I don't care who this guy voted for, he's a hero.

[DanTex]

And this situation needs to stop.

Link to tweet

[bearsfootball516]

1. Get this man an invite to the first presidential debate.

All expenses paid, flight, hotel, etc.

[Bettie]

9. Trump won't debate

unless he can get a spectacle out of it without having to actually debate.

[sandensea]

23. Your words to God's ear!

Here, or in any working democracy, bailing on a debate is a deal-breaker to many voters.

You may recall that Jimmy Carter, God bless him, made that crucial mistake in 1980 - which allowed Reagan to debate Anderson, and both to pile on him.

Let's say Biden our nominee. A Biden-Weld debate? Poifect!

[SCantiGOP]

31. I would bet Trump won't debate

He will make some BS excuse, like all the debates have to be on FOX since 'people are saying' that the other networks are enemies of the people, and then blame the Dems for refusing to participate in debates.
He has nothing to gain from debates and can't stand the constant attacks on his documented lies and changes of position (remember, his tremendous healthcare plan was going to be ready to announce the afternoon of his inauguration).

Nixon refused to debate in 1972 (they called it the Rose Garden strategy since that was the only place he would speak to the press) because he was spending every moment working on winning the Vietnam War. It might have cost him Massachusetts, since his carried the other 49 states.

[oldsoftie]

59. Oh, he'll debate. He thinks he's king of TV, so he'll want that platform

[redstateblues]

52. Wow! It shouldn't be that hard

[bullwinkle428]

2. Utterly shameful that any American has to go through this to cast a vote.

[DENVERPOPS]

29. Amen to that BW

And a big THANK YOU to man pictured, and an apology that we seemingly can't do a thing about this in our so called Democracy.

Land of the free and home of the brave lip service BS my ass

Corrupt purging of voters lists, moving voting locations all over the place and far from peoples homes, drastically controlling how few voting machines are in especially middle and lower class Dem districts, electronic voting machines that have been proven for over twenty years and numerous occasions to be able to be hacked and votes changed, need we go on?

Even the "paper ballots" that are put thru an electronic machine can be corrupted.............

This is a disgrace, and making me ashamed to say I am an American...........

"Right to vote", and "one person, one vote" is total and complete BS...........

Who was the Frenchman in the 1700's that stated: Democracy will work until people figure out that they can vote themselves money?

WASF

[Leghorn21]

3. THANK YOU, HERVIS

Get it together TEXAS, that’s enough of this INSANITY-VERGING-ON-CRUELTY

ENOUGH

[DENVERPOPS]

34. Texas is hardly alone

It's in many many states...........

the Republican Mantra.........The means justifies the end, (as long as it is THEIR end)

Our Democracy/Voting has become so corrupted and the Republicans are gloating over Their job of creating it for decades......

The most descriptive word for Republicans? HYPOCRITES

[BlancheSplanchnik]

47. Exactly. There is something wrong with anyone who identifies as R anymore.

The twisted thinking is viscerally upsetting to me.

I don’t understand the mental isolation that could lead someone to hate someone as genuinely Good as, for example, Barack Obama, and yet genuflect to the documented career criminal... I just don’t get it. What is wrong in the brain that thinks that way??

[DENVERPOPS]

62. The

psychiatrists that I have talked to, ever since W got elected say they have no clue. They can't even imagine what malfunction of Republican brains is taking place. Now, for the last three years, they are really really confused.....

I have given up on any communication with several life time Republican friends, and countless acquaintances over the past twenty years......I just have no use for them. They all are irrational and totally unreasonable in their thoughts and actions......
They have no clue that the Republicans are destroying their lives too.......

[BlancheSplanchnik]

63. I've read a few articles talking about the conservative brain

being different from the liberal brain, on a physiological level. They tend to have lowered empathy responses, for example, among other symptoms.

So I guess one could say they’re born that way. But that sure doesn’t help me understand! Luckily there haven’t been many of them around me, but my own visceral reaction after finding out a work friend is in the cult really makes me ponder.

