By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Texas aims to join a cabal of states aiming to roll back voting opportunities under the guise of protecting the electoral system against the phony allegation of widespread voter fraud.

President Biden has labeled the effort signed into law in Georgia as “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” He could hurl the same epithet over this way in Texas.

Senate Bill 7 seeks to prohibit drive-through voting, seeks to limit the number of polling places, seeks to prohibit officials from asking voters fill out applications to vote by mail — even if they qualify.

What is going on here? I think I know. We have a Republican-led legislative effort aimed at retaining GOP power in state government for as long as they can despite the seemingly inexorable shift in the demographic makeup in Texas, which is becoming what has been called a “majority minority” state.

Quite soon, ethnic and racial minorities will comprise a majority of the state’s voting population. Those voters — big surprise! — tend to vote more Democratic than Republican. Thus, we are witnessing this effort to head off the shift in power.

The Texas Tribune reports:

SB 7, which was offered under the banner of “election integrity,” sailed out of the Republican-dominated Senate State Affairs Committee on a party-line vote and now heads to the full Senate. The bill is a significant piece in a broader legislative effort by Texas Republicans this year to enact sweeping changes to elections in the state that would scale up already restrictive election rules.

In presenting the bill to the committee on Friday, Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes described the legislation as an effort to strike a balance between “maintaining fair and honest elections with the opportunity to exercise one’s right to vote.”

But the bill was met with a chorus of opposition. Advocates for people with disabilities and voting rights tagged the proof of disability requirement as harmful and potentially unlawful. The bill was also widely panned as detrimental to local efforts that would widen access to voting, particularly extended early voting hours and drive-thru voting offered in Harris County in November.

Texas Republicans’ bill to tighten voting rules gets Senate committee OK | The Texas Tribune

This is an insidious trend that bodes grim news for the future of the state if it is allowed to continue.