Texas Senate moves to end countywide voting on Election Day

[LetMyPeopleVote]

I was one of the county democratic party representatives on the committee that approved countywide voting in my county and I testified to the Harris County Commissioners Court on the adoption of county wide voting in Harris County back in 2019. I ended up waiting 6 hours to give a three-minute speech to the County Commissioners Court. The then head of the Harris County Democratic Party is a friend and was really happy that I made the time to speak to the commissioners court. I also spoke at a couple of the public meeting held to discuss the adoption of county wide voting. BTW, there were a couple of GOP nut cases who spoke who objected to making voting easier.

In Texas, you can vote anywhere in the county for early voting and in the counties that have not adopted county wide voting you had to vote in your precinct. I was the election judge for my precinct for a couple of democratic primaries and as a favor to the county election office, I was the republican election judge for the GOP primary once. In my precinct we were at a local elementary school who hated being a voting location. Four out of the six times, I was an election judge were put in an annex building in the back of the school. I used to do a trail of election signs from the front of the school back to the annex where the voting machines were located. Once my county adopted county wide voting, the county stopped using that elementary school and set up voting centers. My youngest child has been working over the years at one of the voting centers which was one of the top turnout locations in the county.

To quote Paul Begala, "Texas is not a red state or a blue state but a non-voting state." Texas is becoming more urban and less rural which means that Texas will become blue unless the Texas GOP can suppress the vote.

Link to tweet

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/04/20/election-day-countywide-voting-texas-senate/?utm_campaign=trib-social&utm_content=1682033387&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

Countywide polling locations on Election Day would be banned in Texas under a bill approved by the Texas Senate on Thursday.

Senate Bill 990, authored by Republican Sen. Bob Hall of Edgewood, passed 17-12 along party lines. The bill — if approved by the state House — would eliminate countywide voting centers on Election Day and require residents to vote at an assigned precinct, typically in their neighborhood. Larger voting centers would be permitted through early voting.

Currently, 90 counties — including large metro counties like Harris and Dallas as well as rural ones — are approved by the secretary of state’s office to use countywide voting centers on Election Day.....

The bill is part of a yearslong effort by Republican lawmakers in the state to tighten voting laws. For years, GOP leaders have said that there needs to be stricter interpretation of the state’s voting laws to ensure the security of the vote. That motivation increased after 2020 when former President Donald Trump claimed without substantiation that current election laws had led to his electoral loss.