They’re gonna have to say it to the judge, so I wanna know what the line of tripe will be. Yeah, it’ll be a Texas judge, but still, they gotta defend it.
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While they’re at it, why don’t they restrict it to property owners? The others are just mooching layabout “takers”, after all.
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If it’s written into law it’s no longer fiat.
I’m reminded when Bill Clinton asked a prominent politician why they had to fight so dirty?
“It’s the only way we can win,” he said.
Sadly, he never identified the politician. Sadder still, the Clintons haven’t come out fighting for our democracy. IMHO they could easily become THE force to be reckoned with.
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Nonsense. That the law grants the secretary of state power to order a new election by fiat (his sole say-so), does not change that it is fiat.
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And that’s why you have to have a SCOTUS that doesn’t give a shit about due process unless it involves guns or fetuses.
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The MSM has been the difference between the Civil Rights Era of Mid 20th Century and these times.
The CNN Debacle was a example
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if at least 2% of their polling places run out of ballots
After decades of disenfranchising big metro area voters, they now ‘care’ about polling places running out of ballots. Republican sabotage has caused this problem repeatedly in Red/Purple states for decades.
If they invoke this law, they will get sued and deserve it.
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Aren’t the local election boards funded at least in part by the state? So that effectively the state is punishing the county for the state’s funding decisions.
Also, the whole do-over thing with no actual additional money, and with ridiculously short deadlines, means that Harris County would have to plan from the outset to run two elections. (Which at least makes it harder to deny standing with a straight face, since the costs would be borne immediately.)
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Wouldn’t that be the point, punishing the voters until they take the hint?
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Of course. The feature for the republicans is that they get to punish other people for the foreseeable consequences of their own actions.
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For Republicans in Texas, there is no local law that is too small to be overturned: Austin’s plastic shopping bag ban or Denton’s fracking ban.
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The population of the next largest county, Dallas, is 2,613,539, in case there is any doubt at all how specifically this bill is designed to hold up a middle finger to Houston.
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It seems that you can scratch any given GQPer nowadays and find a wanna-be Hitler badly hidden underneath. The Kansas GQP Chair just needs a rule change or two, and whaddya know, he has immense power over the Party, and the ability to punish those groups who opposed his election: the ones representing young people, Blacks, hispanics and women!
Of course, everyone is just shocked, shocked that the leopard is eating their faces–and, predictably, they will simply double down on their undying support for the Party.
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The cut off is just barely over the size of Dallas, I mean just barely over it.
The Texas leg has a long history of targeting specific pockets of perceived opposition this way; used to be it was mainly Austin that got this kind of treatment. But even then they never did such a direct hit on fundamental voting rights.
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I am not a lawyer, lexicographer or expert in Texas state law(s) so I may be wrong.
That’s such an ugly characterization. They like to think of it as due diligence.
and the next census is at least seven years out
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As a lifetime resident of Houston (Harris County), I can tell everyone on this forum that missing ballots, broken machines and long lines were never considered a problem until the 2022 midterms. Under the previous (Republican) county clerk, Stan Stanart (real name), these issues were commonplace – in poor and minority precincts. Election returns were always late.
When Democrats wanted to add voting machines to heavily trafficked Democratic-leaning precincts, Republicans got the legislature mandate equal number of machines per precinct. Which comically led to having polls with 20 machines each in precincts (like mine) where Democrats outnumber Republicans 5 to 1.
Once Democrats got the County Clerk’s office, we got:
- More polling places
- Ability to vote your ballot at any polling place
- Extended early voting hours (not just 7am to 7pm)
- More ballot drop boxes*
- Drive-through voting*
- Tabulation of votes usually completed within 4 hours of polls closing
Abbott eliminated all but one voting drop box per county… and the Texas Legislature eliminated drive-through voting, shortened early voting, screwed up vote-by-mail, and more in 2021 in hopes of turning the tide. (The new mail-in ballot restrictions hit the Republican older white voters the most.)
This session, Republicans realized that they’re on the wrong side of the trend line so they’ve decided to simply change the rules to disqualify results (Democratic wins) that they don’t like.
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Specifically, it is prompted by one Republican candidate who lost her 2022 race by a few hundred votes and used the county’s hiccups in same-day ballot delivery as an excuse to demand a complete do-over of her election.
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The only Smedley who I remember is Chilly Willy’s sometimes friend/sometimes rival:
Wikipedia claims that Smedley was voiced by Daws Butler. Do you suppose that Daws Butler was related to your Smedley Butler?
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