Laws in three states have imposed tighter restrictions on people who help voters with disabilities, language or other disabilities vote. Latino groups suing Texas, Arkansas and Missouri over the laws warn that those who need help voting in November’s elections may not get the help they need.
“Many Latino voters have disabilities or English is not their first language. They also don’t know how to use the voting computers and are very nervous, so they ask someone to help them validate their votes,” said Tania Chavez Camacho, executive director of the Texas-based nonprofit community organization La Unión del Pueblo Entero, known as LUPE.
“But now the state requires that if you want to help a voter, you have to take an oath that says you can be prosecuted if you break the rules: That affects volunteers. Finally, some people do not vote because of these obstacles,” Chavez Camacho said. Referring to the SB 1 Texas law that took effect in 2021.
Under the law, aides must fill out new documents disclosing their relationship with the voter and swear an oath to limit their assistance, as well as declare that they did not “pressure or coerce” the voter into choosing them as an aide. Perjury is a state crime punishable by prison terms.
Underneath suffrage lawVoters who are blind, disabled, or illiterate and need help can get help at polling stations. But volunteers in Texas say SB 1 makes it harder to provide that help.
“Sometimes we are afraid to help people who want to accompany them to vote. Because you have to take an oath and it says that if you make a mistake, your vote will not count and you can even go to jail. It’s very intimidating for me,” explained LUPE member María Cristela Rocha.
“The law doesn’t specify exactly how the rule is broken, so if I’m helping a voter at a polling station and the poll worker says I made a mistake, now I can be prosecuted just for wanting to help,” Chavez Camacho said. “For us, this is very disturbing because neither our staff nor volunteers feel comfortable helping people who want to go to the polls to vote. As an organization, it prevents us from doing our job.”
The Brennan Justice Centeris part of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), a legal group that focuses on voting rights and represents LUPE and other organizations. A federal lawsuit was filed against Texas over the law.
“We can’t help people anymore”
SB 1 could also be used to criminalize nonpartisan voter canvassing and severely restrict election officials by creating a new state arrest offense for providing mail-in ballot applications to eligible voters who do not request them.
The claim The details show that more than 277,000 voting-age US citizens with limited English proficiency live in Texas counties where they are not required to file in their native language. Advocacy groups say citizens are disproportionately Asian-American and Latino.
The trial began last year in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, but the case has yet to be decided.
The lawsuit names former Texas Secretary of State John B. Scott, current Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and five other state officials as defendants. Telemundo News sought comment from everyone named in the lawsuit, but only received a response from El Paso County Elections Administrator Lisa Wise. He said in an email that he could not comment “because it is an ongoing lawsuit.”
In court documents reviewed by Noticias Telemundo, some state officials involved in the litigation expressed concern over the “ambiguity” of some sections of SB 1. Also, election administrators stated that in their experience “no voter was confused or unduly influenced.” by community organizations.
In July 2021 Paxton wrote in X“Election integrity measures have nothing to do with race, but everything to do with making voting easier and making fraud harder.”
SB 1 was part of a raft of bills backed by Republicans after former President Donald Trump and other Republicans made false allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election. claims that are still ongoing.
“The fact is that voter fraud is real” State Sen. Brian Hughes, the bill’s author, said in a statement for 2021 posted on the website of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative research group. “We value every Texan’s opinion and will defend their right to express it at the ballot box.”
Democratic State Representative Diego Bernal In 2021, he told the US House Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.: “Of the total 94 million votes cast in Texas over the past 17 years, 154 criminal cases have been filed for voter fraud. The probability of election fraud in Texas is lower than the probability of each of us being struck by lightning.”
In the lawsuit, the groups argue that the Texas law is a “reaction” to demographic changes in the electorate, which is “more racially diverse and young than ever.” They cited official data showing that Latino voter turnout was about 56% in 2020, meaning Hispanic votes accounted for more than a fifth of all votes cast in the state.
Laura MacCleery, senior policy director at UnidosUS, a national Latino civil rights organization, said in her research she sees a correlation between the implementation of laws like SB 1 and Hispanic demographics.
“We must remember that the number of Latino voters who participated in 2020 was greater than needed to declare the results of the presidential election. “Where we have a growing Latino population of strong new voters and eligible citizens, we’re now seeing pressures emerge to limit voting rights, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” MacCleery, whose organization was not involved in the lawsuit, said in an interview.
Official Figures compiled by UnidosUS shows that there are 18 million Latinos registered to vote, making them the second largest group of voting-age Americans. However, there are 31.2 million Hispanics of voting age, so the organization’s researchers say that “closing the voter registration gap is a critical opportunity to achieve full Hispanic representation at the polls.”
Arkansas and Missouri also limit voter assistance
The Texas case is not unique. MALDEF also sued Arkansas and Missouri to limit assistance to voters who do not speak English well or who have disabilities.
“The state of Arkansas limits the number of people who can help vote. A person can help only six voters in each election; if they exceed that number, they are in violation of the law and can be prosecuted,” Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF, said in an interview.
“The laws in the state of Missouri are stricter and say that no one can help more than one voter in each election unless an election judge is present or helping an immediate family member,” Saenz said.
Unlike Texas, the courts in Arkansas and Missouri challenged the old laws. Missouri had a problem Law passed in 1977and in Arkansas, it refers to regulations implemented in the 1990s. according to Data from the Pew Research CenterThere are approximately 83,000 eligible Latino voters in Arkansas; In Missouri, it’s 125,000.
“The limit is a huge obstacle in Arkansas because we have almost no bilingual survey workers,” said Mireya Reith, executive director of Arkansas United, one of the advocacy organizations involved in the lawsuit. “We are one of three states in the United States where everything is in English, where ballots are not translated. “Because we can only help six people, our organization cannot serve all the Hispanic voters who need assistance who do not speak English or who have disabilities.”
Although A federal judge ruled in August 2022 Arguing that Arkansas violated the Voting Rights Act with its six-voter limit, state officials challenged the decision, and it is now before the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Unfortunately, the judge in the Missouri case decided to wait for the Arkansas appeal to be resolved because they raised similar issues,” Saenz said. “So we expect to get an 8th Circuit decision that will affect both cases, but we won’t have a decision before the election, so Latino voters in those states will have to vote again within the limits.”
Telemundo News has requested responses from all state and local authorities named in both lawsuits. In the Arkansas case, spokespeople for the secretary of state and the Board of State Election Commissioners said they could not comment on the lawsuit while it is in the appeals process. Missouri officials did not respond to a request for comment.
State officials in Arkansas argued in court that the purpose of the six-voter limit was to “prevent helpers from improperly influencing the decisions of voters” at the polling station. Without the six-voter limit, officials argued, “carloads of people” could go to the polls and “get fake help from the same person.”
Reith, for his part, said that there is no evidence of such fraud in the state, and that the biggest fear of the Hispanic people in Arkansas is that they make a mistake when voting, so they sometimes “prefer not to vote.”
“We couldn’t meet the demand, so we’re going to prioritize counties with more Latino voters, but 60% of immigrants in Arkansas live in rural communities of less than 8,000 people, so we’re never going to be able to reach everyone, and we’re going to make sure they’re eligible for assistance.” we want them to know,” Reit said.
Meanwhile in Texas, Rocha says she’s excited because, at age 62, this will be her first election since becoming a citizen.
“I became a citizen because we are tired of having our rights taken away from us. We will continue our fight because we cannot deny people help, can we?” he said.
An earlier version of this story was first published on Noticias Telemundo.