Nancy Pelosi visiting Austin to talk voting rights, Ukraine support

The California Democrat will speak at the LBJ Presidential Library, where a news release announcing the visit stated she's "expected to address assaults on voting rights nationwide and in Texas, as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine."

AUSTIN (KXAN) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will pay a symbolic visit to an Austin landmark Tuesday night as part of a call to counter tighter voting rules in Texas and the U.S.

The California Democrat will speak at the LBJ Presidential Library, where a news release announcing the visit stated she's "expected to address assaults on voting rights nationwide and in Texas, as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine."

Event organizers also made a point to share that Pelosi will stop during a tour by the wooden desk in which President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The law outlawed discriminatory voting practices, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. Many Democratic lawmakers would like to reinstate Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which used to require states with a history of voting discrimination to go through a process known as "preclearance" before they could adopt new voting rights or procedures. However, the Supreme Court ruled the practice unconstitutional in the 2014 Shelby County v. Holder case, which voting rights advocates attribute to an increase in states approving new restrictions.

Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 1, the elections overhaul bill, into law last year, which created new identification requirements for mail-in ballots and banned drive-through voting. Republicans argued the measures are needed to make elections more secure. Texas Democratic lawmakers attempted to block the legislation by leaving Austin and going to D.C. to push for federal voting legislation that would counter the Texas bill. They even met personally with Pelosi when they broke quorum. However, the legislation ultimately passed when enough Democrats returned to Texas, and now the law is in effect.

Since the Texas law's approval, efforts to approve voting legislation at the federal level, like the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, stalled in the Senate.

The March 1 primary in Texas put those new voting rules to the test. During the election, it's estimated the state outright rejected nearly 23,000 mail ballots, roughly 13%. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office told KXAN that most happened because voters did not provide any identification on their carrier envelopes, which the new law requires for those ballots to count. The news release announcing Pelosi's speech in Austin mentioned the rejection rate of mail ballots in Texas, so it's likely she'll highlight this as a negative effect of Texas' voting law during her remarks Tuesday.

Charlie Bonner, the communications director for the progressive voter mobilization group MOVE Texas, said he expects highlighting the recent mail ballot issues will play a "critical part" in Pelosi's speech.

"It's deeply frustrating for us as advocates and folks that spent the better part of last year telling lawmakers that this was the exact outcome of this legislation," Bonner said. "This is no surprise to the folks who passed this bill, which makes us really believe that it is the intention of the bill. It is not a flaw of something that happened, but a design of it. They were warned that this would be the problem and passed it anyways."

Republicans are already criticizing Pelosi's visit to Texas. Before coming to Austin, the House Speaker held a round table in Dallas Monday focusing on health care. Macarena Martinez, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, released a statement saying Pelosi is highlighting the wrong issues in the state.

"For the second time this month, another out of touch and widely unpopular Democrat elected official is in Texas, but nowhere near the southern border," Martinez said.

Pelosi is set to remain in Austin and join Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, on Wednesday morning for an event marking the 12th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act. Doggett is running for election in the newly-created Texas District 37.