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      DoJ sues Texas over new voting law, saying restrictions violate civil rights

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      Biden administrationDoJ sues Texas over new voting law, saying restrictions violate civil rightsSuit takes aim at two specific provisions that deal with providing assistance to voters at the polls and mail-in voting Sam Levine in New YorkThu 4 Nov 2021 17.56 EDTLast modified on Thu 4 Nov 2021 20.54 EDTThe Biden administration filed a federal lawsuit challenging Texas’s new voting law on Thursday, saying some of the state’s new restrictions violate key civil rights laws.The suit takes aim at two specific provisions in the Texas law that deal with providing assistance to voters at the polls and mail-in voting, respectively.The first measure restricts the kind of assistance people can provide at the polls to voters, blocking them from explaining how voting works or breaking down complex language on the ballot.Senate Democrats poised for voting rights push to counter Republican restrictionsRead moreThat violates a provision of the Voting Rights Act that guarantees that anyone who requires assistance because of “blindness, disability, or inability to read or write” can receive assistance, the Department of Justice said.“Prohibiting assistors from answering voters’ questions, responding to requests to clarify ballot translations, and confirming that voters with visual impairments have marked a ballot as intended will curtail fundamental voting rights without advancing any legitimate state interest,” DoJ lawyers wrote in their complaint.The complaint targets a second provision that requires voters to provide identification information on mail-in ballot applications as well as the ballot return envelopes.The new Texas law says that election workers have to reject the ballots if there are discrepancies in the identification provided.The justice department said that violates a provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that says someone can’t be blocked from voting because of an error on a paper or record that is unrelated to their qualifications under state law to vote.“Conditioning the right to cast a mail ballot on a voter’s ability to recall and recite the identification number provided on an application for voter registration months or years before will curtail fundamental voting rights without advancing any legitimate state interest,” the complaint says.“Laws that impair eligible citizens’ access to the ballot box have no place in our democracy. Texas Senate Bill 1’s restrictions on voter assistance at the polls and on which absentee ballots cast by eligible voters can be accepted by election officials are unlawful and indefensible,” Kristen Clarke, the head of the Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement announcing the suit.“Texas leaders must be held accountable for their blatant abuse of power in a shameless attempt to keep themselves in power,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic party.The lawsuit comes as Joe Biden faces mounting pressure to enact federal legislation to protect voting rights.Republicans have successfully used the filibuster four times this year to block voting rights bills in the US Senate.The most recent filibuster came on Wednesday, when Republicans blocked a bill that would have restored a key part of the Voting Rights Act that required states with repeated evidence of voting discrimination, including Texas, to pre-clear voting laws with the federal government before they go into effect.Nineteen states have passed 33 laws this year restricting voting access, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. This is the second major voting rights suit Biden’s DoJ has filed this year. It sued Georgia over its sweeping new voting restrictions in June.Many of the laws are widely understood as an effort to make it harder for minority populations and low-income people to vote.Texas Republicans say the changes provide safeguards against voter fraud, which is exceedingly rare.“Biden is coming after Texas for SB1, our recently enacted election integrity law,” tweeted Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general. “It’s a great and a much-needed bill. Ensuring Texas has safe, secure, and transparent elections is a top priority of mine. I will see you in court, Biden!”The Associated Press contributed reportingTopicsBiden administrationUS politicsTexasUS voting rightsnewsReuse this content More

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      What you missed: results from five US races on Tuesday

