Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Republicans are waging a “multi-pronged war on democracy” through bills at state legislatures that would make voting harder, including a slew of bills in Texas.

Holder, who served as attorney general under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2015, took issue with Texas bills that would limit voting hours, restrict the number of voting machines at countywide polling places, ban election officials from sending out unsolicited mail ballot applications to voters, and provide more access at election sites to poll watchers.

“What the hell does that have to do with election integrity?” Holder told The Dallas Morning News. “They’ve come up with diabolical ways in which they’re trying to cripple people from getting to the polls and get there in a really easy way.”

Holder’s criticism comes as lawmakers filing voter fraud bills come under growing scrutiny from the public and corporate America. Last week, American Airlines publicly opposed the Texas Senate’s passage of Senate Bill 7 and Major League Baseball pulled its All-Star Game from Georgia in protest of another voting restrictions bill.

Black leaders in Dallas-Fort Worth also turned up the pressure this weekend, taking out a full page ad in The Dallas Morning News calling on corporate leaders from Dallas-Fort Worth to “use their power and influence” to block the passage of the bill. The bill was signed by nearly 50 leaders, including former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, Beck Group CEO Fred Perpall, Axxess CEO John Olajide, MW Logistics president Randy Bowman and Dallas Mavericks CEO Cynt Marshall.

“The voter suppression laws before the Legislature are discriminatory and say to our residents and our local officials that everyone’s voice and vote is not needed or wanted,” they wrote. “It is a known fact that this new set of proposed laws will disproportionately affect Black and Brown voters. We are calling upon the corporate leaders of the Dallas-Fort Worth area to remind our state legislature why you chose Texas.”

Republican lawmakers have said their bills are about providing election integrity and clamping down on voter fraud, which experts say is rare.

Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, who authored Senate Bill 7, said his legislation provides for uniformity in election laws across the state after some jurisdictions, most notably Harris County, broke that uniformity by expanding voting through extended hours and drive-through voting in the November presidential race. Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, who authored House Bill 6, also said his bill is about safeguarding election integrity and making sure that voters can trust the system by allowing poll watchers, who are appointed by political campaigns, to more clearly oversee the election process.

The Dallas leaders cited restricting hours of voting, criminalizing local elections for sending mail-in ballots and eliminating drive-through voting as reasons for their opposition.

“The restrictions make it easy for a segment of Texans and an obstacle course for others,” they wrote.

Gov. Greg Abbott has made election integrity a priority issue for this legislative session, which ends May 31.

But Holder, who is chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud and pointed to a Houston Chronicle report that found Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office had netted just 16 voter fraud prosecutions in 2020 despite spending more than 22,000 hours working cases.

“They cling to this myth of election integrity and voter fraud but there’s really no proof,” he said.

Texas election officials told lawmakers the 2020 elections in the state were “smooth and secure,” but Republican legislators say they are concerned about the integrity of the election. A major issue in the House legislation is giving poll watchers more access to oversee and record the electoral process.

Possibility of intimidation

Holder said those provisions, among others, would result in intimidating voters of color.

“Giving them unlimited opportunities to question people, it’s really an intimidation tactic,” said Holder, who was the first African American attorney general in U.S. history. “You can bet these poll watchers will not be deployed in safe Republican districts. It will impact people who are Hispanics and African Americans.”

Voting rights advocates have echoed those concerns, saying that voters of color are more likely to be victims of poll watcher intimidation. But Republicans say they just want fair oversight of the election process.

Holder said other parts of the proposed bills would make it harder to vote because they would create stiffer penalties for election workers helping people to vote, which would discourage people from volunteering for those jobs.

House Bill 6 could make an election worker subject to criminal punishment if a poll watcher argued that the worker had removed them from a polling place unfairly. Election judges could be punished by a state jail felony if they entered incorrect information into an affidavit allowing a voter to cast a ballot.

“Going after election officials that makes little or no sense,” Holder said. “Election officials should be empowered to make sure the system runs fine and offer assistance. Why would you discourage people charged with running our elections from running them inclusively?”

The bills include language that election officers could only be penalized if they acted “knowingly,” but Holder said that leaves broad powers of interpretation for a prosecutor. He said election workers could end up like Crystal Mason, a Tarrant County woman whose attempt to cast a ballot in 2016 has embroiled her in a lengthy legal battle over illegal voting.

Mason was ineligible to vote because she was on supervised release after serving five years in prison for tax fraud. But Mason says she didn’t know that. When her name did not appear on official voting rolls, she attempted to cast a provisional ballot. That vote was never counted, but Mason was sentenced by a state district court to five years in prison for illegal voting. Mason is still appealing that ruling.

“It’s like, ‘did you really need to bring that case?’ Did you need to try to put her in jail for five years?” Holder said. “No, they were trying to make an example.”

Fewer volunteers to run elections would mean less infrastructure to run large elections, Holder said. That, along with a provision in one of the bills that would limit the number of voting machines at countywide polling places, would become a systemic barrier to voting.

Previous rulings

Such bills would have been blocked by his Department of Justice prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which removed the legal formula that required jurisdictions that had previously been found to implement discriminatory policies to clear changes to voting laws with the federal government before they could be enacted. That tool had blocked 86 changes to voting laws from 1998 to 2013, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School.

When the Supreme Court removed the “pre-clearance” requirement, states across the country moved quickly to pass laws that restricted voting rights, such as voter ID. A federal judge found multiple times that Texas’ version of that law intentionally discriminated against voters of color. The law was allowed to stand after lawmakers amended it to include provisions recommended by an appeals court.

Holder said he urged Congress to pass legislation that would reinstate federal pre-clearance of state voting laws and reinvigorate the Voting Rights Act. He said that was the best way to protect against proposals that could disenfranchise voters.

Republican lawmakers across the country have filed bills to tighten voting laws. More than 360 bills have been filed across 47 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.