Texas' new voting laws are working as intended (unfortunately)
According to Paul Begala, Texas is not a red state http://www.collindemocrats.org/texas-isnt-a-red-state-its-a-non-voting-state/
Texas isnt a Red State, its a non-voting state
~ Paul Begala @ BattlegroundTX (#BGTX) fundraiser, Austin, Texas Jun 22, 2013
There are clear demographic trends that show that Texas will flip to blue in the near future. The GOP has been fighting these efforts for a while. The Texas voter id law worked great during the one cycle when it was fully in effect where Greg got more votes than Rick Perry but Wendy Davis got far fewer votes than Bill White.
The judge in the Texas voter id trial found that the Texas voter id law would affect between 600,000 registered and 1.4 million eligible voters. The above chart is consistent with this finding. Chad Dunn got this law gutted and now the GOP is resorting to other tactics that are also working.
Texas new voting system was put to the test during recent statewide primaries, and its tough to be satisfied with the results. An analysis by The Associated Press found that the Lone Star State, thanks to Republican-imposed restrictions, threw out mail-in votes at an abnormally high rate.
Republicans promised new layers of voting rules would make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. But the final numbers recorded by AP lay bare the glaring gulf between that objective and the obstacles, frustration and tens of thousands of uncounted votes resulting from tighter restrictions and rushed implementation.
Election experts told the AP its unusual for 2 percent of ballots to be rejected in any given election. During Texas recent primaries, however, roughly 13 percent of mail ballots were discarded and uncounted across 187 counties......
Postscript: In case this isnt obvious, had Republican-appointed justices on the U.S. Supreme Court left the Voting Rights Act intact, Texas voting restrictions wouldnt exist right now. Whats more, if senators were able to vote up or down on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, federal officials would be able to intervene in Texas, but a GOP filibuster is blocking action on the issue.
We are fighting GOP voter suppression. I suspect that more Democrats will vote in person this cycle than in 2020 to get around this problem. I was eligible to vote by mail in both 2020 and 2022 but I will be voting in person. We had poll watchers out in the primary which is normally not needed and the party will be busy in the general election