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      US newsWhat you missed: results from five US races on TuesdayWhile Virginia’s gubernatorial election caught national attention, the results of these local votes across four states are worth noting Gloria Oladipo@gaoladipoWed 3 Nov 2021 18.35 EDTLast modified on Wed 3 Nov 2021 19.02 EDTTuesday was a busy day for voters across the country, as millions of Americans voted on local issues ranging from police reform to increasing voter accessibility.While some races garnered national attention – Glenn Youngkin’s win in the Virginia gubernatorial election, for example – other ballot questions remained more local.Here are five race results worth spotlighting from Tuesday.Republican Glenn Youngkin wins Virginia governor’s race in blow to BidenRead moreVoting reform referendums in New York StateIn New York, voters decided ‘no’ on two voting reform measures that would have allowed for same-day voter registration and no-excuse absentee voting, a practice already implemented in dozens of states and during the coronavirus pandemic.On the question of same-day voter registration, 49% of people voted ‘no’ while 38.93% voted ‘yes’, according to City & State.While Democrats and voting rights groups were in favor of the proposals, Republicans, on the whole, opposed the attempts at increasing voter expansion, citing familiar claims of voter fraud from the 2020 presidential election, noted NPR.Alvin Bragg elected Manhattan DAAlvin Bragg, a former federal prosecutor, was elected the district attorney of Manhattan, the first Black person to be in the influential role, reports the New York Times.Bragg, who campaigned on ensuring fair treatment for all defendants while also maintaining public safety, was one of seven Democrats who ran for the nomination after incumbent Democrat Cyrus R Vance Jr did not run for reelection.A large feature of Bragg’s campaign was his experience with the criminal justice system, one that he said informed his career and differentiated him from other candidates.“Having been stopped by the police”, said Bragg in an interview with the Times. “Having a homicide victim on my doorstep. Having had a loved one return from incarceration and live with me”.‘Prop A’ Police Staffing Plan in Austin, TexasVoters in Austin, Texas overwhelmingly rejected ‘Prop A’ on Tuesday, a plan to hire hundreds of police officers despite city officials saying that significant budget cuts elsewhere would be needed to do so, reports the Austin American-Statesman.Of the more than 155,000 votes submitted, 68% voted against ‘Prop A’ with only 31% in favor of the proposition.The vast rejection of ‘Prop A’ came as a surprise to some who thought the results on the referendum would be tighter.Throughout the campaign, opposition came from multiple sides for the plan. Labor unions for Austin firefighters and EMS expressed their concerns about the plan, worried that jobs would be cut in those sectors to finance more police officers. Additionally, 10 out of 11 Austin council members were against the proposition.After the early voting election results, Austin mayor Steve Adler tweeted a statement of celebration about the measure’s failing.This election reaffirms our community’s belief that public safety for all requires a comprehensive system that includes properly staffing our police, but also our fire, EMS, and mental health responses as well.— Mayor Adler | Get vaccinated! (@MayorAdler) November 3, 2021
      State Senate President Race in New JerseyIn New Jersey, Edward Durr, a Republican truck driver who apparently spent approximately $153 to finance his campaign, will probably defeat incumbent Democrat state senate president Steve Sweeney, who has held the second most powerful political position in New Jersey for almost 12 years, reports NBC.While an official winner has not been called, with more than 99% of precincts reporting, Durr has received 52% of the vote while Sweeney received only 48%.In a YouTube interview, Durr said he entered the race after being denied a conceal carry permit despite having an unblemished record.Durr, who identifies as a “constitutional conservative”, said he was also sensed a growing distrust in Sweeney because of the Covid-19 pandemic and Sweeney’s inability to “challenge” New Jersey governor Phil Murphy’s Covid-19 executive orders, a shift in public opinion that Durr says contributed to his success as a candidate.In addition to opposing mask mandates and abortions, Durr also pledged to create a business friendly environment in New Jersey by cutting corporate, income, and other state taxes as well as property tax.Marijuana support in PhiladelphiaA referendum in Philadelphia that asked voters if they supported the legalization of marijuana overwhelmingly passed, signaling to Pennsylvania lawmakers where residents fall on the issue.With 96% of precincts reporting, about 72% of people voted ‘yes’ to urge the Pennsylvania state legislature to legalize marijuana, according to Philly Voice. The ballot question is not legally binding and doesn’t automatically make weed legal in the state, but symbolizes that the majority of voters want marijuana legalized.While Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf supports the legalization of recreational marijuana as a means of economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, drug legalization has faced opposition from Pennsylvania’s Republican legislature.Weed was decriminalized in Philadelphia in 2014, but recreational use of marijuana in Pennsylvania remains illegal. Two previous bills introduced in 2019 to legalize marijuana have failed.TopicsUS newsElections 2021US politicsPhiladelphiaNew YorkNew JerseyTexasnewsReuse this content More

