Texas Republicans

Statement

Dan Patrick: “If they're worried about people of color — on the Democrats side who came up with this drive-in voting — statistics show that more people of color don't have cars than not. So how do (drive-thru voting centers) help those folks?"

PolitiFact's ruling: False

Here's why: Eliminating drive-thru voting centers is one of the major features of Senate Bill 7, described by its Republican authors in the state Senate as an election security measure and by its Democratic detractors as an attempt to suppress the vote.

The bill would prohibit county election officials from allowing voters to cast ballots from within their vehicles by amending the state’s election code to make voting rules in this regard uniform across the state.

This provision is aimed at Harris County, which set up drive-thru voting centers last year as a safe way to vote during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 127,000 voters cast ballots via the drive-thru centers during the 2020 general election, helping the county set a voter turnout record.

Fact-check:Dan Patrick insists that SB 7 doesn't change early voting rules

Democratic critics of SB 7 argue that eliminating drive-thru voting would disproportionality affect people of color, since many of the 10 drive-thru voting locations in Harris County were near concentrations of Black and Latino residents.

Earlier this month, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick pushed back against that argument by saying that most people of color don’t own vehicle.

“If they're worried about people of color — on the Democrats' side who came up with this drive-in voting — statistics show that more people of color don't have cars than not,” Patrick said during an April 6 press conference. “So how do (drive-thru voting centers) help those folks?"

It's unclear what statistics Patrick was referring to. We sought clarification from his office, but his spokesperson did not respond to several messages. So we searched for sources that show rates of vehicle ownership among different races and ethnicities.

Are people of color mostly without vehicles in Texas?

The nearly 10 automotive and consumer analytic firms we reached out to — including IHS Markit, Cox Automotive, Experian and J.D. Power — either don't collect racial data on vehicle ownership rates or declined to share their research, citing proprietary reasons.

So we turned to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, which collects social, economic and demographic data from 3.5 million households every year. The Census Bureau uses the survey data to create estimates on a broad range of population and economic characteristics at state and local levels, including rates of vehicle ownership among racial and ethnic groups.

Among the state’s 3.4 million African Americans, 88% own at least one vehicle, according to the 2019 American Community Survey, an aggregation of five years of data, the most recent available. Of the state’s Asian population of 1.3 million, 95% own at least one vehicle. And of the state’s 11.1 million people who identify as of Latino or Hispanic origin, 95% own at least one vehicle. Vehicle ownership rates are similarly high for the state’s white, native, mixed race and other racial groups.

The National Equity Atlas, a policy data firm that describes itself as “America's most detailed report card on racial and economic equity,” also publishes a vehicle ownership analysis based on American Community Survey data from 2017. Its findings are largely the same: 93% of nonwhite households in Texas own a vehicle, compared with 96% of white households.

Vehicle ownership in Texas also is higher among all racial and ethnic groups than the national rate. Nine percent of households nationally are without a vehicle, the Atlas shows. In Texas, 12% of black households don’t own cars, compared with 19% nationwide. And 6% of Latino households lack vehicles in Texas, compared with 11% nationwide.

Vehicle ownership rates for Harris County alone are similar. About 89% of the county’s Black population owns at least one vehicle. And between 95% and 96% of the county’s other racial groups own at least one vehicle, according to the Census Bureau data.

Houston, a sprawling metropolitan area that is primarily within Harris County, is one of the most vehicle-dependent cities in the U.S. According to the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, Houston ranks near the top of vehicle miles traveled per capita among the largest U.S. cities.

Harris County became the first jurisdiction in Texas to open drive-thru voting centers at a scale “that allows any registered voter to cast their ballot without leaving the comfort of their vehicle,” the county’s election administrator’s website says.

Ten drive-thru voting sites were open during the early voting period, and one, the Toyota Center in downtown Houston, was open on Election Day.

An analysis of the county’s early voting rosters conducted by the Texas Civil Rights Project shows that people of color used the drive-thru voting sites at higher rates than whites. About 53% of the votes cast at the 10 drive-thru sites were by Hispanic, Black or Asian voters during the early voting period. Meanwhile, 38% of all early votes cast during the election were by people in those three demographic groups.

African American voters especially used drive-thru voting sites at higher rates. Fourteen percent of all early votes were cast by Black voters countywide, while 22% of all ballots cast at the drive-thru centers were by Black residents, according to the data.

