Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) suspended provisions of Texas’ Election Code Wednesday to allow local governments to postpone their May 2 elections until November 3.
With the general election date being November 3rd? More GOP ratfuckery.
This has got to stop.
There are a number of runoffs from both party primaries set for May. Those will have to be resolved before the general.
For example, MJ Hegar and Royce West are in a runoff to see which of them will be the Dem to take on John Cornyn.
What’s wrong with scrambling a vote-by-mail system over the next few weeks? Oh, right, it’s harder to deny blah* people if you can’t intimidate them in person.
*Callback to 2012 Rick Santorum, a quainter time.
This will likely be the approach in my county. Abbott is leaving it to the counties, and, as Beto kept telling us, there are 254 in the state.
It’ll be a rodeo.
Vote-by-mail will yield similar results to FL’s mail in ballot 2020…more primary voters compared to 2016!
Wow… RethugniCONS cannot help themselves…voter suppression amidst Covid-19 Pandemic!
So Machiavellian, So Trumpian, So UNDEMOCRATIC!
The TX SoS just said the runoff issue is gnarly and is being discussed right now. Little comfort that it’ll be handled in any other way than to cripple Democrats and help rethugs.
Where I live, we have a runoff for State Senator as well as the U.S. Senate Democratic runoff. The senate district can probably hold a vote by mail runoff, but the US Senate runoff state wide? This sounds and smells like a protect John Cornyn move on the part of Abbott. Unless Abbott and the Secretary of State come up with an equitable plan for the Senate runoff, he remains the gutless cipher I always thought he was.
Well, Putin is taking advantage of the crisis:
This is legally baseless. Abbott cites Gov’t Code § 418.016. The only potentially applicable part of that section is subsection (a). It says “The governor may suspend the provisions of any regulatory statute prescribing the procedures for conduct of state business or the orders or rules of a state agency if strict compliance with the provisions, orders, or rules would in any way prevent, hinder, or delay necessary action in coping with a disaster.” Local elections are not “state business” and do not depend on the orders or rules of a “state agency.”
GOPers are lawlessly screwing with our elections. Watch out.
Tuesday, November 3 is the election day. Now if Abbot had said the election would be postponed until November 4, that’d be ratfuckery. Voters should start scrambling for vote by mail ballots if that’s an option in TX
They would need to call a special session of the Lege, because the Elections Code is quite clear on the methods of voting: it’s (i) same-day in-person, (ii) early in-person, and (iii) no-excuse absentee by mail, but each individual voter has to request an absentee ballot.
ETA: I thought it was no-excuse absentee voting, but that’s incorrect. You have to give one of 4 valid excuses: (i) 65 or older, (ii) disability, (iii) out of the county (including during early voting), and (iv) in jail. As noted below, I would suggest checking “disability,” as in I am disabled because I am not immune to this deadly virus.
Besides those “blah” people, Texas has a whole bunch of “barn” people just itching to throw these Republicans out of office. They need to be intimidated, too.
so
causes another election to be postponed …
It is, with the caveat that each individual voter has to request an absentee ballot. The deadline to request a ballot for the May 26 runoff election is May 15, and it has to be either received by May 26 (if not postmarked) or May 27 (if it is postmarked May 26 or before).
For the general election, deadline to request is Oct. 23, and the ballot has to be received by election day or the day after if properly postmarked.
Let me guess. They’ll put both Hegar and West on the ballot against Cornyn.
We will likely go with mail ballots for the runoffs, most of which are GOP races at the county level. Repugs will make sure those are resolved.
If you are going to suspend the state code then let us mail the ballots in for the May elections.
Goddamn it
Look at what happened in Ohio. the gov gets denied by the court, and says 'fuck you" and cancels the election anyway using very illegal methods.