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      How Texas Republicans are rigging the system against minority voters | The fight to vote

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      Fight to voteTexasHow Texas Republicans are rigging the system against minority votersRepublicans currently have a 23-13 advantage over Democrats, and the new map gives them a good chance to pick up two extra seats – what might happen next? The fight to vote is supported byAbout this contentSam Levine in New YorkThu 28 Oct 2021 10.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 28 Oct 2021 10.01 EDTSign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterHello Fight to vote readers,You don’t have to be an expert to see why Texas’ new maps for its state legislature and congress discriminate against minority voters. Ninety-five per cent of the state’s growth over the last decade has been driven by minorities. But the new maps Texas enacted don’t include a single new district where there is a Hispanic majority.It’s an astounding fact that underscores how powerfully Texas Republicans have wielded the control they have over the once-a-decade redistricting process.Republicans currently have a 23-13 advantage over Democrats in the congressional delegation, and the new map gives them a good chance to pick up the two extra seats.The boundaries of several of the congressional districts Donald Trump barely won in 2020 have become safe GOP seats. I wrote about one of those districts, the 22nd congressional district a few weeks ago. The new map transforms it from one Trump won by about 1 percentage point in 2020 to one he would have carried by 16 points.A few days before the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, approved the maps, I spoke with Nina Perales, a lawyer at the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (Maldef), who filed the first of two lawsuits challenging the maps, and who is one of the most widely respected redistricting attorneys in the country. I asked her to walk me through how exactly Texas Republicans had gone about entrenching control and what might happen next.“These maps are intended to protect incumbents against the effects of demographic change,” said Perales, who has been involved in Texas redistricting cases for decades. “They’re also maps to kind of protect white voters and the power of white voters at the expense of clearly Latino voters, because Latinos are the large demographic that’s growing very quickly.”Of the two new seats, “one is made into a white majority Republican seat. And the other one is made into a white-majority Democratic seat. So white people win and people of color don’t get anything,” she added.Texas has a long history of discriminating against minority voters in redistricting – courts have struck down districts in every redistricting cycle since the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965. For years a key provision of the act required Texas to get its maps pre-approved by the federal government before they went into effect. But the US supreme court gutted that provision in 2013. That means this year will be the first time since 1965 that Texas won’t have to get its maps pre-cleared before they go into effect.That puts Perales and other people challenging the maps at a huge disadvantage. One reason is that the burden now falls on those who challenge the map to demonstrate why districts are discriminatory. Before, the burden was on Texas to show why the maps didn’t discriminate.“Essentially, we have to prove race discrimination. That’s very hard to prove. The working assumption is always going to be that the state did not discriminate. And it’s our burden to establish that the state did discriminate. And courts are just very, very reluctant to accept the idea that a state actor has discriminated on the basis of race, even unintentionally.”The new Texas districts should be the poster child that show why pre-clearance is still needed, Perales said. Given clear evidence of recent discrimination in redistricting, Texas should have a burden to show why the new plans don’t discriminate, Perales said.Yet as they were drawing the districts, Republicans were already building a shield against claims that the maps were drawn with race in mind. “I’ve stated it, and I’ll state it again – we drew these maps race blind,” Joan Huffman, the GOP state senator, who oversaw the redistricting process in her chamber said during a public hearing.Perales said that kind of claim was “a lie”.