Asian voters similarly took advantage of the drive-thru option. While 4% of the early votes in Harris County were cast by Asians, they accounted for 8% of the votes cast at the drive-thru centers.

“(Patrick’s) comment just doesn't make any sense to me as an actual counterpoint,” said James Slattery, senior staff attorney of the Voting Rights Program at the Texas Civil Rights Project.

“Even if people of color did own cars at disproportionately lower rates, and yet still used drive-thru voting at a higher rate than their share of the population, then doesn't that actually bolster the case that this particular form of voting was vital to them in particular?” Slattery said.

Our ruling
In justifying a provision of SB 7 that would eliminate drive-thru voting, Patrick said that “statistics show that more people of color don’t have cars than not. So how do (drive-thru voting centers) help those folks?"

Estimates from the Census Bureau show that there is no racial or ethnic group, either in Texas or in Harris County specifically, in which more people don’t own vehicles than do. Black residents lag behind other groups in vehicle ownership in Texas, but all groups in Texas own them at higher rates than the national averages. Statewide and in Harris County, rates of ownership among white, Black, Hispanic or Latino, Native, mixed or other groups of residents range from 88% to 96%.

An analysis of the Harris County voting rosters also shows people of color used drive-thru voting sites at higher rates than white voters.

We rate this claim False.

 

Governor wheels, outright lying. What a surprise...

 

One benefit of not living in TX is I don't get to hear all of the stuff coming from Patrick, Abbot, Paxton or Cruz.

 

...you know...

...(and I'm not a woman, so please correct me if I'm wrong)...

...but I've heard that if you wear a girdle too tightly, it can cause a lot of brain impairment due to lack of adequate blood flow.

You think maybe someone should suggest to the "loot" to loosen up a bit?

 

He is such an idiot and a lying machine

 

...we can't call Teddy an idiot because he went to Harvard, I've heard.

...but I betcha I can call Teddy a Harvard idiot.

 

I don't believe Ted Cruz is actually an idiot. I believe he is both very conniving and craven.

 

Same difference.

 

The Legislature found the time, not to do anything actually useful, but to pass HR-871, that declares Representative Andrew Murr, of Junction, TX (great State Park there, btw) has the official best moustache in Texas government.



I also learned that his 2 sons are named Jack and Coke (his grandfather was Coke Stevenson, Texas Governor, lost the Senate race to LBJ by 87 votes, etc)

 

Maybe the left should police it's own then because globalist leftists are supporting fake meat and bug burgers and all kinds of nonsense.

 

Why do you want to CANCEL people who decide for health or personal reasons to become a vegetarian?? I for one support people having their own personal FREEDOMS to CHOOSE whatever they want to eat. So why do you support and promote CANCEL CULTURE of vegetarians??

 

What a load. Abbott is a liar. Patrick is a liar. Paxton is a liar. President Biden didn’t say the crap Abbott’s spouting about beef. What drives Abbott’s little red wagon is his continuing attempt to detract Texans from thinking about the horrific job he’s done as governor of our state, and you apparently buy every one of his lies. Bummer, dude.

 

Cruz for president please

 

SAN MARCOS, Tex. — In a fast-growing city in a fast-growing state, Yvonne Flores-Cale is typical of the population surge that is transforming Texas.


The native Midwesterner is relatively young, Hispanic and politically left of center. She has lived in Kyle — a booming suburb just south of Austin, on the edge of Texas’s famed Hill Country — only for a decade but has watched as the surrounding county has morphed from red to purple to a pale shade of blue.

Last year, she won a seat on the city council, and she sees herself as part of a broader wave that will ultimately crest in the state legislature and Congress, washing away incumbents she regards as more reflective of the state’s past than its future.

“It’s only a matter of time before people like me fill those seats,” said the paralegal and mother of three. “You get mad enough, and change is going to come.”

Yet the change coming to Texas is, for now, likely to be the opposite of what one might expect. The state’s growth — fueled overwhelmingly by people of color in its largest cities and their close-in suburbs — should be cause for celebration among Democrats.

But because of the way the GOP-controlled legislature is expected to redraw congressional districts, this growth is predicted to be a boon for Republicans instead. When coupled with new lines in states such as Florida and Georgia, it might even be enough to flip control of the House in next year’s midterm elections.