[DENVERPOPS]

64. In addition

psychopaths also have no empathy. They make great sadists, corporate executives, and politicians.........

[leftieNanner]

4. For Republicans

That's a feature, not a big.

[33taw]

28. Bug

[rurallib]

5. Hope he doesn't have to do it again in November

But if he must, I hope he is up for it

[NoPasaran]

40. Hopefully by November he'll consider early voting

There are a lot of bad things you can say about Texas (I know, I've said most of them) but lack of early voting is not one of them. We had nearly two weeks to early vote, including a whole weekend.

Texas Southern University is in Houston, a big city. It's not in some rural nowheresville where there may only be one or two polling places on the other side of the county. I'm glad this gentleman stuck it out, but seriously: if voting is important to you, do it early.

[Polybius]

58. I'm not a fan of early voting, because too much can change

To be honest, Texas had early voting, Sanders might have won. He was up big until Saturday. And I'm saying this as a Sanders supporter.

[Leghorn21]

6. "HERVIS ROGERS" is trending at #10 nationally!!

Fucking Kudos to Hervis Rogers for having the resolve to wait that through. Shame on Republicans suppressing the vote so much that he had to.

If we can get high turnout in November with his kind of tenacity, then I have a renewed hope this morning.

Link to tweet

DO YOUR THANG, TWITTER!!

[yellowdogintexas]

53. Harris County Texas is a very blue county and in Texas the county government

decides where the voting precincts are located. They also decide the equipment used; a wide variety of machines are used across the state.

The county elections office determines the precincts and also the number of voting locations. THe number of machines here is based on prior voting history by each party since on primary day we share the same room. I worked yesterday in a very red precinct. We had 3 voting machines and the Rs had 6.

[zackymilly]

7. I wonder how many voters got fed up, had to pick up kids, etc and walked out? We'll never know. n/t

[Bettie]

8. Were the long lines due to

voting machines being broken or there being fewer polling places?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

20. I heard that there were supposed to be more machines, but they never came.

And also, Texas closed many polling places.

God damn them to hell.

[Bettie]

21. So both

and no way to fix it before November, because Texas.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

22. I think the machine issue can be fixed before Nov.

IF there's the political will, that is.

We must get more Democrats into the Texan legislature to really fix problems like these.

[Gothmog]

26. Harris County clerk blames GOP for refusing to allow joint primary, causing long wait times

I live in a neighboring county but I know the current Harris County clerk and I am active in the Harris County Democratic Lawyers Association. Please understand that from 2010 to 2018, a tea party asshole named Stan Stannart was in charge of elections in Harris county. Stan was a teabagger and a major asshole who closed a number of voting locations in minority locations.

Link to tweet

We voted Stan out in 2018 but he left the county in a mess with fewer voting locations and not sufficient machines. Stan was pushing a voting system that he designed that had to be scrapped. Harris County adopted County wide voting on election day to try to help with the mess that Stan created (I actually testified before the Commissioners Court on this proposal).

The other problem is that Texas law allows the parties to force separate primaries. The Texas GOP has an asshole as its chair who forced separate primaries which means that the county did not have enough machines.

Link to tweet

After Harris County voters faced long wait times on Tuesday, in some cases several hours, Harris County Clerk Diane Trautman placed the blame on the Harris County Republican Party.

In a tweet, Trautman wrote that her office proposed “a joint primary election, which would have allowed voters to vote on any available machines. This was rejected by the parties, which means both parties have an equal allocation of machines for each polling location."
In a follow-up tweet, Trauman linked to a press release from the Harris County Republican Party and wrote, “Correction - there wasn’t an agreement between parties. One party agreed while the other did not.”

Link to tweet

Fort Bend County had a joint primary in part because the election administrator told the parties that there were not sufficient machines to do separate primaries.

