Fighting against SB9

The local chapter of Texas Rising Activists spread awareness on the recently passed Texas Senate Bill 9 (SB9), which would increase restrictions on voting.

Members of Texas Rising-RGV gathered from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday outside the Student Union on the Edinburg campus and Thursday outside the Main Building on the Brownsville campus. 

On April 15, the Senate passed SB9, ricocheting many people into disbelief and displeasure with the several “voter restrictions” it encompasses.

“The fact that it passed the Senate is horrible,” said Ofelia Alonso, regional field coordinator for Texas Rising-RGV and a 2018 UTRGV graduate. “Everyone expected it to die in the Senate and it didn’t. It passed, so now we’re trying to call our representatives to make sure that it dies in the House and that we don’t have SB9 as a new law of Texas.”

Alonso explained SB9 is a “huge bill” comprised of several voter restrictions that criminalize people for making simple mistakes when registering to vote as well as adding “a whole lot of restrictions around what kind of things you can do to get people to go out and vote.”

“An example of that is you could get criminalized for driving your friends to the polls and driving, like, doing curbside voting,” she said. “So, if you have more than, I think, five people in your car and they’re not your family, you need to provide documentation that all of you need to do curbside voting.”

C. Lopez, an interdisciplinary studies senior, said that she thought this bill would make it much more difficult for senior citizens and other people who need help to get to the polls, referencing the incident that occurred in Alabama, where the polls turned the elderly away.

SB9 also makes it a class B misdemeanor if a person “impedes a walkway, sidewalk, parking lot, or roadway within 500 feet of a polling place in a manner that hinders a person from entering the polling place,” according to the bill introduced by Sen. Bryan Hughes (R-Tyler) and co-sponsored by Sen. Bob Hall (R-Edgewood).

Another possible transgression the bill imposes is if voters fill out their voter registration incorrectly, they can get jail time as well as large fines for the offense.

Alonso said that this would especially affect transgender people who register to vote and possibly criminalized if they put down the gender they present themselves as, versus the gender they were “born with.” She said all these restrictions “completely ignore” all the barriers that individuals already have for voting.

“It would also specifically be difficult for students to vote because these restrictions are made to intimidate people into not voting, right?” Alonso asked. “So, if you knew you could potentially get a criminal conviction from registering to vote, would you risk registering?”

Along with these several restrictions, SB9 also proposes making it a requirement for Texas counties to utilize voting machines with paper trails.

In addition to informing students about the bill, activists also asked people to take photos in an orange county jail shirt, holding up an array of signs with possible criminal convictions if the bill were to pass. She said this would portray the reality if SB9 passes, as well as a way to inform people of what actions they can take to make sure that it doesn’t “continue going forward.”

“This is also a digital campaign,” Alonso said. “Texas Rising has student chapters all over the state of Texas. We have them everywhere, in El Paso, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Houston, College Station, San Marcos, and so we’re all sort of doing the same thing and we’re all posting our photos online and sort of creating, basically, this narrative of it where we do emphasize that this will be something that could potentially get people sent to jail.”

She said Texas is already a non-voting state, with the “lowest voter turnout in the entire United States,” and that this “attack on voting rights” will only make it worse.

“If it does get passed, usually it goes into effect after the [legislative session] ends, so when SB4 passed in June, it went into effect by September,” Alonso said. “So, if SB9 passes, it should be in effect by the end of this year and it would definitely affect the [2020] primaries and the 2020 election.”

Asked what she thought was most problematic about the bill, Lopez replied, “I find it problematic that it even exists. … With all this hatred that’s being spread around, these senators are just adding fuel to the flame.”

“Right now, [SB9] is in the process of, I think, it’s already referred to a committee in the House, so we don’t know what’s going to happen from here on,” Alonso said. “This is the time that we call our representatives and urge them to vote ‘no’ on it. If there’s enough backlash, it could die.”