Maddow Blog | Texas gov eyes retaliation after Dems derail voter-suppression bill
MSNBC
1 hr ago
Steve Benen
As Texas Republicans advanced a pernicious voter-suppression bill on Saturday, President Joe Biden condemned it in unambiguous terms. The proposal represented "an assault on democracy," the president said, adding, "It's wrong and un-American."
GOP legislators clearly didn't care, but Biden's assessment was more than fair. A
Washington Posteditorial described Texas' anti-voting plan as "the most odious anti-democratic act by a legislature this year" -- and given the flood of voter-suppression measures unveiled in recent months, the competition is fierce.
Republicans in the Lone Star State went to great lengths to craft a bill, negotiated in secret, that attacked the franchise in a multifaceted way, making it more difficult to cast absentee ballots, while curtailing early voting, banning drive-through voting, empowering partisan poll watchers, and even discouraging Texans from transporting voters to polling places. The common thread tying together nearly all of these provisions was an unsubtle attempt to make it harder for Black and Latino voters to participate in their own democracy.