Harris County had a meltdown but the issue goes back to the prior GOP/tea party election administrator (stan Stannart) and the GOP county party

[LizBeth]

32. How was Republican turn out since no one is running against Trump.

[Gothmog]

42. This happened in Tarrant County also

Link to tweet

[yellowdogintexas]

54. that was mostly based on past voting history in the various precincts

If a precinct historically has 50% more Republicans turn up to vote than Democrats, it wouldn't be reasonable to overstock the Democratic side on the outside chance a lot of Democrats would vote there even though they could now that we have voting centers

My very red voting center was lagging behind the R side until 4 pm and then we had a large surge. I think half of our turnout was after 4. Part of that was the time of day - folks voting after work or picking up the kids after school. We had a hard time with it because the access codes to our system expire so we had to reissue a bunch of them and stop issuing them to newly arrived voters for a while until we felt like they would not expire. We did finish at 7:05 though.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

45. TX closed down many voting places in minority neighborhoods.

This shit should be illegal. They know exactly what they're doing when they close down polling sites.

Here in WA, we vote by mail. I wish all states would go to mail-in voting. No one should have to stand for hours on end to vote.

[yellowdogintexas]

55. we have 235 precincts and we had 195 voting centers. There are

lower turnout precincts here and there which have been combined for years at one location. I have worked several elections where we had two or three sets of ballots, and voted in one before I began working as an election judge. These are always precincts which border one another.

I also really think the Elections folks over estimated how much the ability to vote anywhere on election day would move voters around. Most folks stuck to their regular voting locations as far as I can tell.

[Demsrule86]

10. That is ridiculous...this has to stop.

[Baked Potato]

11. Good man!

[rogue emissary]

12. Respect!

[tishaLA]

13. Voting shouldn't require heroism

This is shameful

[Reader Rabbit]

14. Really hope the DNC is taking note of places where there were issues like this.

You know the Republicans will make sure that the difficulty level for voting will be amped up for the general!

[MoonlitKnight]

15. It is shameful that in 2020 we still have to deal with this crap.

We need that kind of persistence from our voters. So while my persistent candidate didn’t break through, at least we have that persistence in our democratic voters. And that is most important.

This man, and the thousands of others who had to fight suppressive tactics to cast their vote deserve the undying support and determination to do whatever it takes to eradicate this travesty everywhere.

[question everything]

16. One has to wonder whether such a chaos would have occured had there was an R primary, too

A real primary, that is.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

17. Get enough Democrats in state offices and this shit will end -- Democrats love voters.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

18. Actually, it should happen more often

There needs to be such massive voter turnout for Democrats that there are long lines and BIG CHANGES!

(That said, voter suppression is evil.)

[mahina]

19. It is a ducking national disgrace. This is on purpose.

How many people can take 7 hours out of their lives to wait like that? Could you?

This voter suppression costs us incalculably and has to stop!

How?

[calimary]

24. I think this is an indicator of how desperately most of America wants to be RID of trump.

The news also carried on about the long lines in California too. Two hours, three hours, and more. People bringing their laptops, their homework, their “Hangman” games and more, to pass the time while they waited to vote.

I think we’re seeing Determination to Dump trump. Alive and kicking and in the flesh!

I don’t remember lines THAT long or people standing and waiting THAT long - to vote. And they’re not out there waiting for something new from Apple to go on sale at midnight.

[former9thward]

46. Why were there long lines?

Republicans not in charge there

[Gothmog]

25. The waits were due to Republicans

This is from El Jeffe (a Biden supporter who I met at a Biden fundraiser) https://juanitajean.com/had-to-wait-in-a-long-line-to-vote-thank-a-republican/

In Harris County yesterday, lines of voters were long and the wait was up to 5 hours. Why? There are two primary reasons:

Since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act Texas has closed 542 polling places, most in historically black and Latino areas. If you include 2012 closings, that number rises to 750.

In Harris County at least, the Republican party refused to allow a joint primary with Dems. What that meant was that the voting machines were divided in 2, half for Repubs, half for Dems. Since Trump essentially had no opponent, turnout in the GOP primary was very low so HALF of voting machines remained essentially unused.

