The State Senate Business and Commerce Committee late Thursday approved a bill eliminating what is called 'straight ticket voting' in Texas, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Jeff Blaylock with 'Texas Election Source' says the practice is becoming more widespread.
"Hopefully this will restore to Texas voters the willingness to go through ballots and evaluate candidates on a case by case basis," he said.
Fully 63% of all ballots cast in last fall's elections were straight party, where a person votes for all Republicans or all Democrats on the ballot and walks out of the booth.
Supporters of the bill say that means many candidates are elected to office without the voter ever even considering their qualifications.
Usually, straight party voting is based on the voters support for only one person on the top of the ticket, generally a candidate for President or Governor."
Texans by the way use it far more than anyone else," he said.
Texas is one of only nine states that allow a voter to simply vote for a political party, rather than for individual candidates.
Opponents say 'straight ticket' voting has several problems. First of all, they say it leads to continued political polarization, and urges parties to go hard left or hard right to recruit candidates, since the voter is more concerned about the party label than about the individual candidates.
Straight ticket voting also hurts efforts to run third party and independent candidates for office.But mainly, down ballot candidates, especially judicial candidates, say it isn't fair for them to lose their jobs after successfully and honorably serving in office, simply because voters want to vote for a Democratic candidate for President or a Republican candidate for governor.
They point out that losing means an attorney has to re-open his or her law practice and basically start from scratch. The State Bar of Texas has cited straight party voting as a main reason why lawyers don't want to seek judicial posts.
But opposition to straight party voting comes from Democrats, who say it disenfranchises minority voters.
"In fact, straight party voting helps Hispanic and African American voters elect their favored candidates, especially in large urban counties where over two-thirds of the population is made up of minority Texans.
"Given the recent hostile actions by Texas Republican leaders on voting rights and basic civil liberties, it is clear enough that Texas Republican leaders see eliminating straight party voting as part of their broader efforts to undermine Hispanic and African American voting strength," said Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project.
Analysts, when asked whether the claims are true, said there is no evidence that Hispanic and African American voters vote straight ticket more than anybody else, or that they could not simply walk into the voting booth and cast ballots for all Democrats or all Republicans if that's what they wanted to do.
They said in the 41 states which don't allow straight ticket voting, there is no evidence of the sort of 'disenfranchisement' that the Democrats are concerned about.