https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/23/texas-voting-polling-restrictions/ The number of Election Day polling places in largely Democratic parts of major Texas counties would fall dramatically under a Republican proposal to change how Texas polling sites are distributed, a Texas Tribune analysis shows. Voting options would be curtailed most in areas with higher shares of voters of color. ... The formula would apply only to the state’s five largest counties — Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar and Travis — and possibly Collin County once new census figures are released later this year. ... In Harris County — home to Houston, the state's biggest city — the formula would mean fewer polling places in 13 of the 24 districts contained in the county, all currently represented by Democrats. Every district held by a Republican would either see a gain in polling places or see no change. ... In most cases, the districts that would lose polling places are represented by people of color and have a far higher share of potential voters of color than the districts that would gain voting sites. Represented by Republican Mike Schofield, House District 132, a more suburban district on the outer edge of the county, would see the biggest gain with 18 additional polling places. White citizens of voting age make up a plurality — 45.9% — in that district, according to U.S. Census estimates. House District 141 — represented by Democrat Senfronia Thompson, the longest serving Black person in the Legislature — would lose the most polling places with 11 fewer sites. About 59% of citizens of voting age in that district are Black. Roughly 86% of citizens of voting age are either Black or Hispanic.
That's the outcome. His point is that it's inept local planning which is a lie. In the end it is the Secretary of State who is appointed by Gregg Abbott. So might as well be Gregg Abbott if he's not too busy tweeting about White Guilt or on Sean Hannity.
so who set the number of polling places on the UT Austin campus at one? Republicans in the State House? directly? The Austin election board has no role to play here? serious questions. I'm not from Texas but I have a VERY hard time believing that Republicans in the State House micro-manage to the level of individual polling locations . . . does Austin not have a local election board?
not sure I understand the implications of "countywide voting," but from this article you have the bill's sponsors claiming that this is non-partisan in intent, even if critics or these headlines suggest otherwise: But in selecting voting sites, counties generally mull various factors beyond voter registration. They consider details like proximity to public transportation, past voter turnout, areas where voters may be more likely to vote by mail instead of in person and accessibility for voters with disabilities. In urban areas in particular, election officials also look to sites along thoroughfares that see high traffic to make polling places more convenient. Some of the Republican districts that would gain polling places under the proposed formula are situated toward the outskirts of a county or along the county line, while the Democratic seats losing voting sites are closer to the urban core. “It’s much more than throwing darts at a board,” said Isabel Longoria, the Harris County election administrator. “There’s a lot of parameters that go into choosing a location. It’s not based on partisanship or what House district you’re in but really what will provide access to voters historically, socially, culturally, transportation-wise and everything in between.” Counties like Harris must also confront historic and racist underdevelopment in communities that are home to large populations of people of color, particularly historic Black communities. In some suburban areas, Longoria posited, the county will be able to use a large high school gymnasium or community center where it can set up 20 to 30 voting machines, but in a historically Black neighborhood, they may need two smaller locations. State Sen. Bryan Hughes, the Mineola Republican who authored SB 7 and the new polling place formula, did not respond to a request for comment. In shepherding the bill through the Senate, Hughes told his colleagues he was aiming for polling places to be “distributed equally throughout the county, not favoring one party or the other.” “The goal of that [provision] is to make sure that if we do countywide voting, like many counties do … if it's a Republican county, we don't want them to be tempted to put all the polling places in the Republican areas, and we don't want the Democratic-run counties to do that either,” Hughes said during a March committee hearing. When pressed by Dallas Democrat Royce West on his focus on the state’s largest counties, Hughes said complaints about lopsided polling place distribution had come from those counties. He also wrongly claimed that countywide voting was initially only offered in larger counties. The 2020 election marked the first major election during which the state’s five largest counties all operated under the countywide model, but countywide voting is a familiar concept throughout the state. Lubbock County, south of the Panhandle, actually piloted the model in 2006. Travis County began using it as early as 2012, but the other large counties didn’t adopt it until 2019. So what's the situation here? explain it to me like I'm a five year old
Well that answers a lot. And yes they do micro manage polling locations. State house Republicans are some of the most partisan hacks in the country. I also just showed you the law that states that the Texas SOS create a program for polling locations and the commission just implements. Now I’m sure that there is back and forth with local organizers and officials at the areas at which the SOS deem a certain number of polls be, but they are restricted in the numbers of polls they can have in the vicinity by the SOS. It’s a good bet that they told the city of Austin you have to have a poll between Guadalupe and I35 given the concentration of people and the Commission and the city then worked with UT to organize the poll. However the poll spot that was on campus was also likely covering a much larger area of Austin and forcing voters to find their way on campus in an area with no parking and a cluster to get in and out. @Deckard would probably be able to speak to the Atx polling mess better than I could. The shenanigans they played with the Houston polling locations are just as bad too. I’m sure there are horror stories you can find in two clicks if you look half as hard as you look for Jonathan Turley opinion pieces.
Is he wrong? You have very strong opinions about things you admittedly know little to nothing about. If you actually care, why not spend the time learning instead of posting articles? You asked to explain it to you like you were a 5 year old - racism, election manipulation, etc are not things that a 5 year old is going to grasp and is not something that can be explained at that level. Go read about what the North Carolina GOP tried to do about a decade ago with black voters and the stupid mistakes they made to get caught. Maybe you'll better understand why modern GOPers aren't going to publicly say "hey yeah, this is our partisan way of decreasing minority voting".
for what it's worth, I've got some background on "countywide voting," the article cited earlier provided a link to this: Many Texans’ votes are lost when they go to the wrong polling place. Counties see countywide vote centers as an answer. The 2020 election could mark the first time the state's five largest counties allow residents to vote at any polling place instead of limiting them to precinct-based sites on Election Day. https://www.texastribune.org/2019/07/25/texas-countywide-voting-rights-problems-solutions/ sounds like a lot of Texas's election woes are an example of the Law of Unintended Consequences at work.
County vote centers are for early voting as it says in the article you just referenced. So your point about Unintended Consequences makes no sense.
I read county vote centers as enabling voters to vote anywhere within a county, as opposed to address-based precincts. I also inferred that counties elected themselves to go that route, as opposed to being forced to do it in top-down fashion. I may be wrong. Unintended consequences include the logistic questions of where to have polling places. As the article suggests, The switch from precinct-based voting locations to countywide vote centers is often followed by closures and consolidations of polling places both for logistical and cost-saving reasons. Because the criteria for those changes is typically based, in part, on traffic at each voting site, community leaders and voting rights advocates are wary that could translate to more polling location closures in areas with predominantly Hispanic, black and lower-income residents, who participate in elections at lower rates than white and more affluent Texans. So the state-level efforts now being attempted seem at least to me to be addressing the ripple effects of certain counties adopting countywide voting. This is why the article also observes: But even fervent supporters of countywide voting, who have publicly endorsed county efforts to implement it, are proceeding cautiously. So, in the original case, attempts to make sure voters' votes are counted even if cast in the wrong location have led now to a new slew of problems with siting and closing polling locations. Fears of polling location closures after a transition to countywide voting are not unfounded. Reports prepared by the secretary of state’s office every two years indicate more than 150 voting site closures or consolidations in Texas can be attributed to the statewide shift toward vote centers in recent years. And state law allows counties moving to vote centers to reduce the number of polling locations to 65% in the first election the model is in use and to 50% after that. or am I missing something here?
you know, one argument for precinct-based voting is that it helps establish a base level of minimal civic competency to vote: if you cannot figure out where you should be voting, then perhaps maybe you should not be voting.
