USA TODAY International Edition
Our view: In Texas, one dropbox in a county of 4.7 million people
Texas is known for its bigness. And one of its biggest features is the chasm between its enormous urban metropolises and its tiny rural communities.
Harris County, home to Houston and many of its suburbs, has 4.7 million people, making it more populous than nearby Louisiana. Harris County is, in fact, bigger than 25 American states and would rate eight, and possibly nine, electoral votes if it were a state itself. Roughly evenly divided between the parties as late as 2012, it has turned decidedly blue in the era of Donald Trump.
On the other extreme are Texas’ 184 counties with populations of less than 50,000. Of these, perhaps the most chronicled is Loving County, a flat expanse of West Texas populated by oil wells, desert shrubs and 169 people. Its politics are evident in the number of votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016: four.
So, when the governor and attorney general, both Republicans, announce that they will limit mail ballot dropboxes to one per county, it is not hard to see what they are after.
What’s harder to figure out is why they have such a profound death wish for the Republican Party. Do they not see that this will only motivate Democrats and anger swing voters? Do they not know that the future of Texas politics will be determined in the state’s high- growth suburbs that they are slapping in the face?
The state's argument that it is now allowing people to go to their one dropbox location throughout October, and not just on Election Day, only carries so much weight. Large counties want to create more drop- off locales, and the state is stopping them from doing so.
In addition to the one- per- county dropbox rule, which will largely impact seniors, the Republican Party has sued
Harris County ( unsuccessfully so far) over in- person early voting, which began in Texas on Tuesday with record turnout and long lines.
Harris County’s offense was in doing the right thing in a community that has suffered more than 150,000 confirmed COVID- 19 cases, the fourth highest total among the nation's counties as of Wednesday. It created 10 drive- through early- voting locations where people can vote without having to go inside with other people.
The voter suppression efforts in Texas are, regrettably, part of a national trend. In Pennsylvania the Trump campaign sued the state in an effort to eliminate all dropboxes. In Wisconsin, Republicans have even attacked voter information booths, where people can get questions answered and drop off ballots if they wish.
These efforts are particularly pernicious as they come amid a pandemic that has made people genuinely afraid of voting in person, and after the Trump administration sought to hamstring the U. S. Postal Service, raising doubts about whether ballots would be delivered on time.
Moreover, these actions are just the latest for a party that has trafficked in false narratives of voter fraud, aggressively purged voter rolls and disenfranchised multitudes through gerrymandering.
Sadly, the party of Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, two great presidents who expanded the Republican franchise, has been reduced to a sorry state. Having too closely associated itself with resistance to change, it is on the losing side of a demographic shift. Now, struggling to hold on to the power it once took for granted, it has lowered itself to the level of trying to make it harder for people to vote.