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(CNN) – The Department of Justice is suing Texas over new voting restrictions that the federal government says will disenfranchise eligible voters and violate federal voting rights law.
The lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in San Antonio challenges the law known as SB1 passed earlier this year to review election procedures in the state.
The New Texas Voting Law Includes These 7 Important Changes
The law, which prohibits voting 24 hours a day and going to vote by car, imposes new obstacles to ballots by mail and empowers partisan election observers, was signed by the Republican Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, in September.
The Justice Department lawsuit said the law illegally restricts voters’ rights by requiring the rejection of ballots by mail “for immaterial errors and omissions.” The law also harms the rights of voters with limited English proficiency, military deployed away from home and voters abroad, the Justice Department alleged.
“Before SB1, the state of Texas already imposed some of the strictest limitations in the nation on the right of certain citizens to assistance in voting. SB1 further restricts, and impermissibly, the fundamental right to meaningful assistance in the voting booth, ”the Justice Department said.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department sued Georgia over its new voting law, similarly arguing a violation of federal voting rights law.
The Texas law was passed after a contentious debate in which some Democrats left the state to try to avoid passing it. It was among a series of similar laws in Republican-run states that were aimed at responding to false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
A woman casts her vote in the 2020 general election inside the Basset Place Mall in El Paso, Texas, on November 3, 2020.
“It makes it easier than ever for anyone to vote. However, it also ensures that it is more difficult than ever for people to cheat at the polls, ”Abbott said when he signed the law.
The lawsuit is the latest legal battle between the Biden Justice Department and Texas, who are fighting in court over abortion rights, immigration enforcement and vaccine mandates.
“Finally, a Department of Justice that fights for justice. Texas is torpedoing American democracy and our constitutional right to vote. We are encouraged to see the Justice Department respond, ”NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement to CNN about the Texas lawsuit.
President Joe Biden said during a CNN feed in late October that the United States is experiencing “the greatest assault on the right to vote in American history, really, since the Civil War.” But the president said pushing his massive Build Back Better plan has barred him from putting a primary focus on voting rights, while promising to focus on the issue once his agenda is approved.
Biden also noted that he would be willing to fundamentally alter or completely get rid of obstructionism, which has been used effectively as a tool to block voting rights legislation at the federal level. He had previously supported the preservation of the rule.
Senate Republicans blocked progress on the John Lewis Voting Rights Act on Wednesday when the Senate took a procedural vote on whether to open debate on the legislation. The bill that would fight voter suppression and restore key parts of the historic Voting Rights Act, originally passed in 1965, failed by 50 to 49 votes. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the only Republican who voted alongside Democrats.
Other changes
The law introduced new mandates that require Texans who vote by mail to provide their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number twice: once on their absentee ballot application forms and once in the envelope in which they return their ballots.
Those numbers will then be compared to voter records to confirm that they are who they say they are – a change from the current signature matching process.
By law, the Texas secretary of state’s office must check monthly to make sure no one on the state’s voter rolls said they were a non-citizen when obtaining or renewing their driver’s license or identification card.
It is also a felony for a public official to send someone a request for a mail ballot that the person did not request, or to complete any part of any request for a mail ballot that he or she sends to someone.
CNN’s Shawna Mizelle contributed to this report.
The-CNN-Wire
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