“Gerrymandering is an easy road map to a Republican majority,” said Michael Li, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute. “They have a lot of incentive to be very aggressive.”

The way state legislators of both parties draw congressional boundaries to engineer a particular outcome, rendering most of the nation’s House districts noncompetitive, has not received the same intense focus as other forms of voter suppression. Yet that will probably change as states prepare to go through a once-a-decade redistricting. In most states where seats are in play, it is Republicans who will hold the pen as new lines are drawn.

Nowhere is that process likely to be more contentious than in Texas, where critics see an ever-widening divide between the state’s fast-changing demographics — which have put the onetime Republican bastion into play in statewide contests — and the ever-redder way it is represented in Congress.

“I am anticipating a big battle,” said Rogelio Sáenz, a demographer at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “It could get ugly.”

That’s in part because there’s nowhere else in the country where the stakes are as high.

In a nation where population growth has slowed to historically low levels, Texas is a standout exception. Numbers in the Lone Star state are rising at an explosive pace — more than double the national average. That made Texas the big winner in this year’s congressional reapportionment, with the state gaining two additional seats to represent its 29 million residents — a total second only to California, where growth has stalled.

The trends in Texas have made the state far more diverse and urban. About 90 percent of its growth over the past decade has been among people of color, with out-of-state moves, immigration and new births all contributing. By late this year or early next, the Hispanic population is expected, for the first time, to top the non-Hispanic White population.

The gains, meanwhile, have been spread across the state unevenly. Texas’s multiethnic major cities are all growing at a rapid clip, with the state now boasting five of the 13 biggest in the country. Increasingly diverse suburbs, too, are reaping the gains. But Texas’s rural areas, many of them largely White, are in sharp decline.

“Texas added more people than any other state” over the past 10 years, said Lloyd Potter, the Texas state demographer. “But about 100 of our counties lost population.”

Republicans tout the state’s growth as evidence that Americans are voting with their feet, choosing to move from Democratic-led states such as California, New York and Illinois to enjoy the low-tax, pro-business policies that Texas offers.

But they also recognize that the new arrivals pose a threat. State GOP chair Allen West greeted news of the state’s census count last month by comparing incoming Democratic voters to “locusts, bent upon destruction.”

The newcomers have certainly made Texas more competitive. Democrats haven’t won the state in a presidential vote in nearly half a century, and have routinely lost by 20 points or more. But last year, the margin was less than six points.

The state’s congressional delegation has moved sharply the other way. At the start of the century, Democrats had a pronounced advantage — a product, at least in part, of maps drawn by Democratic-controlled legislatures that favored their side. But after the GOP won full control in the state capital in 2002, the balance decisively shifted, with Republican lawmakers now outnumbering Democrats in the House in Washington 23 to 13.

Republicans are expected to add two more to their column next year. But Democrats say the additions won’t come without a fight — one that, if past is prologue, will ultimately be settled by judges. “Whatever Republicans do, this will almost certainly end up in court,” said Li, who is a Texas native.

Challenges are likely to focus on the argument that the new districts are being drawn to either “pack” minority communities into a single district or “crack” them across many. Both tactics can dilute the power of voters of color, and judges can deem them discriminatory.

“I hope that the legislature, after losing in court repeatedly on voting rights matters, will have learned its lessons,” said Rafael Anchía, a Democratic state representative who chairs the Mexican American Legislative Caucus.

Anchía said his own Dallas district — which he has won with nearly 80 percent of the vote — is evidence of the “egregious” way that lines have been drawn in his state not only for Congress, but for the legislature as well.

“As good as I might be, I shouldn’t be winning 80 percent. Those are Benito Mussolini numbers. They’re Fidel Castro numbers,” he said. “That’s why our voters are often so disconnected. They feel like the rules of the game have been rigged.”

In many ways, they have. The evidence is visible in maps of the state’s congressional and legislative districts, with lines swerving and curling, spaghetti-style, to exclude or include neighborhoods, or even specific streets.

 

Article continued:

In Austin — the ultraliberal state capital, home to nearly 1 million people — the map is a tangle of six districts, with lines radiating out from city blocks deep into the Texas prairie. Only one of the districts is represented by a Democrat.

But the state’s growing diversity is making the task of drawing safe GOP seats more complicated for the party.

That’s evident in Hays County, south of Austin, where a suburb that once voted reliably for Republicans in federal contests has become a key engine for Democratic votes.