“Do you think she was blind to the fact that the Rio Grande Valley is heavily Hispanic? Or the border region is heavily Hispanic? Do you think the historic wards of Houston, historic Black neighborhoods, that she’s somehow unaware of those things? It’s just not true,” she said.When she testified at one of the legislature’s redistricting hearings, Perales urged lawmakers not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Afterwards she realized she had said something nearly identical during the redistricting cycle 10 years ago.“I feel almost cursed,” she said. “I go to these hearings. I tell them about the cases that they’ve lost. I tell them not to repeat the mistakes. I tell them the plans are likely illegal. And they go ahead and do it anyway.”Reader questionsThank you to everyone who wrote in last week with questions. You can continue to write to me each week at sam.levine@theguardian.com or DM me on Twitter at @srl and I’ll try and answer as many as I can.Andy in Washington writes: Are there mechanisms that can be put into place to help reduce lawsuits (such as those impacting election law) that have no sound basis before they drag through the courts? Asking this because we all watched as the Trump team put the legal system to task claiming election fraud, and lost over 50 of these cases. It was clear to most rational people what was going on, yet our legal system allowed this continuance of abuse of power to great detriment.Yes, there are mechanisms in place that are supposed to hold bad-faith actors accountable in the legal system.In August, a federal judge in Detroit sanctioned Sidney Powell and L Lin Wood, two attorneys involved in several of Trump’s post-election suits, for making bad-faith arguments. Powell and Wood were ordered to take legal education classes and pay attorneys fees to the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan. Rudy Giuliani also had his law license suspended in New York and Washington DC for spreading election lies.TopicsTexasFight to voteUS voting rightsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Former Trump Lawyer to Oversee Election Review in Texas

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      The selection of a new secretary of state arrives as Gov. Greg Abbott is facing pressure to allow an expanded 2020 election audit in Texas.HOUSTON — Amid pressure from former President Donald J. Trump to support a broad review of the 2020 election in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday appointed as secretary of state a lawyer who briefly joined Mr. Trump’s challenge to the 2020 results in Pennsylvania.The new secretary of state, John Scott, will oversee Texas elections at a time when a new law imposing further restrictions on voting and a Republican redistricting plan have raised alarm among voting rights advocates that the state’s growing nonwhite population would not be fairly represented.More immediately, Mr. Scott, a Fort Worth lawyer who worked for Mr. Abbott when he was the state’s attorney general, will take charge of a limited review of the 2020 election results that Mr. Abbott, a Republican, ordered last month for four of the most populous counties in Texas.“I am confident that John’s experience and expertise will enhance his oversight and leadership over the biggest and most thorough election audit in the country,” Mr. Abbott said in a statement announcing the appointment.Though he must eventually be confirmed by the State Senate, Mr. Scott can serve in the role in the interim. The Senate is not in regular session again until 2023.The appointment brought immediate criticism from Democrats and voting groups. “The timing of this announcement is clearly intended to subvert our democratic process in a way that allows Greg Abbott’s completely unsuitable nominee to oversee our 2022 elections without having to face confirmation hearings,” said Stephanie Gómez, the Texas associate director for Common Cause.Mr. Scott was among the lawyers representing Mr. Trump’s campaign as it filed suit to challenge the results of the November 2020 election in Pennsylvania, a state that President Biden won by 80,555 votes.But Mr. Scott withdrew from the case, as did another member of his law firm, Bryan Hughes, on the eve of a hearing, after a circuit court ruling that effectively gutted their arguments. The case was ultimately dismissed.