Poll Watcher Legislation Notice

State Affairs Committee Hearing - Monday, 3/27/2023 - Extremely Important Bills

Watchers,

There is an extremely important State Affairs hearing at the Texas Capitol on Monday, starting at 9:00 AM.

https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/schedules/html/C5702023032709001.HTM

Please review these bills and, if you can, be in Austin to testify on these bills.

Remember, these committee members represent all of Texas in their capacity as committee members.

They need to hear from us!

Here are the bills:

SB 397 Hall

Relating to the procedure for closing a polling place. (early voting tapes required to be printed at close of EV). This is a bill that is a good start, but we want to advocate changes so that poll watchers at Cental Count are not prevented from observing these tapes.

SB 1907 Bettencourt

Relating to preparing and delivering precinct election returns; increasing a criminal penalty.

SB 990 Hall

Relating to elimination of the countywide polling place program.

SB 1039 Bettencourt | et al.

Relating to processes to address election irregularities; providing a civil penalty.

SB 1661 Hughes

Relating to the systems used in a central counting station.

SB 1911 Bettencourt

Relating to increasing the criminal penalty for certain offenses related to elections.

Also being heard on Monday will be SB 1938 and SB 1950 which are less germane to poll watching but are important bills as well if you want to look at those on the Texas Senate website.

If you can’t be there, here are the Committee members’ email addresses (including 2-3 others not on the Committee but need to hear from us).

Copy paste these email addresses into the “to” field to provide your comments on the bills:

To provide verbal comments to Senator Hughes’ office, call: (512) 463-0101

Vice Chair Angela Paxton can be reached at: (512) 463-0108

Thank you everyone!

Wes Bowen

DCRP Election Integrity Committee Chair