Texas is the hardest state to vote in. It could soon get much harder.

[Nevilledog]

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Ari Berman
@AriBerman
·
Jul 8, 2021
Greg Abbott didn’t call special session after 23 murdered by white supremacist in El Paso or after 700 died when power grid failed but GOP holding special session to make it harder to vote after finding only 16 false addresses on registration forms out of 11 million votes in 2020

Ari Berman
@AriBerman
Texas already hardest state to vote in. GOP voter suppression bill would make far worse

“This election bill would take it to a place so far removed from democracy it would beg the question: What kind of form of government would we have?” says @BetoORourke

Texas is the hardest state to vote in. It could soon get much harder.
Democrats are desperately trying to act before Republicans can revive a restrictive voting bill.
motherjones.com
8:42 AM · Jul 8, 2021

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/07/texas-is-the-hardest-state-to-vote-in-it-could-soon-get-much-harder/

Beto O’Rourke is once again crisscrossing the state of Texas, like he did during his breakneck challenge to Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018. He’s no longer running for office but trying to register new voters in order to expand the electorate and flip the state blue.

The opportunity is there: Texas has 3 million unregistered voters, and Democrats estimate, based on demographics, that roughly 2 million of them would vote for their party if they registered and went to the polls, after Joe Biden lost the state by just 630,000 votes in 2020. But Texas law makes it monumentally difficult to register voters.

Unlike 40 states, Texas has no online registration. Anyone who wants to sign up voters must be deputized by each county he or she works in, every two years, which makes statewide voter registration drives nearly impossible in a state with 254 counties. So O’Rourke has spent much of 2021 becoming a volunteer deputy registrar in 15 counties, in places as large as Houston’s Harris County (population 4.7 million) and as small as Rains County east of Dallas (population 10,914).

“It’s a slow, laborious, very labor-intensive process,” O’Rourke told me. And voting in Texas could soon get even harder. On Thursday, the GOP-controlled legislature is beginning a special legislative session that will revive a sweeping voter suppression bill that was blocked at the 11th hour in May when Texas House Democrats staged a dramatic walkout before a midnight deadline, denying Republicans the quorum needed to pass it. So Gov. Greg Abbott called a special session to pass new voting restrictions, along with far-right priorities like banning critical race theory and preventing trans-gender athletes from competing in Texas sports.

*snip*

[Walleye]

1. Next, they will outlaw elections altogether

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. We will be fighting these voter suppression efforts

[area51]

3. k&r n/t