On Tuesday, September 7, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law a bill that imposed a litany of new restrictions on voting in the state. Democrats had blocked the bill by leaving Texas for weeks, preventing the state House from having the quorum necessary to vote on the legislation.

SB1, as it was known, eliminated a number of voting conveniences, mandated new requirements for ID, and even cost taxpayer money in the form of new monthly citizenship checks of the voter rolls.

Among the provisions of the bill:

• No more 24-hour voting, something that helped racially diverse areas expand access to workers who had trouble getting to the polls during normal voting hours
• No more “drive-thru voting,” which was created in response to coronavirus concerns
• A new requirement that absentee voters provide identification twice — once on the application for the absentee ballot and again on the envelope in which the ballot is returned
• Allows partisan “poll watchers,” who now have unfettered access to the transfer of data, including physically following poll workers to secondary destinations for the tabulation of votes

Now the Department of Justice, as expected, is suing Texas over the new law. As they alleged that the restrictions would harm the rights of non-native English speakers as well as deployed military and overseas voters, the DOJ made a concrete statement:

Before SB 1, the State of Texas already imposed some of the strictest limitations in the nation on the right of certain citizens to voting assistance. SB 1 further, and impermissibly, restricts the core right to meaningful assistance in the voting booth

The law came about as a result of false claims of voter and election fraud that came out of the losing Republican side of the 2020 election. Former President Donald Trump still insists that the election was “rigged” and has demanded election audits in multiple states, all of which so far have shown that not only were the results accurate but in some cases, that more votes had been cast against him than initially counted.

If the DOJ is successful in the lower courts, the case is expected to reach the Supreme Court in a matter of months.

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