Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/27/texas-supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-gov-abbotts-order-limiting-mail-in-ballot-drop-box-locations-to-one-site-for-each-county.html
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Thankfully their efforts at voter suppression aren’t going as well as they hoped. Here in Harris County with over 4 million people, having a single drop box had the potential to really screw up voting. The county added enough early voting and drive through voting locations, though, that record number of votes have already been cast.
The ballot includes 4 of these assholes on the Texas supreme court, may they all be out on their asses soon
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Hey texas voters…take back your state and get every Republican out of office.
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So, based on Bart O’Kavanaugh’s latest opinion, this should be struck down, no?
“As Chief Justice Rehnquist persuasively explained in Bush v. Gore … the text of the Constitution requires federal courts to ensure that state courts do not rewrite state election laws.”
I’m sure he’ll be consistent about this.
ETA:
“Article II expressly provides that the rules for Presidential elections are established by the States in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,’”
-emphasis Bart’s, not mine
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People who think Texas will suddenly turn Blue are deluded. It’s like wishing on a Texas Lone star. Hey, I WANT it. But it ain’t gonna happen. The Bubbas are ten deep here.
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Nothing sudden about it. Texas has been undergoing major demographic shifts for the past 20 or so years. Don’t forget that Ted Cruz beat Beto O’Rourke by a very slim margin in 2018.
It’s not outside of the realm of possibility that Texas could flip in 2020. It’s unlikely, yes, but not implausible in any way.
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These people keep proving they hate democracy.
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Everything’s big in Texas, remember-
Including the levels of stupendous hypocrisy,
desire for voter disenfranchisement, and corruption of the judicial system.
I want to see a goddamn wave of voters pounding down the doors of those judges when their asses lose- throw them to the curb with the rest of the diseased conservative trash there.
How can you possibly fucking think it’s even logistically possible to have one ballot box for 4 million people in one county?
How is this not absolutely glaring bullshit to anyone with even a law degree from Timbuktu?
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People who think Texas will suddenly turn Blue are deluded. It’s like wishing on a Texas Lone star. Hey, I WANT it. But it ain’t gonna happen. The Bubbas are ten deep here.
Believe it or not, far less than half the Texas population are voting Republican. If voter turnout goes high, Texas will go Blue. The issue in Texas is voter apathy and voter suppression.
Consider that in 2014, only 25% of the voting aged population even bothered to vote. Greg Abbot was elected governor by only 15% of the voting age population. The GOP knows the demographics are against them and does everything in their power to keep voting turnouts low. The Texas GOP has closed over 750 polling places since 2012 (and almost all were located in locations that lean Democratic). Registering to vote is a hassle and was even found by a court to be intentionally discriminatory, yet the Texas GOP works to make it harder to vote each year.
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The courts argument would have some merit if there weren’t long lines at the early voting locations daily even with the extended number of early voting days. And if the post office were not being sabotaged by a degenerate.
We desperately need a new national voting rights act that both sets standards for ballot accessibility but also for acceptable wait times. It’s great that texas is having record turnout but it is clear they have what should be criminally few ways to vote. That sort of lines should result in the federal government forcing you to open more voting capacity both for early voting and election day, and that shouldn’t be restricted to southern states with a history of disenfranchisement it should be everywhere.
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It’s almost certainly going to happen assuming trump doesn’t stage a coup and cancel elections. Probably not this year, but eventually and with the right candidate it will.
Consider that in 2016 trump won Texas by a smaller margin than Iowa, a state that voted for Obama in 2008 and Al Gore in 2000. Iowa has certainly gotten more conservative, but texas is getting to the point where a candidate like Obama could win and the demographic shift doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
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In 2016, 1.3 million people voted in Harris County (the largest county in the state and the one with the most votes for clinton). In 2020, 1.2 million people have already voted in Harris with a week to election day
Absolutely! That the enumearted rights of the constituion does not include the right to vote and have votes given equal weight is unexcusable
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Well the electoral college is terrible but we do have the the 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th amendments. The right to vote has a lot more support in the constitution than almost anything else. Yet courts still seem to find that the government interest in preventing imaginary voter fraud or whatever the made up excuse of the day (none of which has any explicit basis in the constitution) is more important than real, demonstrated, quantifiable disenfranchisement, even of the specifically named classes within the constitution. And a lot of these jokers then have the gall to say they are “textualists”
Justices wrote that the order “provides Texas voters more ways to vote” than the Election Code, and “does not disenfranchise anyone.”
How does limiting ballot boxes result in MORE ways to vote, and how does it not disenfranchise voters who now have to drive possibly multiple hours to get to said ballot boxes (some of those counties are BIG)? This isn’t just a lie, it’s antireality. Three minus two does not equal ten, and anyone justifying decisions by saying it does needs to be questioned and confronted at every turn.
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The reasoning is explained in the ruling (on page 7 I think):
And no party disputes that the Governor’s October Proclamation increases the options available to voters relative to the Election Code. In the end, the plaintiffs’ complaint is that the Governor ultimately decided not to increase their voting options quite as much as he initially announced. In other words, the plaintiffs’ challenge is to the Governor’s decision to change from one expansion of voting options to another slightly less generous expansion. These preliminary observations inform our analysis of the plaintiffs’ probability of obtaining relief on each of their three claims.
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Like others have said, the demographics have been inevitable for decades. Every election people hope it’s the tipping point (I’m not assuming this year is the year, either). Texas is a notoriously low turnout state and gerrymandering and disenfranchisement skew things. One goal of this eleciton is to flip 9 districts so Democrats can help with redistricting. In 2018, even though Beto lost in the Senate race, exit polls showed native-born Texans voted for him 51% to 48%–when people move to Texas it makes sense it attracts a certain type.
I do think Republicans could bring in religious conservatives who are minorities, but they seem to ruin every opportunity.
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The rationale behind so much of Republican “governance” boils down to “because we can!”
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And I’m sure the SCOTU agrees with them so that’s that. Next year, if Trump wins, it will be one box per state set up in a gated community.
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I wonder how the judge would rule on a law limiting counties to one gun shop each?
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I did my part. They need to go. So does Abbott in two years.
I don’t think the early voting is going the way Abbott wanted. It makes me wonder why he ordered the early voting extension at all. Did he expect people, particularly democrats, to not come? Did he really think liberal and populous counties like Harris and Travis to wouldn’t take advantage of that extra time and have lots of polling places?
@Wally I’m feeling pretty hopeful about Texas this year. It might be the year we go blue. If we can get a democratic majority in the Tx House, that will go a long way towards keeping it blue because this is the year for redistricting. We’ve got out bubbas and our MAGAs and our covidiots, but we also have a lot of young people, people of color, LGBTQ people, and others who look are working for change.
We have decades of voter suppression to push past to vote. Decades of voter apathy to counter. It’s difficult to register and difficult to vote here.
It may not be this year, but the tide is coming in and the GOP knows it.
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