On February 2nd Governor Abbott delivered his State of the State Address outlining his priorities and emergency items for the Legislative Session. Typically, legislative committees must wait 30 days to take action on bills, but emergency items may move through the process immediately.
Along with those emergency items, Gov. Abbott discussed other unofficial priorities such as election integrity stating, “We must safeguard our elections so that only United States citizens are able to register and cast a vote in Texas. I support Senator Hughes’ election integrity bill to restore power to the Attorney General to prosecute election violations.”
Senator Bryan Hughes actually has filed two bills that would restore prosecutorial powers to Attorney General Ken Paxton. One is Senate Bill 846 and the other is Senate Bill 1026. Both require law enforcement to contact the AG as well as the local prosecuting attorney when they have a case of criminal violation of the Election Code. They also require the AG to act if the local prosecuting attorney does not act within 6 months. The difference between them is that SB 1026 is limited to election law while SB 846 includes criminal acts regarding abortions and human trafficking.
It is absolutely essential that the Texas Legislature restore the Attorney General’s power to prosecute. Laws are meaningless if the penalties for breaking them are not enforced.