“The lesson from the Pennsylvania case is that John Scott is a guy you can trust to follow the law,” said Mr. Hughes, a Republican state senator from Tyler, Texas. He added that, while in the attorney general’s office, Mr. Scott represented Texas in litigation over the state’s voter identification law, “so this area of the law is not unfamiliar to him.”Mr. Hughes was the lead sponsor of Texas’ restrictive new election rules, which passed this year over concerted opposition from Democrats. The new rules broaden the authority of the secretary of state in elections.No credible evidence has emerged of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election in Texas or in any other state. Mr. Trump carried the state by more than 5 percentage points and Republicans maintained a lock on the statehouse despite a well-funded effort by Democrats to try to flip control.Still, with supporters of Mr. Trump believing he should have won the state by an even greater margin, Mr. Abbott has faced growing calls for legislation authorizing a “forensic audit” of the 2020 presidential vote in Texas. Last month, Mr. Trump wrote a letter to Mr. Abbott urging him to back the legislation.“Despite my big win in Texas, I hear Texans want an election audit! You know your fellow Texans have big questions about the November 2020 Election,” read the letter, steeped in arcane Texas legislative language and signed by the former president.Political operatives in the state have suspected that the former president received assistance in his foray into Austin politics by Texas conservatives, perhaps the lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who twice chaired Mr. Trump’s campaign in the state. Under Mr. Patrick’s leadership, the Senate has already passed a 2020 election review bill.Trump’s Bid to Subvert the ElectionCard 1 of 6A monthslong campaign. More

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      Republicans move to tighten grip on Texas after redistricting map approved

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      TexasRepublicans move to tighten grip on Texas after redistricting map approvedRedrawn map, expected to strengthen Republican numbers, faces final negotiations before being sent to Governor Greg Abbott Edward Helmore and agenciesSun 17 Oct 2021 12.27 EDTRepublicans have moved to tighten their grip on power in Texas after a late-night vote in the state’s legislature approved an early sign-off to new congressional boundaries at the expense of communities of color.The Republican-led effort will give the party powers over redrawn US House maps and shore up its eroding dominance in Texas, whose demographics are becoming less white in a shift that most experts see as favoring Democrats.The redrawn congressional districts would make make it easier for many Republican incumbents to hold their seats, but critics say they also threaten Black and Hispanic communities’ political influence.The district map contained in Senate Bill 6 is expected to strengthen Republican numbers in the state’s delegation to Washington from the current 23-13 split in favor of Republicans to a 24-14 or 25-13 advantage, according to the Austin American-Statesman.Republicans say the districts, which were drawn by the Texas state senate, adhered to federal voting rights law. Texas Democrats objected to the proposed districts, arguing that Republicans had failed to respect or reflect the sharp increase in Latino, Black and Asian populations who make up more than half of the nearly 4m new Texans over the past decade. The increase gave Texas two seats in Congress last year.“This map is a bad map,” said Democratic representative Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, a city in Dallas County. “It’s a map that does not reflect that the tremendous growth of our state is 95% attributable to Texans of color. It gives the two new districts that Texas received to Anglos.”Another Dallas-area democrat, Rafael Anchía, said that SB 6 would increase Anglo-majority districts from 22 to 23, while districts where Hispanics make up the majority of voters would be reduced from 8 to 7. The state’s sole majority-Black district would disappear.“That doesn’t work morally, it doesn’t work mathematically, and it shouldn’t work in redistricting,” Anchía told the Austin American-Statesman newspaper. But Houston senator Joan Huffman, the Republican author of SB 6, has said that she created a redistricting plan “blind to race” that meets the requirements of the Voting Rights Act.The redistricting maps still face final negotiations between the Texas upper and lower chambers before being sent to Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, who is expected to sign them.The measures are expected to trigger court challenges by Democrats and voting rights advocates in what could be another high-profile, high-stakes legal battle that has already made Texas the center of abortion rights and immigration battles.Republicans, who control both chambers, have nearly complete control of map-making process, and are working off maps that the courts have already declared as tilted, or gerrymandered, in their favor.Representative Van Taylor, for example, whose district in Dallas’ exurbs went for Donald Trump by a