Texas Tribune – Democracy Watch

In another example of Republicans saying the quiet part out loud, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in an interview that Joe Biden would have won the Lone Star state if not for voter suppression.

Last fall, Harris County – the largest county in Texas and home to Houston – wanted to mail absentee ballot applications to all of the county’s registered voters. Throughout the country, absentee voting was popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. Several counties and states took the initiative to make the process of mail voting easier.

Texas Republicans would have none of that, though, as the formerly reliably red state transitions to a purple hue. Paxton’s office sued Harris County, and the conservatives on the Texas Supreme Court killed the plan.

According to Newsweek:

“If we’d lost Harris County—Trump won by 620,000 votes in Texas. Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million, those were all illegal and we were able to stop every one of them,” Paxton told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon during the latter’s War Room podcast on Friday.
“Had we not done that, we would have been in the very same situation—we would’ve been on Election Day, I was watching on election night and I knew, when I saw what was happening in these other states, that that would’ve been Texas. We would’ve been in the same boat. We would’ve been one of those battleground states that they were counting votes in Harris County for three days and Donald Trump would’ve lost the election,” the Republican official said.

So here we have an elected statewide official bragging on a podcast with an avowed white nationalist that he overruled a local elected official and successfully rigged an election, denying Harris County voters an opportunity to simply receive a mail-in ballot application.

Paxton, by the way, was indicted on securities fraud. Former aides to the Texas AG have accused him of “violating federal and/or state law including prohibitions related to improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential criminal offenses.” Amazingly, he continues to serve as the top law enforcement officer in the state of Texas.

Meanwhile, even as state-level Republicans rush to pass as many voter suppression bills as possible across the country, Senate Democrats (namely Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema) are dragging their feet on a national voting rights law that would protect our democracy.

Texas Republicans have advanced a bill that restricts voting in the Lone Star State. The bill passed the state senate on April Fools’ Day. Sadly, it isn’t a joke.

According to the Texas Tribune:

In an overnight vote after more than seven hours of debate, the Texas Senate signed off on Senate Bill 7, which would limit extended early voting hours, prohibit drive-thru voting and make it illegal for local election officials to proactively send applications to vote by mail to voters, even if they qualify.

The legislation is at the forefront of Texas Republicans’ crusade to further restrict voting in the state after last year’s election. Although Republicans remain in full control of state government, Texas saw the highest turnout in decades in 2020, with Democrats continuing to drive up their vote counts in the state’s urban centers and diversifying suburban communities.

The news in Texas is part of a concerted national effort on the part of Republican lawmakers to restrict voting after record or near-record turnout in a number of states last November.

Last week, we reported how Georgia’s new voter suppression law makes it illegal to give water to voters waiting in line. That law is being compared to Jim Crow. The restrictions come only after President Biden became the first Democrat in a quarter-century to carry the Peach State.

Image Credit: Kyle Bell