The Big Voting Lie
No, not that one, but you could be forgiven for thinking this is about the 2020 election and the lie that Trump is currently trying to sell to people. This isn’t about the “legitimate political discourse” lie by the DNC either. This podcast episode is about Texas, which has time and again proven to be the bell-weather for what the Republican strategy will be writ large.
This week, Texas had their primary, and it was abysmal. Over 30% of the mail-in votes weren’t even counted. Do you remember when the Texas Democrats fled Texas for over a month to block voting rights legislation? We got to see the results of that legislation play out in real-time, and the net result was exactly what the Democrats, and professional analysts across the country, said it would be. In particular, there are two provisions that cause significant problems:
The ID information provided on mail-in ballots must be the same ID that was used to register originally. This sounds innocuous enough, but take a moment to think. Do you remember which ID you used to register to vote just out of high school? Because some people have to remember what they used over 46 years ago.
It is illegal for election officials to help people in any way.
Together what this means is that if you can’t remember which ID you used to vote, there is no one and nowhere you can go to find that information out. Oh, the government knows, or they wouldn’t be able to do the comparison. They just won’t tell you.
Here’s the kicker: Texas voting was the most restrictive already without the law, and there was little to no fraud in Texas (to the tune of 0.0006% of voters). So why do it?
We have some ideas, and none of them bode very well for Texas.
None.
