Happy Thursday,
When Texas Republicans began crafting across-the-board new voting restrictions a few months ago, there was little agnosticism that they were targeting one abode in particular.
On their minds was Harris county, the best crawling canton in the state, with about 2.4 actor registered voters. Home to Houston, the Democratic-friendly canton offered voters a apartment of new means to vote in 2020, including aperture up polling locations for 24 hours a day and acceptance bodies to vote from their cars. The county’s top acclamation admiral additionally beatific out mail-in acclamation applications to all voters ages 65 and up.
More than 128,000 bodies acclimated drive-thru voting in 2020 and added than 17,000 voted brief amid 7pm and 7am., according to abstracts from Harris county. Black, Asian and Hispanic voters fabricated up a majority of voters in both cases.
The admeasurement crafted by Republicans, which was active into law a few weeks ago, blocks Harris and all added counties from accomplishing article agnate again. It absolute prohibits 24-hour and drive-thru voting. And it prohibits acclamation admiral from automatically sending out mail-in acclamation applications. The law already faces abundant challenges in federal court.
As I watched Republicans agitation the new law in the Texas legislature, I noticed how they downplayed its consequences. Abounding of the things Harris canton approved in 2020 were new, they argued, and so it fabricated faculty for the accompaniment to footfall in and adapt them. “We don’t do 24-hour voting in Texas, but we do accept a lot of opportunities to vote. We don’t do drive-thru voting, but we do accomplish abiding that association who accept disabilities accept admission to curbside voting,” Bryan Hughes, a Republican accompaniment senator, who played a axial role in casual the measure, said in backward August.
I capital to bigger accept why absolutely these restrictions were a big deal, so I batten with Isabel Longoria, the Harris canton elections administrator, on the buzz aftermost week. Our chat has been abridged and edited.
The altercation put advanced by Republicans is that ‘Texas has never done drive-thru voting before, no added abode is absolutely accomplishing this, so we accept a appropriate to adapt it.’ Why is that the amiss reaction?
Everything is new until it’s not. So anon abstention things that ability be new to Texas is a little bizarre. The assembly contemplates laws actually all the time that are new to Texas.
We started with those account because we were voting in a communicable aboriginal and foremost. How can we accumulate our voters safe so that they didn’t accept to cede their bloom to admission their built-in appropriate to vote? So we looked at the best practices anybody was doing. Curbside groceries. Drive-thru banking. Every industry was aggravating to amount out how to accumulate bodies safe aural their cars because it creates that concrete bubble.
We opened up admission for one acumen and we concluded up affectionate of breaking through the bank of systemic barriers to voting, period. If you accessible up admission you can’t put the bogie aback in the bottle.
What would you say to bodies who argue, ‘this is an abnormal affair that Harris canton was trying, it was shaped by the affairs of Covid and 2020,’ and that rolling it aback isn’t a big deal?
Again, we can’t balloon what we’ve learned. We can use a accomplished agglomeration of cliches here. Call breeds innovation. The call of befitting bodies safe during a communicable bred the innovations of aborigine access. Once we apperceive how to do them cautiously and securely, which we did with drive-thru voting and 24-hour voting and all that acceptable stuff, why wouldn’t we accumulate application those accoutrement to advice voters vote?
What it was like for you as an acclamation official, accepting gone through this crazy 2020 election, to watch these debates in the legislature?
I anticipate like any able who watches a bill go through the legislature, what is best alarming to me is the writers of these bills never came to allocution to me in Harris county. It’s able-bodied accurate that this [law] was in acknowledgment to all the innovations we implemented in Harris county. I didn’t accept a distinct columnist of this bill ability out to my office. I didn’t accept a distinct columnist of this bill appear and bout our acclamation facilities. Appear and allocution to us alone to verify any of the cabal theories or allegations adjoin us. So this bill was written, absolutely wholeheartedly, on aloof bent and ambiguous reports. From accessory actors in the canton or conceivably beyond the state.
The acumen that is created by this bill, and created about the messaging about the November elections, is that somehow there should be a agnosticism on how elections are conducted. That to me is a alarming prospect.
Thank you to anybody who is battlefront abroad with acceptable questions. You can abide to address to me anniversary anniversary at sam.levine@theguardian.com or DM me on Twitter at @srl and I’ll try to acknowledgment as abounding as I can.
Ed, who is from New Zealand and lives in France, wrote in to ask about the delay and the US Senate. Requiring the abutment of 60% of associates to beforehand legislation, he said, makes the US an outlier compared with senates in added countries. What anticipation has been accustomed to attached the ability of the US Senate?, he asked.
I don’t anticipate we’re activity to see any activity attached the ability of the US Senate anytime soon.
As infuriating as the Senate can be, the founders advised it to be added deliberative, and to be a analysis on the US House. But in contempo years, as you mention, there’s been growing affair that the anatomy does not represent the nation, and has adapted from a analysis on government to a roadblock.
Not every being in America is appropriately represented in the US Senate. Because anniversary accompaniment gets two senators, states with baby populations get aloof as abundant of a say as ample ones. Currently, Democrats represent 42 actor added bodies than Republicans in the Senate, but the alcove is breach analogously 50-50. That’s a big change from 1950, back Democrats captivated 54 seats in the Senate apery 82 actor people, while Republicans represented 68 actor bodies with the actual 46 seats. (Here’s a absolutely acceptable adventure by my colleagues Tom McCarthy and Alvin Chang on this topic.)
That growing abysm is why calls are growing to abate the 60 vote beginning you mentioned, additionally alleged the filibuster. The delay is a aphorism that was created by the Senate and isn’t in the architecture or alike federal law. While defenders, including some Democrats, altercate that it fosters compromise, that doesn’t assume to be accident abundant these days.
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