The Texas Republican leadership also stands firmly behind former President Donald Trump and his “big lie”. Like the Republican leadership in Georgia, it has enacted and is pushing forward with a new voting bill that significantly undermines elections. One key problem with the bill is that it could impose harsh penalties on election officials and poll workers who are suspected of an error or a violation. This article written by Nick Corasaniti is published in The New York Times. Here is an excerpt:

Republican lawmakers in Texas, following in the footsteps of their counterparts across the country, are pressing forward with a voting bill that could impose harsh penalties on election officials or poll workers who are thought to have committed errors or violations. And the nationwide effort may be pushing poll workers to reconsider serving their communities.

The often thankless task of millions of workers who administer the country’s elections has quickly become a key target of Republicans who are propagating former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. In their hunt for nonexistent fraud, they have turned on those who work the polls as somehow suspect.

That attitude has seeped into new voting laws and bills put forward by Republican-controlled legislatures across the country. More than two dozen bills in nine states, either still making their way through legislatures or signed into law, have sought to establish harsh new penalties, elevated criminal classifications and five-figure fines for state and local election officials who are found to have made mistakes, oversteps or other violations of election codes, according to a review of voting legislation by The New York Times.

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