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May 16, 2019      12:28 PM

Updated: House Elections Committee postpones vote on upping penalties for alleged ballot fraud

A meeting had been called for 9:45 this morning, a quorum was not present. Now we are told Rep. Swanson is out sick and Democrats are also on guard to deny permission for the committee to meet while the House is in session. If there's objection to that it takes 2/3rds support

In one of the more heated debates of the closing weeks of the legislative session, a new version of SB 9 brought out hundreds of witnesses to the House Elections Committee Wednesday as the chair cut short registration for testimony and delayed a vote.

The vast majority of those who registered before 8:30am, when registration ended at Chair Stephanie Klick’s direction, were in opposition to the bill which has been labeled by Democrats as an attack on access to the polls and an attempt to suppress voter turnout.

Conservative supporters like Sen. Bryan Hughes R-Mineola, say it’s aimed at stopping those who cheat in elections by making it a state jail felony to forge a ballot. Critics say that amounts to “criminalizing mistakes.”

The hearing started off confrontational as Chair Klick laid out the bill while seeming to anticipate several lines of criticism.

By Andrew Turner

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