Texas’s GOP-controlled Senate passed on party lines major changes to its election code that will make voting more cumbersome for people in Texas’ urban communities as well as for voters in need of assistance.
One section will require that large counties adopt a new formula for deciding where to set up polling places. That proposal will limit the extent to which election officials can take into account transportation access in deciding where to put polling locations, critics of the measure say. It will result in polling locations being shifted towards white suburban communities, where voters are more likely to have cars that can take them a greater distance to polling locations, and away from minority-heavy urban regions, where voters are more reliant on public transportation.
You know who else this will impact, students and all those young people moving into urban areas who mostly use public transportation.
And what’s up with limiting the number of people in a car that is bringing someone who need assistance with voting?
I still have an ideological problem with a poll watcher filming anyone who is there to vote. That means my image can be used and/or manipulated to show me doing something that I wasn’t doing. Though I have to admit that my polling place has only ever had official poll workers in there besides those waiting to vote. I just don’t think that anyone exercising their franchise needs to be on camera while they are voting.
So NOW is the time for corporate America to speak up and act in Texas, not after the fact.
Texas, you know how you’ve been drawing high-tech workers to your state recently? Well between your ‘deregulated’ infrastructure and this nonsense, you can start to kiss them buh-bye.
And you’ve also permanently surrendered the right to complain about bipartisanship of any form.
Do these Republicans understand that every backward step they take is making passage of the new federal voting standards now pending in Congress much more likely?
Naked voter suppression, Jim Crow style. Republicans being Republicans.
They have great faith in Mitch and Joe Manchin …
All 15 of those goverment run military bases in Texas, be a shame if something happened to them
FAFO: John Lewis Edition.
Former mighty predator, backed into a blind canyon, bares fangs and growls one last time before his pursuers give the final blow.
No voting before 9 am? Absurd. All the working people who can’t cut out during business hours will be forced into long lines after quitting time.
Which, of course, is the intent.
Well, as Charles Pierce has stated, John Roberts has said the the day of jubilee is here. So this is all just fine, I’m sure.
More important than the electric grid.
“Corporate America”
Talking at you Pizza Hut, AT&T, Dell, American Airlines and any other Texas HQ company.
And they Texas are already regretting it, property prices have gone through the roof and the place is full of hippies and immigrants.
They don’t want those vans running across the border packed with 15 illegal immigrants to be going around to each polling place they find and voting multiple times each until the poll workers start getting suspicious.
Require the disabled to re certify every year? Which brain dead a-hole came up with that? And what problem is the provision trying to solve? People faking amputations?
(Yes, I know the provision was withdrawn, but why there in the first place?)
@txlawyer Any ideas?
Nah, there’re a ton of H1-Bs and newly minted Indian citizens in Texas. They aren’t the ones being targeted here. High-tech workers aren’t going to be impacted.
They don’t care and they are counting on McConnell to continue to gum up the works.
Then they plan on court challenges, should HR1 pass in the Senate, that will delay implementation through 2022, as the challenges will need to work their way through State systems and then through the Federal system.
By the time it gets to SCOTUS, the entire issue will be dead because the GQP will be entirely in control. The inevitable is coming and there’s really no stopping it from what I can see. The courts simply won’t be able to keep up with the relentless battering ram of challenges.
What’s on the senate’s agenda today? What are Democrats focused on today? What are the Dem. talking points today? Are they more pressing than passing strict protection of voters’ rights? Can someone tell me why Dems. are doing anything other than focusing like a laser beam on passing a strict voting rights Bill?