Both of these moves by Republicans made it harder for Texans to vote, which has been their goal for over 20 years as demographics started moving against them. I got to experience their strategy yesterday since my polling place was one of those closed. It took me three attempts at two different polling places to finally cast my vote, and I had to drive 15 minutes from one polling place to another to accomplish that. After discovering my polling place was closed, I drove to my old polling place only to find the line out the door and down the block. I went to have some lunch and returned about an hour later to find the line almost as long. A nice young poll worker for Ben Rose had information on other polling places, so I drove all the way out to Buffalo Speedway to vote at a church there. The line there was about half an hour (and it was air-conditioned) so I waited it out. When I got into the polling place, HALF of the voting machines were being unused while Republican poll workers twiddled their thumbs. On the other side, Dems were forced to wait in multiple lines to access the other half. Total time not including lunch was about two hours of waiting and a lot of driving just to vote in a goddam primary.

It’s shameful that the Republican party has been allowed to continuously and increasingly restrict access to the Constitutional right to vote. Their rationale, of course, is based on lies since their actual goal is voter suppression not “election integrity” which is one of their standard lies. Texas Republicans are perfectly happy to make the lives of their fellow Texans miserable simply for political gain. This reason alone should be enough to vote the bastards out.

[2naSalit]

27. Tickets to the inauguration. ...nt

[BadgerMom]

30. The hatefulness of the Republican Party can still stun me.

I’m 66 years old. I was young when Dr. King was leading the Civil Rights movement and LBJ, a Texan, was shepherding the Great Society legislation through Congress. I never dreamed we would be back here. Screw them! Let’s defeat them thoroughly in November and become an even greater society.

[yaesu]

33. the mess this 3rd world fascist countries voting system is in is the laughing stock of the world. nt

[irisblue]

35. Heck yes

[whathehell]

36. Absolutely agree...He is a hero, but

this is OUTRAGEOUS.

[napi21]

37. That's a disgrace sto the Country! Texas sgould be very ashamed & guilty for damaging the

reputation of the State. The Secretary of State in Tx. needs to issue a BIG apology to the citizens and explain what they did wrong and what they've done to guarantee it will never happen again!

[Wounded Bear]

38. Voting in many areas of the USA is shameful...

Good on this guy.

[budkin]

39. ABSOLUTE INSANITY

This is unacceptable.

[renate]

41. Yeah Hervis!

I'm glad he's getting the credit he deserves!

(I feel kind of bad for all the people who were just a few minutes in front of him in line, but....)

I was also glad to see both CNN and MSNBC commentators talking about how this is absolutely disgraceful in the United States of America. I hope they address this in every single primary that comes up from now on. It's embarrassing. The whole world is watching really closely this time, and they can see that in this titular democracy, voting is being squelched in poor, black, and brown neighborhoods.

[rickford66]

43. More absentee or early voting

GOTV should zero in on this

[drray23]

44. The DNC should fund him for a full all expenses paid

Trip to the convention.

[MustLoveBeagles]

48. +1000

[MustLoveBeagles]

49. K&R

[FoxNewsSucks]

50. I saw a meme earlier tonight

about this guy, saying that MF45 should be worried that people are willing to wait in line 7 hours to help choose his replacement.

[RandySF]

51. We need Democratic legislatures

and new Democratic senators who will vote to pass HB1.

[Aussie105]

56. That's just not right!

In a democratic country, you want to exercise your right to vote, and you have to wait 7 hours?

That's not Democracy, that's more like voting by Survival of the most Determined!
How many said 'Bother and tarnation, stuff this, carry on without me!' and went home?

I get twitchy when I have to vote at the local polling station (primary school hall, 5 minute walk away) and I have to get in line with as many as <GASP!> 10 people!

[Hassin Bin Sober]

57. It's fucking criminal

[IronLionZion]

60. Make Texas Blue Again

This is plain voter suppression. They are hoping people who "look like Democrats" will give up after a few hours and leave.

[Daxter]

61. The GOP loves surprising votes

It is the only way they can win (and getting help from Trump’s bff Putin). The GOP keeps trying to shut down polling stations to try and stop minority voters from voting.