Mail-in ballots frighten Republicans
It’s hardly surprising that Texas is in the midst of a political controversy over making it easier for Americans to vote — on the wrong side.
Texas has a long history of limiting voting rights, epitomized by 1923 and 1927 laws that sanctioned allwhite Democratic primaries. State Attorney General Ken Paxton is maintaining that tradition by insisting on the narrowest possible interpretation of the state’s absentee voting law in the case now before the U.S. Court of Appeals.
The state’s actions since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that freed it and other states with histories of voter discrimination from the Voting Rights Act’s requirement for Justice Department preclearance of voting law changes show why that provision was necessary in the first place.
They include the implementation of one of the nation’s most restrictive voting ID requirements, congressional and legislative redistricting plans that courts found discriminated against the state’s growing Hispanic population and decisions to limit the number of Dallas and Houston polling places.
In the current case, Paxton contends his argument is legal not political, citing the state law that limits absentee ballots for voters under 65 to those who will be away on Election Day, are disabled or in prison and otherwise eligible.
State District Judge Tim Sulak, who initially ruled against the state, said the risk of catching the virus qualifies as a disability. U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, whose order blocking the state is pending before the appeals panel, said Paxton’s interpretation abridges the voting rights of those under 65.
This battle comes at a time when fears of the virus have prompted increased national efforts to expand mail voting so voters won’t have to risk possible infection by going to frequently crowded polling places. Opponents of the Texas position, including the state Democratic Party, say voters afraid of contracting the virus should have the same access to absentee ballots as those already ill.
Paxton’s position parallels the effort by President Donald Trump and many Republican allies to prevent expanding voting by mail in November’s presidential election. They argue without any evidence that it’s conducive to fraud and beneficial to the Democrats.
“This is a scam by the Democrats to steal the election,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said last week in a Fox News interview. With all-mail voting, Trump said, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
It’s unclear that expansion of mail voting would benefit the Democrats. The states that conduct elections entirely by mail include heavily Republican Utah and Arizona, where the GOP holds most statewide office holders. And the Republican governors of Arkansas and Nebraska said recently they are encouraging expanded mail-in absentee voting because of current health problems.
But Trump, who claims without evidence that his 3 million popular vote deficit in 2016 stemmed from widespread voter fraud, has threatened to withhold federal COVID-19 relief from Michigan and Nevada because their secretaries of state, a Democrat in Michigan, a Republican in Nevada, solicited absentee voting applications from all of their states’ voters.
And Republican National Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel joined a California suit against the state’s decision to mail absentee ballots to millions of registered general election voters.
Trump’s campaign against mail voting is not the only sign of Republican concern about the potential size of the 2020 electorate.
The RNC is recruiting thousands of lawyers to monitor polling places in November for potential violations, The New York Times reported. For more than three decades, a federal court ruling restricted the RNC from such on-site inspections because of GOP “ballot security” efforts in the 1980s that were widely regarded as voter intimidation.
Ever since an outpouring of younger and minority voters helped Barack Obama win the presidency in 2008, Republicans governors, legislatures and other state officials have championed measures intended to reduce voting by these groups, like a controversial New Hampshire law designed to curb voting by college students.
Ironically, at the time Trump is denouncing allmail voting as “RIPE for FRAUD,” he supports absentee voting “for the many senior citizens, military and others who can’t get to the polls on Election Day.”
Current polls show him trailing among seniors, so Trump may actually be encouraging many who will vote against him in November.