United States of America: Texas is processing an electoral law that tightens voting requirements

Madrid, 29 years old (Europe Press)

The Republican-controlled Texas Congress has begun to address a new electoral law that puts dozens of restrictions on the exercise of the right to vote and even facilitates the cancellation of elections, an initiative the US president has already criticized. Joe Biden.

Biden himself criticized the Texas initiative for being “anti-American.” “Today, members of Congress in Texas submitted a proposal that joins the Georgia and Florida proposal in attacks on the sacred right to vote (…). It is an attack on democracy that we have seen many times this year and that disproportionately affects blacks and black Americans.”

In a statement issued by the White House, the President added: “In the twenty-first century, we must facilitate, not impede the participation of a voter who has the right to vote.”

The text bans car voting and makeshift polling stations and imposes harsh penalties on authorities that submit voting requests by mail to citizens who do not request them.

It also bans 24-hour polling stations, used by more than 100,000 voters in the 2020 presidential election in Harris County, with Biden winning only 56 percent of the vote.

In addition, it tightens identification requirements and recognizes only the driver’s license and Social Security number as valid documents, according to information gathered by The Hill newspaper.

The rule also allows elections to be canceled “if the number of illegal votes is equal to or greater than the number of votes needed to change the election result” without the need to prove any fraud.

The rule must be approved in the Texas House and Senate, then signed off by Governor Greg Abbott, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump.

Texas is the latest in a series of state legislative initiatives that impose restrictions on voting and that has been widely criticized by activists and the Democratic Party for affecting primarily minorities.

Republicans are defending these initiatives to restore confidence in the electoral system that Trump and his allies have questioned, who do not acknowledge Biden’s victory in the November 2020 election.