Pacheco (D–San Antonio), who resigned in August to take a teaching job at San Antonio College. The district includes part of San Antonio and areas south and east of the city in Bexar County. Lujan finished first in a five-way special election in September to replace Pacheco but failed to win a majority of the votes, leading to Tuesday’s runoff. In January 2016, Lujan also won a special election in the reliably Democrat district. He then lost two successive general elections for the seat to Democrats: now-former State Rep. Tomas Uresti (San Antonio) in 2016 and Pacheco in 2018. In addition to his prior stint as a state representative, Lujan has served as a Bexar County sheriff’s deputy and a San Antonio firefighter. He currently owns a local IT business. Lujan will serve out Pacheco’s remaining term, which runs through January 2023.
DRIVE-THRU VOTING?
Dissenting Judge: Texas Law ‘Could Not Be Clearer in Its Prohibition’ of Drive-Thru Voting
Federal appellate court dismisses drive-thru voting challenge as moot while its inventors in Harris County continue the extralegal practice. In a 2-1 decision last week, federal judges dismissed a lawsuit challenging the use of “drive-thru” voting in Texas elections by declaring the case moot, meaning the issues have been resolved.
Meanwhile, Harris County election officials who came up with the scheme to let everyone vote from their cars during 2020 are continuing the extralegal practice. Reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom or folly of drive-through voting. The place for that debate is in the Legislature,” Judge Andrew Oldham wrote in his dissent. “Once the dispute enters our courts, however, the only question is what the law commands. And the law could not be clearer in its prohibition of Harris County’s conduct.”
Oldham is one of three judges on a U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel that ruled against a lawsuit brought in 2020 by Republican activist Steven Hotze, State Rep. Steve Toth (R–The Woodlands), and two GOP candidates. The plaintiffs argued drive-thru voting violates the Texas Election Code, which allows only voters who are physically unable to enter a polling place to vote “curbside” from their cars. Harris County’s previous election chief, Texas Democrat Party official Chris Hollins, invented the process of in-vehicle voting last year, ostensibly as a COVID safety measure. It resulted in a discrepancy of more than 1,800 votes cast by drive-thru voters. Judges Catharina Haynes and Eugene Davis said the legal challenge was moot because the November 2020 election is over and the plaintiffs didn’t show evidence Harris County would offer drive-thru voting again.
The two judges also said Senate Bill 1, Texas Republicans’ signature election integrity reform that explicitly bans drive-thru voting, made the case moot for elections held after the new law takes effect on December 2. Oldham agreed with the plaintiffs, noting that in a supplemental brief, Harris County “not only refused to disclaim unlawful drive-through voting for future elections—it promised to continue the practice.”
“Harris County’s promise is certainly enough to prevent the case from becoming moot,” he wrote: When asked at argument how many provisions of Texas law the County could ignore before violating the Elections Clause, Harris County had no answer. And when invited to file a supplemental brief to address a new law—passed by the Legislature to put beyond doubt the illegality of Harris County’s conduct—the County doubled down with the head-scratching insistence that the new law somehow blessed its violations of the law in the past and its plans to violate it in the future. “Harris County has taken the remarkable position that it (1) wholly ignored provisions of the Texas Election Code in 2020, and (2) can continue wholly ignoring those provisions in future elections—notwithstanding the Legislature’s express instructions to the contrary,” Oldham added.
Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria opened 16 drive-thru voting locations during early voting for the November 2021 constitutional amendments election. A total of 3,065 voters used the drive-thru locations during the 12 days of early voting—an average of 16 voters a day at each location. Harris County has more than 2.4 million registered voters, more than any other county in the state, accounting for 15 percent of all registered voters in Texas. Longoria was appointed as the county’s chief election official by the Democrat-controlled commissioners court last November, even though she had just a few months of election administration experience working under Hollins during 2020. Hollins himself had no experience when he was appointed by commissioners in May 2020 and tasked with running the largest election in the state. Hollins and Longoria took creative license with other parts of the election code last year. They implemented 24-hour voting (which Longoria continued during 2021, though it’s also plainly prohibited by SB 1) and also attempted to send mail-ballot applications to all registered voters in the county, whether eligible or not, but that overreach was stopped by the courts.
Though the new law has yet to take effect, Democrat-allied groups on the left are deploying dozens of attorneys to challenge SB 1 in federal court.
TEXAS CONSTITUTIONAL AMMENDMENTS
ELECTION RESULTS: Texas Voters Approve All Constitutional Amendment Propositions
Two of the propositions were directly related to government overreach in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vote totals reflect those posted on the Texas Secretary of State website at 9:20 a.m. on 11/3/2021 with 254 of 254 counties reporting. The unofficial results are in, and Texas voters have collectively approved all eight ballot propositions to amend the Texas Constitution.
Brief Texas Constitutional Amendment History - Since being adopted in February of 1876, the current Texas Constitution has been amended more than 500 times. This Constitution is the fifth since statehood. Since 1876, the Legislature has proposed more than 690 constitutional amendments; of those, 687 have gone before Texas voters. Only 180 proposed amendments have ever been defeated.
