HB5115

HB5115 raises the basic penalty for election fraud under Election Code Section 276.013 from a Class A misdemeanor to a second-degree felony. It also moves two already-criminal vote-counting/reporting practices into that section. It took effect September 1, 2025; it does not retroactively increase punishment for earlier offenses.

The offense requires knowingly or intentionally making an effort to do listed acts. Existing acts include improperly influencing another’s vote during voting or in the ballot’s presence; registration, ballots or voting under false pretenses; false or intentionally misleading election documents or statements; preventing eligible voting; deliberately misleading eligible voters to prevent voting; frustrating a voter’s ballot intent; voting for someone known to be deceased or unqualified/unregistered; multiple voting in one election; and destroying or discarding a completed ballot without consent.

The two added paragraphs address counting votes known to be invalid or changing reports to include them, and refusing to count votes known to be valid or changing reports to exclude them. Those acts were already second-degree felonies under Section 276.014, which the bill repeals while moving the conduct into election fraud. They are not newly prohibited conduct, and their ordinary felony grade did not rise simply because of that move.

Penalty changes. The ordinary election-fraud grade becomes second-degree felony (normally 2–20 years in prison, with an optional fine up to $10,000). Conduct committed while acting in one’s capacity as an elected official becomes first-degree felony, up from state jail felony (normally 5–99 years or life, with an optional fine up to $10,000). A conviction for an attempt becomes third-degree felony, up from Class B misdemeanor (normally 2–10 years, with an optional fine up to $10,000). These are ordinary statutory ranges, not predictions of an individual sentence.

The bill also removes Section 276.013(c)’s separate one-category enhancement for a prior Election Code conviction, certain offenses involving a voter aged 65 or older, or another offense in the same election. The older-voter enhancement had family/household exceptions. Removing that subsection does not mean every other sentencing law is repealed. The unchanged subsection (d) permits prosecution under this section, another applicable law, or both.

The new law applies only if no element of the offense occurred before September 1, 2025. Earlier conduct remains governed by the former law.

Sources: final law, Sections 1–4; official history; ordinary misdemeanor/felony punishment ranges.