Texas closes hundreds of polling sites, making it harder for minorities to vote

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Texas closes hundreds of polling sites, making it harder for minorities to vote

Guardian analysis finds that places where black and Latino population is growing by the largest numbers experienced the majority of closures and could benefit Republicans

Richard Salame
Mon 2 Mar 2020 11.00 GMT
Last modified on Mon 2 Mar 2020 19.21 GMT

Last year, Texas led the US south in an unenviable statistic: closing down the most polling stations, making it more difficult for people to vote and arguably benefiting Republicans.

A report by civil rights group The Leadership Conference Education Fund found that 750 polls had been closed statewide since 2012.

Long considered a Republican bastion, changing racial demographics in the state have caused leading Democrats to recast Texas as a potential swing state. Texas Democratic party official Manny Garcia has called it “the biggest battleground state in the country”.

The closures could exacerbate Texas’s already chronically low voter turnout rates, to the advantage of incumbent Republicans. Ongoing research by University of Houston political scientists Jeronimo Cortina and Brandon Rottinghaus indicates that people are less likely to vote if they have to travel farther to do so, and the effect is disproportionately greater for some groups of voters, such as Latinxs.

“The fact of the matter is that Texas is not a red state,” said Antonio Arellano of Jolt, a progressive Latino political organization. “Texas is a nonvoting state.”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-polling-sites-closures-voting

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Goddamn those republicans for their underhanded tricks.

This is absolutely criminal.

This is how they suppress the Democratic vote.

[Igel]

2. But the same process also makes it easier.

My voting precinct is a mile or so south of where I live. Where I work is 13 miles NW of where I live. 6 years ago I couldn't vote near where I worked, even though I passed 2 or 3 voting stations on the way home.

Now they're merged and I suspect the old one I had to vote at 6 years ago is closed. I still pass a couple on the way home, but I can vote at either of them. They're on main routes, and the few city buses that get out this far stop within half a block of each of them. One of them is in a large supermarket.

I don't know what's been left out of the article. So those that are closed are disproportionately in areas with large black and Latino population increases. (It's Texas, some of that will be from undocumented or documented immigrants and that part of the increase is immediately ignored.) That also means areas in the fastest growing counties. And part of the reason for going with vote-anywhere polling places is to avoid needing to designate or beef up polling places in response to more population and more stringent requirements.

The Guardian article does a better job than the few-paragraph quote at the beginning, but it has the usual Guardian stance. "This is what's going on. That bit over there is what they say--but while they may *say* that bit, now we'll repeat that *this* is what's really going on."

[SunSeeker]

3. K & R for exposure.