AUSTIN — Election fraud is once again a felony in Texas after Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation into law that ups the criminal penalty.
The bill makes voter fraud a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison. The offense was a misdemeanor for two years after a Republican effort in the Texas House reduced the penalty amid questions over inadvertent illegal voting
Abbott signed the bill without ceremony Tuesday. His office did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Supporters of the measure, including its author, Rep. Cole Hefner, R-Mount Pleasant, have said the law returns the penalty for illegal voting to what it was for nearly 50 years and that the change is necessary to restore confidence in elections.
“We have made tremendous strides toward election integrity in recent years, but we must ensure Texans are confident the legitimate votes they cast will be counted and are not canceled out by someone who has knowingly or intentionally cast an illegal ballot,” Hefner said during an April 27 House hearing on the bill.
Election fraud has remained a top priority for the GOP in Texas since Donald Trump’s leadership of the party began. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Trump’s unproven allegations of widespread fraud fueled a push for a sweeping election law passed in 2021.
That law erected new voter ID checks in the mail ballot process that led to a surge in rejected ballots. It also made it a crime for local election officials to solicit ballots by mail.
However, tucked into the law was a House Republican-supported provision that reduced the criminal penalty of election fraud to a misdemeanor.
The San Antonio lawmaker behind the change, Rep. Steve Allison, later said the attorney general’s office had requested the penalty be reduced to give the office a tool for making plea agreements in exchange for witness testimony.
Attorney General Ken Paxton, currently sidelined on impeachment, vociferously denied his office sought the change.
After it became law, many Republicans seethed over the change, including Lt. Gov Dan Patrick. Patrick made increasing the criminal penalty a top priority of the Senate this year.
The bill Abbott signed was a somewhat watered-down version of the Senate proposal, which also would have made it easier to prosecute the crime.
That version of the bill threatened to criminalize simple mistakes in the provisional ballot process, such as attempting to vote after registering past the 30-day deadline before an election.
Some critics of the law believe it could scare people away from voting under the guise of clamping down on a nonexistent problem.
“For two years, illegal voting was a Class A misdemeanor in Texas,” said Emily Eby French, a voting rights attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project. “There was no surge in illegal voting during that time. HB 1243 restores a felony penalty that is based in intimidation and suppression, not in reality.”
