Because election integrity is the top priority for the Republican
Party of Texas in the 88th Legislative Session, we want to update
you on recent legislative actions regarding election security and
the prosecution of election fraud.

This week, the Senate passed SB 2 by Senator Bryan Hughes. SB 2
restores the penalty for illegal voting to a second-degree
felony, its historic level, and undoes the change from 2021 that
reduced it to a misdemeanor. This is a huge victory for the
Senate. It will now go over to the House for a committee hearing.
So stay tuned for more updates.

Additionally, SB 921, authored by Senator Bryan Hughes which bans
ranked choice voting in Texas, passed out of the Senate State
Affairs Committee and will now go to the Senate Floor.
Representative Briscoe Cain filed companion HB 3611 in the House.
There has been a national movement to implement ranked choice
voting in several states and localities across the country. To
Sen. Hughes and leadership's credit, they are being proactive in
ensuring this method of voting is statutorily banned altogether
in Texas. Ranked choice voting is a confusing method of voting in
which the voter ranks candidates in order of their preference.
Often, winners are declared with less than 50% of the total
ballots cast on election day as voters fail to properly mark
second, third and fourth place choices and their votes end up
being discarded from the election.

Senate Bill 1070 was also filed by Senator Bryan Hughes, which
prevents the collection of data outside of the original framework
of the Texas Interstate Crosscheck Program. HB 2809 by Jacey
Jetton is the House companion. The Interstate Crosscheck Program
was created in 2015 to prevent duplication of voter registration
in more than one state and was a free service organized by the
Kansas Secretary of State, to help states with communication and
record keeping. As of 2020 however, Texas is in a contractual
agreement with the national group "Electronic Registration
Information Center" (ERIC) for the purposes of maintaining voter
lists across state lines.

The ERIC membership agreement collects an extensive amount of
personally identifiable information and data related to elections
going far beyond the requirements of our Interstate Crosscheck
Program. Moreover, ERIC has forced the State of Texas to reach
out to every eligible, or possibly eligible voter, who is not
registered to vote. Given this type of outreach, Texas is now
participating in a national voter registration drive at taxpayer
expense. The data collected is given to third parties like the
Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) which has
partisan affiliations and Senzing, an artificial intelligence
gathering system. The contract with ERIC also costs taxpayers
over $1.5 million dollars in membership and maintenance costs.
Senator Bob Hall's bill, SB 399, has a similar goal to withdraw
from ERIC, given the data collection concerns.

According to a recent Secretary of State press release, Keith
Ingram will now serve in a "newly created position to develop and
manage an interstate voter registration crosscheck program." This
is good news for our concerns at the Republican Party of Texas.
Florida, Missouri, West Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana and Ohio
have already severed ties with ERIC citing privacy violations.
California and New York never participated in the program.
Colorado, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Alaska and DC all have pending
lawsuits against ERIC. Clearly many member states have grown
frustrated with the enormous amounts of data collection performed
by ERIC.

At the quarterly State Republican Executive Committee (SREC)
meeting held in Austin, two significant election resolutions
passed to express priorities of the grassroots. The first
demanded withdrawal from ERIC and the second was a resolution to
ban ranked choice voting by statute. The Republican Party of
Texas platform supports withdrawal from ERIC and clean voter
rolls under Planks 241 and 242.

You may email Secretary of State Jane Nelson at
[email protected] and kindly ask her to withdraw from the
ERIC membership agreement. Absent legislation, the State of Texas
is still a member of ERIC and actively sends sensitive
information to third parties. The Secretary of State has the
authority to end the contract, as other states have done.

In addition, please contact both your House and Senate members
expressing support and passage of the important bills mentioned
above to rectify our urgent concerns in Texas elections. Thank
you for your activism over the last two years which has brought
this topic of ERIC and RCV to such a laser sharp focus. We
appreciate your hard work!

CONTRIBUTE
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