Updated at 4:30 p.m. with comments from Biden, Harris and state Rep. Jim Murphy.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed an elections overhaul bill into law Tuesday, enacting new requirements for mail-in ballots, banning drive-through and 24-hour voting, and giving partisan poll watchers more freedom at polling places.

Three more lawsuits were filed Tuesday seeking to halt the law, following two lawsuits filed last week.

The contentious bill contains many of the provisions that were proposed in the regular session, when House Democrats broke quorum, effectively killing it. Abbott called a special session, and Democrats walked out again, running out the clock on the 30-day session.

Abbott called a second special session, which started with enough Democrats absent to again keep the House from considering legislation. But a handful returned two weeks ago, finally leading to the consideration and final approval Tuesday.

With the bill signing, Texas joins more than a dozen states that have passed Republican-backed voting changes since the 2020 election.

Republican lawmakers say their bill ensures that voting laws are consistent and protects against fraud, which experts say is rare. Democrats said the final bill makes a few strides in the right direction, but still has too many penalties and restrictions that would discourage people from voting or criminalize them for honest mistakes.

“One thing that all Texans can agree (on), and that is that we must have trust and confidence in our elections,” Abbott said as he signed the bill in Tyler in East Texas.

State Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, who carried the elections bill, specifically cited charges filed in 2020 against a Gregg County commissioner and three others accused of fraudulently soliciting mail-in votes. The case is ongoing.

“Anybody who tells you there’s no voter fraud in Texas is telling you a very big lie,” Hughes said. “It’s going on today. This bill deals with that.”

Multiple lawsuits

The law, which takes effect in early December, is already facing legal challenges, with two more federal lawsuits filed Tuesday after two were filed last week. One of the new suits was filed in federal court in Austin on behalf of Voto Latino, LULAC Texas, the Texas Alliance for Retired Americans and the Texas American Federation of Teachers. The four groups contend that the law will make it harder for people of color and older Texans to vote.

The other lawsuit was filed in federal court in San Antonio on behalf of the Houston Area Urban League, Houston Justice, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and The Arc of Texas.

A third lawsuit was filed in Harris County district court on behalf of the Texas State Conference of the NAACP, Common Cause Texas, three election judges, one voter assistant, and one registered voter in Harris County. The suit charges that the law disenfranchises voters of color.

“Today we begin our quest to save democracy in Texas, hoping that those in our court system will put our Constitution above purely partisan and bigoted interests as reflected by SB 1,” Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas State Conference of the NAACP, said in a statement. “If the Constitution is properly applied, this racially discriminatory legislation must fall for the good of us all.”

In the past, federal lawsuits over Texas voting laws, such as voter ID, have slowed their enactment or forced changes by the Legislature to make them less strict.

Abbott said he is “extremely confident” the law will stand up in court.

“No one who is eligible to vote will be denied the opportunity to vote. It does, however, make it harder for cheaters to cast an illegal ballot,” he said. “Those are the kinds of principles the courts will uphold.”

GOP House Caucus Chairman Jim Murphy of Houston was asked at a separate news conference Tuesday afternoon if Republicans are worried that the law might be struck down in the courts and concerned about lawsuit costs. He said they’ve been “mindful” of constitutional considerations.

“We are just confident that our work is going to withstand that kind of scrutiny, as it has in the past,” Murphy said.

Texas House Democratic Caucus chair Chris Turner of Grand Prairie said Texas is one of the most difficult states in which to vote, and the bill makes it harder. He called on the U.S. Senate to approve a bill that has cleared the U.S. House that would provide federal oversight of state elections.

“Senate Bill 1 will go into effect on Dec. 3,” Turner said in a written statement. “With the deliberate barriers to voting created by this legislation and redistricting just around the corner, we need the U.S. Senate to act immediately on the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Our democracy depends on it.”

President Joe Biden also called on Congress to act, retweeting Vice President Kamala Harris, who called the new Texas law “one of the most restrictive in the nation. The bill limits the options that enabled a historic number of Texans, especially citizens of color, to vote safely in our last election.”

The new provisions will be in effect for the 2022 election cycle, when Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and all 181 state legislators are on the ballot.

What the law does

Here are eight things that the new law covers:

1. Absentee voters, primarily elderly and disabled Texas, would have new ID requirements, but also a new process to correct errors found with their vote-by-mail application and ballots.

2. Election officials who send out unsolicited vote-by-mail applications, even to voters who qualify, could be charged with a felony and face up to two years in jail. Campaigns are still allowed to.

3. Poll watchers, who work on behalf of candidates or political parties to observe elections, would be allowed “free movement” in the polling place, keeping just the ballot box off-limits. Election officials who obstruct their view could face criminal penalties. The watchers would have to take a new training course and pledge not to “harass voters,” something critics fear will happen, pointing to past examples.

4. The state’s largest counties, including Dallas, Tarrant, Collin and Denton, must implement a video surveillance system to livestream all areas containing voted ballots, including central count.

5. Early voting could only take place between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Counties with populations over 55,000 must offer at least 12 hours of early voting on weekdays, a drop from the current threshold of 100,000.

6. Drive-through voting, which was offered in at least three counties last year to make voting more accessible in the pandemic, is banned.

7. Assistants who help disabled Texans vote must disclose their relationship with the voter and pledge under penalty of perjury that they didn’t pressure or coerce the voter into picking them.

8. A candidate could sue his or her opponent for civil damages over alleged election fraud violations carried out by the opponent or a person acting on their behalf.

Austin bureau chief Robert T. Garrett contributed to this report.