Election Bill Conferees Claim Typo Tainting
that Fuels Suspicions on Deceit and Intent
Capitol Inside
June 1, 2021
Two GOP lawmakers are contending that they inadvertently signed a conference committee on a controversial election bill with a typographical error that could have had a devastating effect on Black voter turnout if Democrats hadn't killed the measure in the Texas House on Sunday night.
The bizarre claims on a drafting blunder represent the latest twist in the titanic disaster that the GOP push for election integrity has turned out to be up to now at the Texas Capitol in 2021. The Senate Bill 7 typo tales also are another unintended gift for Democrats in a treasure trove of material that the Republicans have given them for a court fight on the voting restrictions that have been wrapped this year in Senate Bill 7.
State Rep. Travis Clardy of Nacogdoches asserted in an interview on NPR that the conferees on the voting plan hadn't agreed to push the starting time for early voting on the Sunday before the election to 1 p.m. like it would have done in the compromise document that contains signatures for a handful of Senate Republicans as well.
Clardy said the SB 7 conferees actually had agreed on 11 a.m. as the time that the polls could open on the Sunday in question. Clardy said during the debate on the conference report that he was well aware of the tradition that Black voters have when they go to the polls together after church to cast their ballots on the last day for doing so before the election. The Souls to the Polls initiatives are products of the fight for civil rights in the U.S. in the 1960s.
State Rep. Briscoe Cain - a Deer Park lawmaker who led the House negotiators as the sponsor of the legislation - has corroborated Clardy's story on the accidental error involving the early voting hours.
"That was not intended to be reduced," Clardy said. "I think there was a — call it a mistake if you want to — what should have been 11 was actually printed up as 1."
But neither Cain or Clardy mentioned that the conference report was tainted with a technical mistake on the House floor on Sunday night when they were outlining a myriad of eleventh-hour restrictions that would be inserted into SB 7 with a vote on a permission slip in House Resolution 2007.
None of four Senate Republicans who'd signed the compromise on SB 7 - State Senators Bryan Hughes of Mineola, Paul Bettencourt of Houston, Dawn Buckingham of Lakeway and Lois Kolkhorst of Brenham - acknowledged such an error during an all-night debate on the compromise that all had signed the previous day.
Hughes actually defended the 1 p.m. starting time in the face of questions from Democratic State Senator Royce West of Dallas on his knowledge of Souls to the Polls and the damage that he said SB 7 would be doing to it with the last-second addition to the conference report.
Hughes said the conference committee had chosen 1 p.m. to give voters the opportunity to go to worship services before the polls open on the final day for early voting. Hughes never attempted to explain how or why the ability of churchgoers to vote would be affected if the polls opened at 11 a.m. instead.
Hughes referred specifically to the 1 p.m. setting in the final product of SB 7 multiple times while defending the measure from criticism by Democrats for more than eight hours before the election bill that the conferees had negotiated cleared the upper chamber for the last time in the regular session on Sunday around sunrise. |