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Alexa Ura is an associate editor and reporter at The Texas Tribune. As the Tribune’s demographics reporter, she covers the intersection between politics and race with an emphasis on the state’s surging Hispanic population. She also covers voting rights issues for the Tribune, where she started as a reporting fellow in 2013. She’s a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin.
After temporarily derailing a GOP priority voting bill, Texas Democrats looked to Washington this week to make the case for a federal legislation to overhaul elections and reinstate protections for voters of color. Full Story
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All they could get was a temporary win. But the lawmakers said taking the extraordinary measure of breaking quorum in the Texas House was justified by the harm they felt their mostly Black and Hispanic constituents would face under the GOP’s voting bill. Full Story
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Midnight was the deadline for the House to approve the legislation that would alter nearly the entire voting process, create new limitations to early voting hours, ratchet up voting-by-mail restrictions and curb local voting options. Full Story
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Senate Bill 7 includes provisions to limit early voting hours, curtail local voting options and further tighten voting by mail. The upper chamber suspended its own rules to approve it after debating it for hours overnight. Full Story
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Senate Bill 7, a Republican priority voting bill, would limit early voting hours, curtail local voting options and further clamp down on mail-in voting, among several other provisions. Full Story
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House and Senate negotiators have reached a deal on competing versions of Senate Bill 7. Once both chambers sign off on the agreement, it will head to the governor’s desk before it becomes law. Full Story
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Voters in some urban, Democratic areas of Harris and Tarrant counties would see a drastic drop in polling places under the Senate version of Senate Bill 7, a Texas Tribune analysis shows. Full Story
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The Senate Nominations Committee never took up Hughs’ nomination, requiring her to leave office at the end of the legislative session. Full Story
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In a 78-64 vote, the House on Friday passed a pared down version of priority GOP legislation to place new restrictions on voting. Now the bill likely will be reshaped in conference committee with the Senate, largely out of public view. Full Story
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Dozens of big companies, local businesses and chambers of commerce issued a statement reflecting the biggest pushback yet by the business community against Texas Republican efforts to further tighten the state's restrictive voting rules. Full Story
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The House elections committee gutted the Senate’s priority voting bill and replaced it with language from the House’s preferred legislation, signaling a divide over which new restrictions will make it to the governor’s desk. Full Story
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Texas will have 38 congressional seats as a result of the latest U.S. census. It's one of six states to gain seats, and it's the only state that will get more than one. Full Story
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Senate Bill 7 would create new restrictions on early voting, how voters can receive applications to vote by mail and the distribution of polling places in diverse, urban counties. Here's our breakdown of the proposed changes. Full Story
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An outraged Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick castigated those implying that GOP efforts to restrict Texas voting are racist. But the state has a history of marginalizing voters of color, and many business leaders, voting rights advocates and Democrats see it taking another step down that path. Full Story
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Like other Republican proposals, the measure would target Harris County’s initiatives from the 2020 general election, including a shift to proactively send out vote-by-mail applications. Full Story
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American Airlines and Dell Technologies on Thursday publicly declared their opposition to Republican legislative proposals that would impose new restrictions on voting. Full Story
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Senate Bill 7 is at the forefront of Texas Republicans’ crusade to further restrict voting in the state after last year’s election. Full Story
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The Tarrant County woman faces a five-year prison sentence for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election while on supervised release for a federal conviction. Her vote was never counted. Full Story
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Senate Bill 7 would make sweeping changes to Texas voting by limiting extended early voting hours, prohibiting drive-thru voting and requiring Texans to provide proof of disability to qualify for mail-in voting. Full Story
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The chamber signed off on House Bill 1024 to permanently allow beer, wine and mixed drinks to be included in pickup and delivery food orders. The measure still requires approval from the Senate. Full Story
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