Demand expansion

How did fighting to stop voter suppression legislation become the loftiest goal for Texans?

Perhaps it’s part of our self-reliant culture not to expect too much from government in Texas. It’s why our forefathers didn’t trust the governor with too much power and only let lawmakers meet every two years.

But this perennial hedging of our sacred voting rights begs the question: how on Earth did we allow Texas government to expect so much from us?

How did we get to a point where all voting-age Texans — Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Green Party members and independents — are expected to relinquish more and more of our voting access to lawmakers every two years in the service of one party’s rule?

Texas GOP leaders cry “integrity” and “security,” alleging widespread voter fraud that, after 15 years of looking under every rock, they have yet to find.

And what do many of us do? We dutifully fall in line, handing over more options to cast ballots, more convenience, more protections from intimidation.

Texas already ranks dead last in the nation for voter access. And lawmakers are still hacking away to make it worse. This session, they are no longer debating things such as Voter ID, for which reasonable, if flawed, cases can be made.

No, in the name of combating phantom voter fraud, lawmakers are demanding we give up something as harmless as drive-thru voting, which Harris County election officials so successfully introduced last year to protect voters during the pandemic.

Many appreciated the option, helping contribute to record turnout in Texas’ largest county, which happens to be run by Democrats. And that, of course, contributed to Republican fears.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and other champions of Senate Bill 7 defend it by saying that provisions such as limiting voting hours and number of polling locations won’t suppress voting. For many, of course, it won’t. For many others — those who struggle with transportation, shift work schedules or child care — it will.

Fighting voter suppression is fundamental. But those of us who care about voting rights in Texas must ask ourselves: how did fighting suppression become our loftiest goal? Why have we let a few Republican leaders redefine the expectations of our own constitutional rights by such lowly standards?

That’s like sending us last year’s lower tax bill and calling it “tax reform.”

We want more than just no new suppression. We want open access, the kind a democracy requires to truly be “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Abraham Lincoln did not define “people” as only those with home printers to complete an onerous voter registration process. He didn’t mean only those with working cars and bosses who let them take a long lunch to hit the polling place.

In a state that already hovers near the bottom in the nation in voter turnout, we cannot be content to defend the scraps of status quo when it comes to voting access. We must demand not only that lawmakers stop dismantling our voting rights but start building them back.

We must support legislation that is pro-active rather than defensive, bills that actually expand access — as states as diverse as Trump-favoring Kentucky, blue-blue New Jersey and purplish Virginia already have.

Voting procedures that are scandals in Texas, and potentially criminal, are perfectly legal and ordinary in other states.

Consider, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures:

While Texas requires an “excuse” to vote by mail, nearly three dozen other states do not.

Texas is one of only around 10 states that doesn’t allow voters to register online. (Our state was actually found by a federal judge earlier this year to be violating the 1993 “Motor Voter” law that requires states to let people register to vote when they apply for a driver license.)

While Texas House Bill 6 aims to make it a state jail felony for local election officials to send out vote-bymail applications to all voters — yes, that’s only applications, not actual ballots — five states manage to conduct actual voting entirely by mail without any existential threats to their democratic processes. Unsurprisingly, all but one have much higher voter turnout than in Texas.

While more than 20 states allow voters to register the same day they cast a ballot, Texas is among the states that cuts off registration the earliest: 30 days before Election Day.

Patrick has the audacity to claim the Senate’s voter legislation, SB 7, will change little: “Nothing has changed for mail-in ballots, Election Day or early voting,” he said. “And anyone who says different is lying to you.”

Tell that to a Harris County voter who was able to roll through a drivethru polling place in 2020 but, under pending legislation, won’t have that right again — because, “integrity.”

Tell that to the thoughtful Texan who, under pending legislation, would be forced to fill out paperwork to assist an elderly neighbor at the polls.

Tell it to a voter who may feel intimidated by a proposed law allowing partisan poll-watchers to focus their prying eyes, and their recording cell phones, on anyone they “reasonably believe” is violating an election law.

Patrick’s red-faced rebuke of local leaders who dare criticize the bill and the media who dare report the facts is telling.

A “nest of liars” he called us all. As the saying goes, if you have facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table.

Patrick doth protest too much. But it is we, Texas voters, who protest too little.