AUSTIN, Texas (CN) --- With Texas Republican state lawmakers using their majority to push through "election integrity" bills, Democrats sought clarity Thursday on how the legislation would impose criminal penalties on election judges for obstructing poll watchers and what type of assistance for disabled voters would be considered felony offenses.
House Bill 6 has provisions its author Rep. Briscoe Cain, whose district includes several east Houston suburbs, says are meant to "preserve the purity of the ballot box" and ensure uniformity in elections across the state's 254 counties.
Cain, an attorney, traveled to Pennsylvania in November to help the campaign of former President Donald Trump suss out purported voting irregularities in the Keystone State before he was appointed chair of the Texas House Elections Committee in February.
Much of committee's hearing Thursday on HB 6 has focused on clauses that would make it a misdemeanor for a presiding election judge to have a poll watcher removed from or make them leave a polling place.
Rep. John Bucy, an Austin Democrat, repeatedly said he believes it contradicts with other language in the bill allowing election judges to have poll watchers booted for violating the Texas penal code.
He asked Cain if election judges would have authority to call the police on a poll watcher intimidating voters or otherwise disrupting the election process.
"Because it says they can't remove them...are they not the middle man and thus find themselves guilty of removing the watcher?" Bucy said.
Several Democratic lawmakers and witnesses said they believe it would have a chilling effect on recruiting poll workers who were already in short supply for the November elections due to the pandemic and the fact that many poll workers are retirees, an age group prone to becoming seriously ill from Covid-19.
The bill would also mandate anybody, other than an election officer, who helps a voter fill out a mail-in ballot or vote in person must fill out a form with their name and address, the manner in which they are assisting the voter, the reason the assistance is needed and their relationship to the voter, under penalty of perjury.
Cain said only people with disabilities that render them unable to see or write, or who can't understand the ballot due to language barriers, qualify for help.
Advising the Texas House Elections Committee on the bill Thursday, Jonathan White, chief of the election fraud division of the Texas Attorney General's Office, said assistance fraud happens all over the state.
He described the most egregious case he's investigated: "After the assistant punches the information into the voting kiosk the voter asks, 'When do I get to vote?' And the assistant says, 'You already did.' So that an example that's pretty clear-cut."
Rep. Mike Schofield, R-Houston, said toughening up the regulations of voting assistants is to ensure they are not helping people who don't need it, which would effectively be vote harvesting.
The legislation would add provisions to the Texas Election Code, defining vote harvesting as direct interaction with one or more voters in connection with an official ballot, ballot by mail or an application for a mail-in ballot.
Texas candidates regularly mail absentee ballot applications to voters age 65 and over, who automatically qualify. Individuals and advocacy groups can also provide them to voters and they can be printed off the websites of the Texas Secretary of State.
These activities would not be considered vote harvesting under the proposed legislation, White said, because there is no direct interaction with the voter. A canvasser could even hand them out to people in their homes, he said.
"Once you start dealing with the documents and assisting that's a different ballgame," White said.
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