McALLEN — A local watchdog group is responsible for a proposed change in state law that would limit the number of absentee ballots a single person could handle during an election cycle to two.
McALLEN — A local watchdog group is responsible for a proposed change in state law that would limit the number of absentee ballots a single person could handle during an election cycle to two.
The Texas House Committee on Elections met Monday evening to discuss various proposed changes to the Texas Election Code, including House Bill 3425, which seeks to decrease the number of mail-in ballots a person can handle and levy a heavier penalty for those who violate the statute.
The discussion came just hours after the city of McAllen voted to appoint a signature-verifying committee to double check a surge in absentee ballots. On Monday — the first day of early voting for city elections — officials had received 529 mail-in ballots. That’s more than a 1,000-percent increase from 2015, when the city received fewer than 40 absentee ballots during its municipal election.
Elections committee chairwoman Rep. Jody Laubenberg, R-Rockwall, authored HB 3425 after hearing from members of the Objective Watchers of the Legal System during an interim hearing in September. During that hearing they testified about the use of politiqueras in Hidalgo and their perceived role in the harvesting of votes.
“And based on that testimony, it’s evident that mail-ballot fraud is an unfortunate reality in Texas,” Laubenberg said. “Also unfortunate is the fact that the penalty for mail-ballot harvesting is much less than (for) an individual who votes fraudulently.”
An individual who votes twice is subject to a felony penalty, whereas somebody that harvests a hundred ballots gets a slap on the wrist, the chairwoman said.
“This bill seeks to fix that,” she added.
Currently, there is no limit on the number of absentee votes a single person can handle. HB 3425 would change that. The bill would limit that number to two and would create a state jail felony for anyone who violates the rule.
The only exemption to the proposed law applies to family members or people carrying ballots for others registered to vote at the same address.
“The bill would protect people with disabilities and the elderly,” Laubenberg said. “Ballot harvesters target and prey upon these groups and often influence or misdirect the ballot, effectively taking away their most important constitutional right.”
Assistant Texas Attorney General Jonathan White, who is in charge of prosecuting voter fraud, expressed support for the bill. He said this type of crime often goes unpunished because the penalty level is not congruent with the amount of manpower and “tremendous amount of resources” it takes to retrace the steps and successfully prosecute.
Alan Vera, chairman of the Ballot Security Committee for the Harris County Republican Party, also expressed his support for the bill.
“This bill addresses one of the most frequent problems with mail-in ballots — so-called-assistants helping with so many ballots that their actions raise concerns about their role and their influence of the voting process,” he said.
Vera, however, made a suggestion to Laubenberg to add language that would not only prohibit people from mailing two ballots, but also from signing as an assistant on an absentee ballot more than twice.
“You may not have a witness who saw them put it in there (mail drop), so we would add ‘or signs as an assistant on more than two mail ballots per election’ because that’s a documented paper trail that you can prove,” he said. “We think these two small changes give prosecutors a better chance of proving the offense and will therefore make the established penalty a better deterrent.”
Laubenberg seemed open to the suggestion and left the bill pending in committee, despite what seemed like expressed support from other members on the committee.
