Lawmakers are seeking to limit early voting and tighten ID requirements, among other restrictive measures.
Former President Donald Trump’s stolen election lie has convinced 3 of every 4 Republicans that there was widespread voter fraud in last year’s election, according to a December Quinnipiac University poll, even though there is broad evidence that it is extremely rare.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office spent 22,000 hours looking for voter fraud and uncovered just 16 cases of false addresses on registration forms, according to The Houston Chronicle. Nearly 17 million voters are registered in Texas.
And while Texas already had some of the most restrictive laws on the books, that isn’t stopping state lawmakers from joining their GOP peers across the country to propose new restrictive bills. Republican legislators in Georgia, Arizona, Florida and Wisconsin — many of whom joined with Trump to cast doubt on the system — are legislating to restrict the vote, arguing that new measures are needed to restore trust in the system.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, lawmakers have introduced at least 253 restrictive bills in 43 states.