Texas Dems Continue To Block Election Integrity Efforts

Overall, 2025 has been a blockbuster year for election integrity. Conservative states across the country advanced popular measures ending the late receipt of mail ballots and banning foreign interference in state elections.

But in one of the most conservative states in America, it was a vastly different story. Texas lawmakers started the year strong, with the Republican-led Senate passing a series of significant bills. But in the House, Democrats conspired to kill one reform after the other. History should record 2025 as the year Democrats sided with progressive activists and foreign-funded special interests against everyday Texans who just believe that it should be easy to vote and hard to cheat.

First on the Democrats’ chopping block was SB16, a commonsense bill requiring proof of citizenship before anyone can register and vote. Americans overwhelmingly oppose noncitizen voting, and last year a University of Houston survey found that just 56% of Texas voters believed noncitizens would be adequately prevented from voting. SB16 was intended to give the state new tools to do just that. Had it passed, Texas would be the gold standard for ensuring that only citizens can vote.

Texas Democrats obviously feel differently, but don’t expect them to admit it. Instead, they will hide behind the handful of liberal lawmakers who broke ranks and voted to put a constitutional ban on noncitizen voting on the ballot. But it is highly cynical to ban noncitizen voting and then block the tools officials need to effectively and efficiently enforce it. What do Texas Democrats have to fear from verifying that only American citizens are voting in American elections? The public deserves to know.

Next on the Democrats’ hit list: A bill to ban foreign interference in Texas elections. SB2035 would have protected state constitutional amendments and other ballot measures from the influence of foreign nationals. The measure passed overwhelmingly in the Senate, but House Democrats killed the bill with a procedural motion in the dead of night.

They may regret that move in the light of day. Americans overwhelmingly oppose foreign interference, and seven states have passed similar bans this year alone. All these states are reacting to a growing problem. It is illegal for foreign nationals to contribute to any candidate running for political office. But a loophole allows these same foreign interests to finance highly impactful ballot measure campaigns. Just one example: Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire, has poured almost $300 million into a far-Left, D.C.-based dark money group called the Sixteen Thirty Fund. In turn, they have dumped $130 million in foreign-tied funds into ballot measures advancing progressive causes in 26 states.

The Texas legislature was close to closing that foreign funding loophole once and for all, until Democrats sided with foreign billionaires and fought to keep their foreign dark money flowing.

Democrats in the Lone Star State also killed SB310, a bill to definitively ban ranked-choice voting. Ranked-choice voting is a confusing, complex system that has been rejected across the country. It leads to voter confusion, disenfranchisement, and head-scratching outcomes that see losers transformed into winners. In Alaska’s first ranked-choice election, for example, a Democrat was declared the winner of a race for the U.S. House even though Republican candidates won roughly 60% of the vote. Results like this explain why liberal organizations and their billionaire donors are spending tens of millions of dollars across the country to sell the public on ranked-choice voting.

Ranked-choice voting’s impact on elections is so corrosive and unpopular that 17 states have taken the extraordinary step of banning it, including six states this year alone. Six more states rejected ranked-choice voting ballot measures last year by wide, bipartisan margins. But not Texas, thanks to another late-night procedural maneuver from the Left.

Three times in one year, Texas Democrats put partisan politics ahead of integrity and trust in elections. Thanks to their stonewalling, Texas is falling behind other states that made election integrity a priority. Unless Governor Abbott calls a special session, lawmakers won’t have another chance to beef up the security of Texas elections until 2027.

By then, another presidential election will be looming and the stakes will be that much higher. There will be no excuses—not even Democrats’ intransigence—for failing to get commonsense measures like foreign funding bans across the finish line.

This year, Democrats stood with foreign billionaires and defended noncitizen voting. Texans, and all Americans, deserve to know why.

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Jason Snead is the executive director of Honest Elections Project Action.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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