NO NEW NEWS ON SB1
The Latest SB1 Update
Although this bill was controversial and if you read the media headlines you would think somehow this bill would somehow restrict voters from voting, but as we look closer to the details we see otherwise. Here is an overview of SB1.
Protecting the Vote Count
Paper Backup Records for Elections
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Tex. Elec. Code 61.002(c) - Election judges at the polls must now print a Results Tape immediately upon closing of the polls on election day showing the votes each candidate received on the voting machine. This is a big win!
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Tex. Elec. Code 61.002(a) - Election judges at the polls must now print a Zero Tape immediately before polls open showing all candidates have zero votes on the voting machines.
Poll Watchers
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A standardized online watcher training course will be developed and required by all participating poll watchers. A certificate will be given.
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Tex. Elec Code 33.056(a) and (f) - Watchers are now entitled to sit or stand near enough to see or hear election officers activities.
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Tex. Elec. Code 33.0605(b) - Watchers are now entitled to follow and watch the transfer of electronic media containing voted ballots into all areas the ballots are being processed from polls to regional sites, and central counting stations.
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Tex. Elec. Code 33.061(a). - Watchers shall not have their view obstructed by election officers.
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Tex. Elec. Code 33.0963 - Those that appoint watchers have the explicit statutory standing to civilly sue election officials for obstructing watchers.
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Tex. Elec. Code 33.051(g) - Election officials that prevent a watcher from entering service are subject to a Class A misdemeanor.
Transparency of Vote Counting
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Tex. Elec. Code 127.132(b,c, and d) - Central counting stations in counties of more than 100,000 population must implement a video surveillance system that tracks all areas containing voted ballots. The video system must be live streamed.
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Tex. Elec. Code 129.009(a) - Central counting station computers tabulating votes must be equipped with software that tracks all input activity on the device. Tex. Elec. Code 129.009(a).
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Tex. Elec Code 127.1301 - By 2026 a verifiable paper trail must be in use in every county in Texas.
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Tex. Elec. Code 43.007(c) - Auditing of voting machines and central counting station tabulation computers are required before and after an election.
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Tex. Elec. Code 87.103(a) - Ballots cast at early voting locations and by mail must be tabulated separately on the election returns.
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Tex. Elec. Code 127.131(f) - Central counting station presiding judges must reconcile votes cast and ballots tabulated.
Civil & Criminal Remedies for Vote Counting Fraud
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Tex. Elec. Code 247.001 - A candidate can now civilly sue their opponent, an agent of their opponent, or someone acting on the behalf of their opponent related to election fraud.
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Tex. Elec. Code 31.006(a) - Easier to have Sec. of State report fraudulent activity to the Attorney General.
Prohibition of Waivers
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Tex. Elec. Code 276.019 - A public official or election official shall not create, alter, modify,waive, or suspend any election standard, practice, or procedure mandated by law or rule..
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Tex. Elec. Code 1.003(a-1) - Election officials and public officials must interpret the code uniformly.
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The election code, 127.201(f), that permitted the Tex. Sec. of State to waive partial manual recounts was repealed.
Random Election Audits/Bryan Slaton
Tex. Elec. Code 127.351Representative Bryan Slaton proposed an amendment on the House Floor for randomized county election audits of two large and two small counties per year.. This passed by 2 votes.
Vote Harvesting Crimes
Defined as “in person interaction with one or more voters, in the physical presence of an official ballot, a ballot voted by mail, or an application for ballot by mail, intended to deliver votes for a specific candidate or measure.”
Basically this eliminates drive-through voting and extended hours would be made illegal, which will effect how Harris County conducted their election in 2020.
Regarding the certification process of Voting Machines regarding Internet and Outside Devices.
There is an existing certification process in place that is overseen by Secretary of State and Attorney General. This will be updated.
NO VACCINE MANDATES
Texas GOP Continues to Push for
Special Session on Vaccine Mandates
The state party is calling for a four-day special session to ban vaccine mandates, despite hesitation from Gov. Greg Abbott.
While Gov. Greg Abbott continues to dig his heels in on his refusal to call lawmakers back to Austin for a special session to ban COVID vaccine mandates, the Republican Party of Texas is amplifying their call for action. In an email sent to Texas Republicans on Thursday, Texas GOP Chairman Matt Rinaldi called for a four-day fourth special session to “ban vaccine mandates for good,” citing the rapid speed at which other states are tackling the topic. “Tennessee has already completed a three-day session to address mandates, and Florida is calling a five-day session later this month. Texas must help lead the way,” Rinaldi said.
“We know our elected officials are tired of being in Austin, but there is no reason why the Texas Legislature can’t get this done in as little as four days.”
In their call to action, the party is asking supporters to contact their state legislators and urge them to release a public statement supporting a four-day fourth special session to ban vaccine mandates.
The call was immediately responded to by newly sworn-in State Rep. Brian Harrison (R–Midlothian), who noted that an executive order against vaccine mandates issued by Gov. Abbott several weeks ago was “unlikely to fully protect” Texans and is “already being disregarded.”
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