· In August of 2021, during a special session of the Texas Legislature, I helped pass SB 1, a sweeping election integrity measure. The bill’s tagline was “Easy to vote but hard to cheat” and it contained a long list of reforms. At the conclusion of the bill, Texas had about a dozen different felonies for election or voter fraud.

· Specifically, SB 1 87(3) banned overnight polling hours and set uniform election dates and hours across the state, established greater protections for poll watchers, provided greater access for voters who need assistance, banned vote harvesting, and established monthly citizenship checks. It also mandated a series of election audits for counties across Texas, ensuring the largest Texas counties are audited more regularly.

· Mail-in ballots have consistently been the greatest opportunity for voter fraud in Texas. So SB 1 also made numerous changes to that process, including requiring voter ID for all mail-in ballots, making it a state jail felony to harvest applications for mail-in ballots and giving eligible voters the ability to track their ballots once they are in the mail.

· At the recommendation of District Attorneys who couldn’t enforce one form of mistakenly voting, we lowered the penalty from a felony to a misdemeanor for that infraction only. Over two decades, it was prosecuted only twice. However, after listening to our voters, during the 2023 session we raised the penalty back up from a misdemeanor to a felony with HB 1243, which I coauthored.

· Harris County continuously has major problems with their elections. Whether it’s local election administrators attempting to change state law themselves or conveniently shorting Republican polling sites by hundreds of paper ballots, the state was forced to respond. During the 2023 session I backed major reforms affecting Harris County specifically with the passage of SB 1933 and SB 1750. These reforms include abolishing the oft-troubled, likely fraudulent, Harris County Elections Administrator position entirely.