They will be counted and matter just as much as anybody else’s votes. This whole dumb thing is just window dressing. By the way, Trump narrowed his margin in Harris County by 1 point in 2020 thanks to Lina Hidalgo doing everything she could to make voting more accessible. Here in Dallas County, where we just stuck with the usual early voting procedures, we tacked on an extra 4 points for Uncle Joe.
These people are morons.
So’s their leader it seems.
It will be very interesting to see if trump can keep his yap shut about Bragg and the NYC case.
Not if your legislature passes two bills giving your Sec. of state power to veto elections.
From the article…
… … … … … … … …
"Texas state lawmakers crept closer late Monday night to approving a series of bills aimed at stripping one of the country’s largest cities of the authority to run its own elections.
The measures single out Harris County, home both to 4.7 million people and to much of the city of Houston, the biggest in Texas.
Texas state lawmakers are poised on Tuesday to pass two bills: one which would fire Harris County’s elections administrator, and another which would lay out a process to give the Texas Secretary of State veto power over how elections are run in the area. "
… … … … … …
The bills are designed for just Houston as it says counties with 4 million or more.
Does not equal …
Helpful. What are you FUCKING DOING? Really sick of commentors here who criticize everyone else. Why don’t you visit another site where you can screech at the fascists?
I suspect that’s the reason for the ‘over 4 million’ ammendment. It’s an attempt to say ‘hey, we’re not treating people unequally, we’re providing for the State’s ability to step in and put greater resources in play for any county that gets large enough to have problems.’
I got carried away
Still the obvious intent of the legislature is to shit on Houston.
Even if the Lege passes those bills. That authority is never, ever going to be exercised, as any attempt would be shot down immediately by the courts. This is 2020 Trump-level legal thinking. It’s Sidney Powell’s Kraken, Rudy’s hair dye, and Lin Woods’ crack pipe levels of legal strategery. It’s dumb, unenforceable garbage.
I still preferred it when they were stupidly disenfranchising Red county votes.
The State GOP trying to screw Harris County might not matter for the federal election, but I could see it screwing up downballot state races. Unless they run afoul of federal law, those races will go to the SCOTX, which I have no faith in not upholding the most Republican-friendly outcome.
Amen. Making it harder for people to vote by mail, when basically only their prime voting age demographic was even eligible to vote by mail in the first place, was chef’s-kiss levels of stupidity.
Which they obviously will. There’s Supreme Court authority making it unconstitutional to count ballots in disparate ways around a state.
Seems pretty arbitrary, a county w a population of some random but not random number only?
So a question would be who could overturn or strike down these bills? TX Supreme Court? Then appeal to 5th Circuit? Then off to the Supremes?
I don’t know what the consequences of these bills would be, but if past performance is any indicator it won’t be good for democracy.
Well I do and I would hazard a guess our registration, fundraising and GOTV will be somewhat easier going forward.
The thing is, there will not be a lawsuit seeking to invalidate these laws, because nobody will have suffered any cognizable legal injury until they seek to invoke them to invalidate a Harris County election. And by the time they’re seeking not to count a couple million properly-cast ballots, it’s going to be pretty damn clear just how unconstitutional that is.
Having eviscerated the VRA, the Roberts Court will issue a 6-3 decision that “The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof” means exactly that. It is up to Congress, not the Court, to “by law make or alter such regulations.”
when have they ever cared about current conditions vs conditions that applied as pen was set to paper?
TX imposing on Houston does seem exactly like what the VRA was all about, feds monitoring Jim Crow states, except of course the feds wanted to protect democracy and TX wants to end it.
According to the article, the Texas Senate “dropped another proposal, SB 1993, which would have allowed the Secretary of State to “rerun” elections in Harris County,” so do-over elections are not at issue.
It almost sounds like standard fare, coming out of the Texas legislature. But the posturing seems severe in this case. If I lived in Houston (or any place in Texas), I would be concerned they could carry out their legislated threats.
It may be prudent to keep track of some of the less well-known Justices. In today’s NYTimes, Jamelle Bouie has a column on Gorsuch’s commments to last week’s Order remanding the Title 42 motion with orders to dismiss as moot:
“The history of this case,” Gorsuch wrote, “illustrates the disruption we have experienced over the last three years in how our laws are made and our freedoms observed.” It’s at this point that Gorsuch dropped a doozy: “Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”
Gorsuch elaborated on the point: “Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale,” and “governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes.” They shuttered businesses and schools, he continued, and “threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions, too.”
He’s not talking about DeSantis or abortion, he’s talking about COVID!
We’re doomed.
Gorsuch sounds like an anti-vaxxer and/or a rando freak on Reddit.
“We need to make sure elections turn out the way we want them to.”
GOP
