There was a comment in a recent diary about Texas that asked if anybody had figured out why Texas hasn’t gone blue yet. I appreciated the fact that comment didn’t contain the vitriol so many other comments I’ve seen in diaries about Texas, but as a native Texan and a lawyer who specializes in election protection work, I’d like to point out a few things for those Kossacks who most likely aren’t aware of how things work in the Lone Star State that help explain our current situation.
1) Gerrymandering: The Texas GOP has had over two decades of complete control of our state, and a huge reason why is because gerrymandering keeps the State Legislature in their hands and skews the balance of our state’s representation in the US House. I live in a heavily gerrymandered Congressional district (the TX-9th in Houston), and it’s about 80% Democratic as it was drawn to pack as many Dems into it as possible to shore up nearby Republican districts. And you can look to Travis County to see how the city of Austin was cracked for years into various Republican districts.
But what about statewide races because gerrymandering doesn’t impact them you may say. I call nonsense on that because living in a gerrymandered district where you know from the start that your candidate of choice is not going to win will absolutely suppress turnout for the side that can’t elect its candidate, and in Texas due to gerrymandering, that’s most frequently the Democrats.
2) Election Laws: So what does a gerrymandered Legislature get the Texas GOP? Aside from the usual tax cuts for business and donors and gutting what few environmental and safety regulations we still have, it gets the Texas GOP the ability to change our state’s election laws.
The list is far too long for a single diary, but here are just a few “highlights” of our most recent legislative session regarding election laws that have been signed into law by Gov. Abbott:
- SB1070- allows Texas to leave the non-partisan ERIC (the Electronic Registration Information Center), which is widely considered by election experts to be the best method states currently have to notify election officials when a voter is registered in multiple places so voter rolls can be updated. For reasons, it’s become a GOP boogeyman recently despite their continued claims to care about “election integrity”.
- HB1243- increases the criminal penalty for “illegal voting” from a misdemeanor to a second degree felony with a potential of 2 to 20 years in prison. What are some other second degree felonies in Texas you may ask? Arson, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, and of course, certain instances of murder.
- SB1750- abolishes the non-partisan position of Elections Administrator in Harris County (where Houston is), and Harris County alone, and returns election administration and voter registration duties to two different partisan elected officials (our County Clerk and our Tax-Assessor Collector) who would both be overseeing aspects of elections where they appear on the ballot. An “interesting” 180 from the completely apoplectic reaction Republicans had about now Gov. Hobbs being the Arizona Secretary of State while she was running for Governor.
- SB1933- allows the unelected Sec of State (a partisan gubernatorial appointee in Texas) to take over local elections in one county, and one county only, in the state, Harris County, if a candidate on the ballot or an election official, lodges an election complaint against the county.
But don’t worry not every election bill the Legislature passed is becoming law as Abbott vetoed a bipartisan election bill (with near unanimous support), HB3159, that would have allowed people with disabilities who need assistive technology to vote to cast their votes over a secure private electronic system. Abbott’s stated reason for vetoing the bill: “While this intent is laudable, the text of the bill is not limited to assisting this group. Instead, it allows any voter who qualifies to vote by mail to receive a ballot electronically.” Literally, his reason was that this bill might help too many people vote more easily.
If you want to look up something absolutely byzantine, look up our voter registration laws. If a civic group wanted to be able to register voters in all of our 254 counties, then they would have to be approved by election officials in each and every county because there’s no way to be approved to register voters statewide. I ran the numbers one time, and to be able to register voters in just our six biggest cities (Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, and Fort Worth), a person would have to contact and get approval from 18 different county election offices because our big cities aren’t always contained within a single county’s borders.
And of course, a first time voter in Texas can’t register to vote online. It was actually a big deal when the Legislature passed a bill last session allowing currently registered voters to update their voter registration address online. And all of that’s just a sample of how bad our election laws currently are.
So please listen to us Texans when we say that things down here are utterly corrupt and undemocratic. Instead of mocking or pitying us, I just want everyone to realize that we are the canaries in the coalmine. To paraphrase Justice Brandeis’ famous idiom “states are the laboratories of democracy”. Well we’ve seen, over the past 20+ years in Texas, that states run by the right are now the “laboratories of suppression”. The suppression of democracy, the suppression of free thought and speech, the suppression of bodily autonomy.
If the GOP takes control of the federal government again, there will be laws like the Texas GOP has already passed, and much worse, passed nationwide. Whether it’s the GOP in Austin, or the Freedom Caucus maniacs in DC, they’re giving us a real-time preview of what they’ll do to America as a whole. Combatting that takeover at every level of government and with every fiber of our beings has to be seen as infinitely more important than trying to score cheap gotcha points at the expense of the people suffering very real harms from these laws in states like Texas.
UPDATE: For some added clarification on how elections are administered in Texas, I’m cutting and pasting a portion of one of my comments in the comment thread right here.
For those who may not know, elections in Texas are administered at the county level, and they can be run in one of two ways:
- a combination of the County Clerk (administering the elections) and the County Tax Assessor-Collector (in charge of voter registration in a hold over from the poll tax days) which are both partisan elected positions
- this means these two officials will be overseeing the administration of both the election and the voter rolls for elections in which they personally appear on the ballot, OR
- a non-partisan Elections Administrator who handles both roles and is appointed by a group of elected officials consisting of: the County Judge (what we call our counties’ top administrator), the County Clerk, the County Tax Assessor-Collector, and the chairs of the County’s Democratic and Republican parties (technically it’s any party that holds a primary for state and county elections, but realistically that just means Democrats and Republicans)
- Elections Administrators are legally prohibited from supporting/opposing any candidate/issue on the ballot, participating in partisan activities, or making a campaign donation to a candidate running for office.
Worth noting again that our state’s Sec. of State is an unelected partisan appointee. And as I also noted, the state Legislature passed a bill that gives the Sec. of State the “authority” to take over elections here in Harris County.
UPDATE 2: If anyone reading this wants to support some fantastic pro-democracy groups here in Texas, I have some suggestions based on 5+ years of personal experience in the election protection arena in Texas.
- The Texas Civil Rights Project- One of the absolute highlights of my professional career was working as an Election Protection staff attorney here last year. They’re as dedicated to fighting for democracy in Texas as anyone is.
- Our Vote Texas- I’m currently a member of the Board of Directors of Our Vote Texas, and we’re focusing our efforts on compiling voter education materials for our fellow Texans. We’re very small, but very dedicated to empowering our fellow Texans with the knowledge they need to navigate voting here.
- ACLU of Texas, Common Cause Texas, Houston in Action- In the course of my time working in the election protection arena in Texas, I’ve gotten to work closely alongside amazing people from these other groups as well, and I can honestly say that their dedication to our fellow Texans is inspiring.