single percentage point last year. Under the new maps, reports the Associated Press, Trump would have won the district by double-digits.Michael McCaul, representative of Texas’ 10th Congressional District, stretching from Austin to Houston could now represent a solidly pro-Trump district, after Houston’s exurbs were peeled away.Furthermore, the district stretching from the Rio Grande Valley to San Antonio that President Joe Biden won by just over 2% would now slightly tilt toward Trump voters.But some incumbent Democrats, too, came away with advantages by changing the configuration that placed two Democratic African-American representatives, Sheila Jackson Lee and US Representative Al Green, in the same Harris county district. Another Democratic amendment returned Fort Bliss to the district based in nearby El Paso.TopicsTexasRepublicansGreg AbbottUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Para los demócratas, estos son los votantes clave en Texas

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      Una nueva y ambiciosa campaña pretende atraer a los jóvenes texanos que no están registrados para votar o no acuden a las urnas sistemáticamente.HOUSTON — Cristina Tzintzún-Ramirez está convencida de saber cuál es el secreto para que Texas se convierta en un estado demócrata.La juventud.Cuando se postuló para dirigir NextGen America, un grupo liberal respaldado por el multimillonario y excandidato a la presidencia Tom Steyer, ella dejó en claro dos cosas: que no iba a salir de Austin y que la organización tendría que invertir tiempo y dinero en Texas.Además, se enfocó en un número mágico: 631.000 votos, que fue el margen de triunfo con el que los republicanos ganaron el estado en 2020.Ahora, NextGen tiene como meta dos millones de votantes en Texas: 1,1 millón de electores de entre 18 y 30 años de edad que están registrados para votar pero que no acudido a las urnas de manera sistemática en las últimas elecciones; otros 277.000 electores jóvenes que no votaron en 2020; y 565.000 personas que han identificado como “progresistas jóvenes” que no están registrados. Si solo una tercera parte del total saliera a votar —aproximadamente 633.000 personas—, sería suficiente para que los demócratas superaran el margen de los republicanos.“Hay una enorme cantidad de jóvenes que aún no se registran para votar, así que tenemos que lograr que crean en su propio poder”, señaló Tzintzún-Ramirez, quien es la presidenta actual de NextGen y ha trabajado en la política de Texas durante más de 15 años. “La gente pensaba que la demografía bastaba, pero en realidad tenemos que salir y convencer a esa población de que vote”.Esta organización está pensando gastar casi 16 millones de dólares en Texas durante los próximos dos años para registrar a nuevos electores y llevarlos a las casillas en las elecciones intermedias de 2022. El proyecto representa una parte del gasto más importante de los demócratas en Texas y tiene como objetivo captar a los jóvenes, un grupo que el partido espera que sirva para poner fin al control republicano en ese estado.No obstante, los demócratas tienen que subir una cuesta muy escarpada. La meta de ganar Texas, el estado del país más grande controlado por los republicanos, se les ha escapado desde hace mucho tiempo: su partido ha gastado muy poco o nada, la manipulación partidista les dificulta ganar las elecciones y la cámara estatal lidera con eficacia el flanco derecho de los republicanos.Además, con singular entusiasmo, los republicanos siguen haciendo circular el dinero en ese estado: el gobernador Greg Abbott recaudó casi 19 millones de dólares solo en los últimos diez días de junio, mucho más dinero del que NextGen piensa gastar en el estado durante los próximos dos años. Varios de los cheques para el gobernador fueron por un millón de dólares, algo que ocurre de manera habitual en el caso de los republicanos de Texas, donde no existen límites de donación en las contiendas estatales.“El dinero no lo es todo, pero es mucho mejor que nada”, comentó Julián Castro, exalcalde de San Antonio y excandidato a la presidencia. “Es primordial aumentar las cifras, cuando hay tantos votantes poco asiduos; registrar votantes cuesta dinero”.Cristina Tzintzún-Ramirez cree que a los jóvenes los motivan más los temas que los candidatos en sí.Annie Mulligan para The New York TimesTzintzún-Ramirez piensa que a los jóvenes los motivan más los temas que los candidatos en sí y que el trabajo del grupo complementará cualquier gasto en las campañas. La mayor parte de estas, señaló, se enfocan en los electores con los que ya cuentan o en los indecisos, y “movilizar a los jóvenes no es parte de la ecuación y no es rentable para la mayoría de las campañas”.Según el Centro para la Información y la Investigación sobre Educación Cívica de la Universidad Tufts, el año pasado, aproximadamente el 50 por ciento de las personas menores de 30 años