Someone on facebook mentioned how Texas is considering a voting law that would, among other things, make carpooling illegal as a way to get people to vote.
So I tried to find out if snopes had investigated this or not, and so far I can’t find anything.
I believe this is the text of the bill. Is this hyperbole or factual?
From what I can tell, it doesn’t sound like its anti car pooling so much as an effort to prevent people from having ballots given to them in the parking lot.
Am I missing something? Some people are claiming this law is designed to make it much more difficult to carpool to the voting place unless you can prove your other passengers are disabled. Is that factual or not?
None of this makes any sense to me. Here in Vermont, you can vote via mail, for any reason. Otherwise, you have to go into the polling place and vote in person.
There is nobody in the parking lot taking notes and asking questions. How do you prove that your friends who needed a ride are disabled? I get disablilty, but I have no way to prove it.
Couldn’t “carpooling” also extend to people who live together, for any number of reasons, who ride in the same car to the polling place? This is ridiculous.
You know, people can care about more than one issue at a time. I’m very much opposed to your story, but I also care about the original story, even if I think it would be very hard to enforce.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Texas legislature is trying to prevent people from driving other people to the polls, because it’s not unheard of for activists to provide bus service to people in poorer areas for voting purposes. But I’d appreciate a legal (but not binding!) opinion on the proposed changes.
The original text is about someone going into the voting booth (or equivalent) with another person, which is a pretty common prohibition/limited activity. The new text would ask that people providing transportation indicate whether they’re providing transportation only or also on-site assistance.
In Spain you don’t need to have any kind of paperwork to assist someone, but if the voting officers see anything which smells funky they can request that it be one of them who does the assist, or if they can’t, that the assistant be replaced by someone else. Two examples: I assisted my grandmother voting in the 1-O Catexit referendum and given how loudly I needed to speak with her, the officers had no trouble telling I was marking down exactly what she said; I was an officer in a local election and one of the voters was a recent immigrant from Romania who was accompanied by a translator from a local NGO, if we had thought she was telling him anything else than what I explained we could have asked any of the other Romanians present to verify the interpretation (one of the things I watched while giving the explanation was precisely the faces of those Romanians standing in line who could hear us clearly).
I don’t see how it would have anything to do with carpooling. Both the amended provision and the Subchapter B that it references appear to be about regulating people who “assist” voters in making their vote. I would think there is a greater risk of illegal activity with assistance reading, understanding, marking, etc. the ballot (what “Subchapter B” seems to be about) than sitting in the car with them and watching them vote. But I can see the concern there too.
Unless “carpooling” is a situation where you all drive to the polls, pretend to be disabled, and ask the election officer to bring you a ballot. (Regardless of the risk of coercion, etc., I also think that curbside voting is logistically inconvenient. When I’ve seen it done, it looks like you need multiple election officials - to witness each other - as well as the various party poll watchers. A temporary, but significant, reduction in the manpower at the polling site. Maybe Texas is different).
This certainly appears to be Fake News. It seems people have taken a sentence out of context and made up a narrative that it somehow prevents carpooling (even though carpooling is never even mentioned in the statute).
Section 64.009 of the Texas Election Code deals with how to handle situations where the voter is physically unable to enter the polling place. Apparently adopted by the Texas Legislature in 1985 (predating the ADA by 5 years). It seems that if the voter is physically unable to enter the polling place, then a ballot may be provided to that voter either at the door or curb of the polling place. The proposed changes merely proceduralize how the person who is assisting the disabled voter is to notify the election officers that they will need a ballot and why, the assumption being that someone who is unable to enter the polling place will have someone providing assistance (otherwise, how would they get there?). As the code already gives the authority to the election officer to modify the procedure as needed to allow the disabled voter to cast a ballot, I would guess these modifications are merely an attempt to adopt “best practices” so that election officers are not overwhelmed by people claiming they require special consideration because they are physically unable to enter the polling place.
Perhaps one reason for the Fake News is that a few years ago, there was a somewhat minor kerfuffle when Uber (or was it Lyft?) tried to offer free (actually it was a credit of up to $10) rides to your polling place. Texas law (as many other states, I’d assume) is very clear that paying someone to vote is not legal, and offering someone a $10 credit was seen as a bit too close to paying someone.
Too bad, because she quoted the law in question and so am I. Texas is trying to amend their voter laws, and they have a history of voter suppression. So this is something that should be investigated to determine if its true or not.
