Reality check: What's really in the Texas voting reform bill?

The fleeing Democrats have cast the bill in an apocalyptic light as a full-scale attack on core voting rights, but the legislation, formed by one bill in the Texas House and one in the Texas Senate, is mostly a modest reform of the state's voting rules, relative to both existing law and other, slightly more far-reaching bills passed by other state legislatures in recent months.

State Rep. Diego Bernal argued that the GOP reform bill was "An attempt to rig the system," while state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer suggested the flight of Democratic legislators was a "Stand for democracy," The remarkable step of fleeing the state for Washington has served to paint the Texas bill as an even more dire threat to voting rights.

Under the bill, voters who wish to vote by mail would be required to include their driver's license number on the application.

The bill would forbid residents from voting from their cars unless the voter suffered from a disability that prevented voting inside the polling location.

Sparse explanations for controversy Texas Democrat Michelle Beckley, one of the lawmakers who fled with colleagues to Washington, said in a statement that the law was filled with "Vote suppressing provisions." "Both versions of the bill impose restrictions on expanded early voting hours, threaten election officials with criminal charges for removing disruptive partisan poll watchers, and even allow partisan poll watchers to threaten election workers with frivolous litigation," she argued.

"These bills unnecessarily make it harder to vote by mail by requiring voters to provide sensitive personal information and increasing the technical requirements for both voters and election workers when dealing with vote-by-mail ballots." Beckley also argued that the bill makes it "Easier to prosecute people who assist mail and in-person voters through increasing the technical requirements that they must comply with and removing any defense to prosecution," a reference to new paperwork requirements for individuals assisting others in casting a ballot.

A CNN article on Tuesday referred to the legislation in question as "Republican restrictive voting bills" that appear "Tainted by political opportunism." Yet the article only examined the contents of the bill after 21 paragraphs, and even then mostly obliquely, claiming the bill "Introduces new restrictions for voting by mail." A Monday New York Times article styled the bill as a "Restrictive new voting law by the Republican-controlled Legislature," but the report only briefly addressed the actual substance of the bill after nearly 30 paragraphs.
 

https://justthenews.com/government/state-houses/whats-texas-voting-reform-bill-made-democrats-flee-washington