votaron en las elecciones presidenciales, un aumento del 11 por ciento en comparación con 2016. La información del censo muestra que Texas es el segundo estado más grande del país y que su población también es una de las más jóvenes y diversas. En la última década, la gente de color representó el 95 por ciento del crecimiento estatal y, ahora, los texanos blancos conforman menos del 40 por ciento de la población del estado.Tal vez no sea suficiente inundar de dinero el estado en un momento en que el Partido Demócrata de Texas enfrenta obstáculos importantes: una disminución del entusiasmo entre los electores, actitudes políticas cambiantes, restricciones de votación más estrictas y una reestructuración de los distritos que favorece a los republicanos. Además, aunque desde hace mucho tiempo la demografía se ha considerado una ventaja para los demócratas conforme el estado se vuelve más diverso, en las últimas elecciones, una cantidad considerable de electores latinos de la zona fronteriza decidieron votar por el Partido Republicano.Para los republicanos, quienes creen que el discurso de darle la vuelta a las votaciones en el estado no es más que propaganda demócrata, esas donaciones de siete cifras para su propio partido reflejan un entusiasmo hacia el Partido Republicano.“Desde luego que el dinero influye, pero los demócratas han afirmado una y otra vez que Texas estaba a punto de volverse demócrata y vieron truncadas sus esperanzas”, comentó el senador Ted Cruz, quien criticó a Beto O’Rourke en su contienda por el Senado en 2018 por atraer tantas donaciones de los liberales de otras partes del país.La dificultad para los demócratas se puso de manifiesto durante un mitin que dio inicio a los esfuerzos de registro de votantes de NextGen en la Universidad de Houston. En el evento subieron al escenario varios líderes demócratas, uno tras otro, en un intento de convencer a la pequeña multitud del poder que tienen los jóvenes votantes.Pero al final, cuando Sheila Jackson Lee y Al Green, dos congresistas negros, subieron al escenario, quedaron claros los límites de ese poder.Los republicanos que elaboraron el borrador de un nuevo mapa del Congreso fusionaron sus dos distritos en uno solo, lo que plantea la posibilidad de que dos de los integrantes más veteranos de la delegación demócrata del Congreso del estado se vean obligados a competir entre sí. Jackson Lee y Green se han opuesto al nuevo mapa, al decir que parece ser discriminatorio.“Vamos a tener que pelear”, dijo Green en una entrevista. “Habrá que protestar. Eso requerirá energía. Se necesitarán recursos. Y los conseguiremos”.El multimillonario y excandidato presidencial Tom Steyer fundó NextGen en 2013.Annie Mulligan para The New York TimesDesde hace mucho tiempo, Texas —donde hay más de 650.000 millonarios, más que en cualquier otro estado, a excepción de California— ha sido una especie de cajero automático para los candidatos de ambos partidos en otras partes del país, casi siempre en detrimento de los candidatos locales.Apenas hace ocho años, cuando Paul Sadler contendió por un escaño en el Senado contra Cruz, que en ese entonces apenas empezaba, los demócratas del país casi no hicieron nada para apoyar su campaña, afirmó. Cruz recaudó más de 14 millones de dólares. Sadler no llegó ni siquiera a un millón de dólares.“No tuvieron ninguna participación”, comentó el exlegislador estatal Sadler acerca de los grupos demócratas a nivel nacional. “Tomaron el mapa y eliminaron a Texas por completo. Me decepcioné muchísimo. Ni siquiera lo intentaban”.Más bien, los dirigentes demócratas de todo el país trataron a Texas como si fuera una alcancía y recaudaron dinero de donantes que vivían ahí para las campañas de otros estados. “Nadie creía que Texas podría ganarse, pero ahora es un lugar diferente”, señaló.De hecho, en las elecciones presidenciales de la última década, se han reducido o se han mantenido igual los márgenes del Partido Republicanos en Texas. En 2012, Mitt Romney ganó Texas con 57 por ciento de los votos. Donald Trump recibió 52 por ciento de los votos en 2016 y una vez más en 2020.El gasto demócrata ha crecido al mismo tiempo en los últimos ciclos: mientras que unos 75 millones de dólares se destinaron a los candidatos demócratas en el estado en 2016, aproximadamente 213 millones de dólares se destinaron a los candidatos demócratas en 2020. Esa cifra de 2020 seguía siendo empequeñecida por los 388 millones de dólares gastados en candidatos republicanos, según Open Secrets, que rastrea el gasto político en todo el país.Debido al tamaño de Texas, tanto demócratas como republicanos gastan más dinero allí que en casi cualquier otro estado del país. Pero el porcentaje gastado en candidatos demócratas es uno de los más bajos del país. Aproximadamente el 35 por ciento de todo el gasto político en Texas se destina a los demócratas, según Open Secrets. En Wisconsin, un estado clave