It would also seem to me that a law prohibiting carpooling – well, anywhere – would run afoul of First Amendment protections for freedom-of-congress: Unless we’re known criminals, a free people should be able to gather in any public place and any quantity. That would include a bunch of people jumping into a passenger van to go to the polls – provided everyone is seated and safely strapped-in and not otherwise exceeding the van’s safe usage limits.
That is threadshitting. The OP appears to have found the actual text of proposed legislation and quoted it. That he was motivated to do so by something he read on FB is irrelevant.
Assuming the quote is accurate, it would mean I couldn’t drive my wife to the polling station. She doesn’t drive, but is certainly not disabled. I cannot believe such a law would stand. It might even be too much for Clarence Thomas (although don’t bet on that).
IANAL, but it seems to me that “a voter voting under this section” is the key phrase in the proposed amended section. That is, the requirement applies only if the voter is physically unable to safely enter the polling place and needs a ballot brought out to them, as that is the scenario that section 64.009 addresses.
I’m not sure what problem the proposed amendment is trying to fix, however. Is it just about filling out a request form for the election officer to come out and deliver the ballot? If so, formalizing a procedure for that isn’t necessarily bad, as it makes it easier for election officers to know how to handle the situation.
However, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that it’s based on someone’s deranged notion of an especially improbably form of voter fraud, or that it might be a deliberate effort to cause confusion as to what is allowed. We’re talking about the Texas legislature; there’s enough intertwined idiocy and malice there that it’s hard to tell.
The law says “personal assistance”, which is a legal phrase under which giving someone a ride does not fall. Wheeling her wheelchair would be “personal assistance” as would providing her an arm so that she won’t fall over due to an unsteady gait. Reading her the ballot because she is visually impaired would count. Marking the ballot because her Parkinson’s makes her hands too shaky would count. Giving someone a ride is not “personal assistance.”
Again, in section 64.009, “the voter” is someone who is physically incapable of entering the polling place. If the voter is incapable of entering the polling place, but does show up at the polling place, somebody must have provided the voter with transportation (since the the voter is incapable).
The only misunderstanding is caused by people taking clauses out of context and twisting them to try to make them mean something they do not.
This whole thread is absurd. Even with the excerpts quoted in the OP, there is nothing saying that providing transportation is illegal. Nothing.
If I drive my wife to the polling station (that’s providing her with transportation means, under any ordinary interpretation), I must also affirm that she is physically unable to enter the polling place, which is nonsense. If you have any other interpretation, please provide your reasoning.
I don’t think my reasoning is particularly inaccessible. The proposed bill adds two subsections to Section 64.009 of the Election Code. Section 64.009 (which is titled "Voter Unable to Enter Polling Place) appears to be concerned (oddly) with voters who are unable to enter the polling place. When subsection (e) talks about a voter “voting under this section”, we are necessarily and quite obviously talking about a voter who “is physically unable to enter the polling place without personal assistance or likelihood of injuring the voter’s health”. Whether or not that includes your wife, I don’t know. But if it is “nonsense” for you to affirm that she is physically unable to enter the polling place, then she is unlikely to legitimately be a voter who “is physically unable to enter the polling place without personal assistance” and thus is outside of the statute.
Put another way, the proposed laws adds subsections (e) and (f) to the existing statute. So, as amended, it would read:
Subchapter B (as referenced above) addresses voters who are “eligible to receive assistance in marking the ballot” because of disability or illiteracy.
So, there’s really no ambiguity here and I don’t understand your confusion. The statute creates a system where there is a class of voters who are “physically unable to enter the polling place” (call them Eligible Voter). Under the statute that exists now, an Eligible Voter is entitled to have an election officer bring them a ballot, mark the ballot, and return the ballot to the election officer (or have the person accompanying them deposit the ballot).
Under the new statute, a person who transports an Eligible Voter must affirm that the voter is an Eligible Voter and provide their own identity and indicate whether they are providing additional assistance beyond transportation (specifically, with respect to reading or marking the ballot).
I don’t have an opinion on whether this is a good law or an onerous law or anything of that sort. But it is exceedingly straightforward, and I don’t see how you can reasonably claim that it would apply to your wife, who you’ve suggested is physically capable of entering the polling place, competently reading and marking the ballot, and in fact does so. (And if the problem is that she cannot fill out the ballot or is illiterate, this statute doesn’t appear to alter those procedures at all).