Wesley Story of Progress Texas

Democrats filed out of the Texas House of Representatives throughout the night on Sunday, May 30, breaking quorum to prevent a vote on Senate Bill 7 which they described as a Republican effort to squash voter turnout in the state.

In a press releases that described SB 7 as a “a racist voter suppression bill that contains some of the most extreme voting restrictions in the nation” and “Jim Crow 2.0,” Progress Texas Communications Manager Wesley Story declared, “Ding-dong, the wicked bill is dead.”

Story continued, “Resilient Texans organized for months to kill Senate Bill 7, and on the very last day that it could pass, voters can finally celebrate its demise.

‘Activists, business leaders, elected officials, and so many others fought hard this session to defend voting rights, but Republicans refused to listen,” Story said. “From start to finish, GOP lawmakers made a mockery of the legislative process in attempts to jam through their racist bill. Democrats used every tool at their disposal to kill this bill, and Texans are all the better for it. Texans can sleep better tonight knowing they have champions at the Capitol committed to defending their rights.
“Hopefully Texas Republicans have learned their lesson. Instead of wasting time on their Jim Crow 2.0 legislation, Republicans should have spent this session prioritizing the issues most important to Texans,” he added.

Among the bill’s provisions were measures that would eliminate drive-thru voting and 24-hour voting, limit early voting on weekdays to between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m., restrict Sunday voting, require voters with disabilities to disclose reasons for wanting a mail-in ballot, create unnecessary hurdles for voters who request assistance in voting, require voter ID for mail ballots, make it harder to register to vote, add obstacles to voting by mail, allow partisan poll watches at the polls, criminalize unintentional mistakes in rejecting or accepting ballots, enable to the Secretary of State to unilaterally alter voter rolls if he or she believes local registrar made a mistake, prevent local election officials from pro-actively informing voters about their voting options.