Majority of poll voters believe Texas shouldn’t tighten laws on vaccines

The Record’s online poll from Aug. 23- Sept. 6 asked readers whether they think Texas should tighten laws that make it easy for parents to opt-out of vaccines.

Texas is one of 16 states that allow parents to bypass vaccine requirements for enrolling their kids in school by claiming a conscientious exemption, along with citing medical or religious concerns.

In 2003, House Bill 2292, a 311-page bill that struck out the language limiting religious exemptions to vaccines violating the tenets of “a recognized church or religious denomination” and replaced it with vaguer “religious belief” and added a new exemption category: “reasons of conscience,” was signed into law. The amendment also lowered the bar for medical exemptions, allowing a doctor to sign off if they thought the vaccine would “pose a significant risk” instead of the previous requirement that the vaccine “would be injurious” to a child.”

State data shows that in the 16 years since Texas loosened its exemptions system, Texas vaccine exemption rates have reached an alltime high. In the Fiscal Year 2004, Texas received vaccine exemption affidavit requests on behalf of 7,250 individuals. By 2018, that number had grown more than tenfold to 76,665 individuals.

Vaccine advocates and medical experts say that the state’s current system for vaccine exemptions poses a public health risk. Vaccine critics say that parental rights and medical freedom are at stake with tightening the laws.

The poll asking, “Do you think Texas should tighten laws that make it easy for parents to opt-out of vaccines?” received an inordinate amount of votes within a short period of time and the VotingAPI (Application Programming Interface) that the website developers use to store, retrieve and tabulate votes miscounted final number of votes to be 3,340 instead of the actual number of votes which was 3,406. The VotingAPI also mistabulated the percentages to add up to 102% instead of 100%.

The Daily Record manually tabulated the votes for the poll and found the original number of votes for option “No, parental rights and medical freedom are at stake with tightening the laws,” to be 3,177, or 93%, instead of the 95% the VotingAPI originally represented. The original votes for option “Yes, the state’s current system for vaccine exemptions poses a public health risk,” accounted for 229 votes, or 7%.

A majority of poll voters think that Texas should not tighten laws that make it easy for parents to opt-out of vaccines because. Every week, the Record gives its readers the opportunity to voice their opinions on different topics. This poll does not, and does not purport to accurately depict public opinion. It is only intended to inspire thought-provoking discussion within the community.

SMDR’s new poll is available online now and asks for readers’ opinions on whether the City of San Marcos should consider a senior tax exemption. It can be voted on now.