Among the fastest-growing counties in America, Hays has more than doubled in size over the past 20 years. While many of the new arrivals are transplants from elsewhere in Texas, a large share have also moved here from out of state.

“In the cul-de-sac where I live, there are six houses. Five of us came from somewhere else. Four are from California,” Jason Giulietti said.

Giulietti moved to Texas from Connecticut to lead the region’s economic development organization, the Greater San Marcos Partnership, and said the qualities that draw so many people to the area applied to him as well: beautiful scenery, reasonably affordable housing, ample job opportunities and a lower cost of living.

Companies have helped to feed the growth, with tech firms sprouting up and beginning the transformation of what had long been sleepy commuter towns into what Giulietti and others call the “Texas Innovation Corridor” — a still somewhat aspirational moniker, but one becoming more real by the day.

The rapid growth has brought the usual set of challenges. Traffic congestion is growing more interminable each day, along with pressure on water, power and other infrastructure. Concerns about gentrification, displacement and rising housing costs also abound.

Flores-Cale ran for city council in Kyle because she felt she could help address some of those issues, while also serving as a bridge between longtime residents and the city’s newer arrivals. She wasn’t “trying to be political,” said the 43-year-old. “I was trying to be a part of change.”

She was apprehensive at first, wondering whether she, a gay Black woman, would be accepted. Her concerns have largely been put to rest. She has found her community, along with a taste for Texas wines and a fondness for the recreational opportunities that come with the region’s scenic rivers and hills.

“San Marcos feels like a small town, but I’m a small-town girl, so I absolutely love it,” she said. “And Austin and San Antonio are only 40 minutes away if you want bright lights, big city.”

But the way she and her fellow citizens are represented in Congress bothers her. Her city is split down the middle, with one side of its main commercial center in one congressional district and the other side in the other. It all feels manufactured to achieve a partisan result, and to Lane, it goes in the same category as other attempts to discourage people from engaging in their democracy.

“My parents and grandparents were very active in ending voter suppression,” said Lane, who is originally from Georgia. “This is just another form of it. If you want people to vote for you, give them a reason. It’s really as simple as that.”

Yet getting voters to engage with the issue of gerrymandering is not so simple. Relatively arcane and abstract — with much of the action taking place out of sight — the question of where congressional district lines should be drawn has seldom captivated public attention.

The top elected local official in Hays, Judge Ruben Becerra (D), said he is attempting to change that, appointing a citizen commission to study the issue, help educate the public and advocate for the county in Austin.

“This gerrymandering that we deal with is so un-American,” he said.

Becerra, the first Latino to lead Hays, said he would like to see an independent commission, rather than the legislature, draw the new lines. He also wants his county in a single district, rather than split among three, so the community’s voice is amplified in Washington and its increasingly diverse populace is adequately represented.

While non-White voters in Texas have traditionally favored Democrats, as is true nationally, the state has offered recent reminders that many of those voters are far from locked in.

In the November election, surprisingly large gains in Latino support for Trump in the Rio Grande Valley helped solidify his victory statewide.

That’s one reason, experts say, that Republicans would be unwise to write off the state’s newest residents — and why Democrats shouldn’t take them for granted.

“It’s not automatic that these new residents will be logged into the Democratic ledger, particularly with Latinos and, to a certain extent, Asians as well,” said Sáenz, the demographer.

Walt Smith, for one, sees the newcomers as an opportunity. The former Capitol Hill staffer moved back to his native Texas to raise a family and now is a Republican member of the Hays County Commission.

The 45-year-old said many of his new neighbors and constituents are a lot like him. They didn’t want their children to grow up in cities experiencing upheaval and are trying to escape the political rhetoric and regulation associated with Democratic rule.

“Many feel like they are refugees from places like California and Colorado where they don’t feel heard,” Smith said. “They’ve come to our area because they don’t like taxes and want to have a more free place to live.”

Republicans statewide have said they plan to conduct a fair redistricting process, and Smith said he expects “there will be an honest effort to do everything as it’s supposed to be done.”

He also expects Democrats to challenge the new lines in court but doesn’t have much sympathy for the minority party’s inevitable complaints of unfair treatment.

It’s politics, after all.

“At the end of the day,” he said, “elections have consequences.”

 

Priorities for the DUI party...