en las elecciones, el 49 por ciento se destina a los demócratas.Ya ha habido algunos intentos de inversión de alto nivel en el estado: la campaña de Michael Bloomberg gastó varios millones de dólares a favor de Joe Biden durante las primarias presidenciales de 2020. En 2014, Battleground Texas, un esfuerzo liderado por exasesores de Barack Obama, gastó millones solo para que todos los demócratas perdieran en las elecciones estatales.Rafael Anchia, un legislador demócrata estatal de Dallas, quien preside el Comité Legislativo Mexicoestadounidense, señaló que la campaña de O’Rourke fue el único esfuerzo reciente de los demócratas a nivel estatal con un presupuesto lo suficientemente alto como para cubrir todo el estado. Anchia afirmó que, al igual que otros demócratas de Texas, ha defendido ante los donantes del país que ese estado podría ser competitivo.“Texas ya no se considera una quimera”, comentó. “Tiene una población parecida a la de California, pero ha sido un estado de baja participación y de bajas votaciones”.Claudia Yoli Ferla, directora ejecutiva de MOVE Texas, anima a los asistentes en un evento de NextGen en Houston.Annie Mulligan para The New York TimesQuizás uno de los obstáculos más difíciles que hay que superar sea la apatía. En una reunión de planificación de NextGen en McAllen, en la frontera con México, varios estudiantes dijeron que su mayor reto sería convencer a sus compañeros para que votaran.“Para la gente, la política es un tema incómodo o algo que en realidad no le afecta en absoluto”, comentó Rebecca Rivera, una estudiante de 21 años de la Universidad de Texas en el Valle del Río Grande. “Han perdido la confianza en el gobierno o, para empezar, nunca la tuvieron en realidad”.Jennifer Medina es reportera de política estadounidense que cubrió la campaña presidencial de Estados Unidos de 2020. Originaria del sur de California, anteriormente pasó varios años reportando sobre la región para la sección National. @jennymedina More

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      Why Democrats Say Young Voters Are Crucial to Flipping Texas

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      Young people who are unregistered or do not vote consistently are the focus of an ambitious new push to turn Texas blue, a long-elusive goal for Democrats.HOUSTON — Cristina Tzintzún-Ramirez is convinced she knows the secret to turning Texas blue.Young people.When she applied to lead NextGen America, a liberal group backed by the billionaire and former presidential candidate Tom Steyer, she made two things clear. She was not leaving Austin, and the organization would have to spend time and money in Texas.And she was focused on a magic number: 631,000 votes. That was the margin of victory for Republicans in the state in 2020.Now, NextGen is targeting nearly 2 million voters in Texas: 1.1 million voters between the ages of 18 and 30 who are registered to vote but have not cast ballots consistently in recent elections; another 277,000 young voters who did not vote in 2020; and 565,000 people they have identified as “young progressives” who are unregistered. If just a third of the total turns out to vote — roughly 633,000 people — it would be enough for Democrats to overcome the Republican margin.“We have a huge number of young people who are not yet registered to vote, so we need to make them believe in their own power,” said Ms. Tzintzún-Ramirez, who is now the president of NextGen and who has worked in Texas politics for more than 15 years. “People believed demography is destiny, but we actually have to go out and convince those people to vote.”The organization is planning to spend nearly $16 million in Texas over the next two years to register new voters and get them to the polls in the 2022 midterm elections. The project marks some of the most significant Democratic spending in Texas that targets the young people the party hopes will help it break the Republican grip on the state.But Democrats have a steep hill to climb. The goal of flipping Texas, the country’s largest Republican-controlled state, has long eluded Democrats, after years of their party spending little to nothing, partisan gerrymandering making it more difficult for them to win elections and a statehouse that is effectively leading the Republican right flank.And Republicans enthusiastically keep the money flowing freely in the state: Gov. Greg Abbott raised nearly $19 million during the last 10 days of June alone, more money than NextGen plans to spend in the state in the next two years. Several of those checks to the governor were for $1 million, a regular occurrence for Republicans in Texas, where there are no donation limits in statewide races.“Money is not everything, but it’s a lot better than nothing,” said Julián Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio and a former presidential candidate. “It’s crucial to getting the numbers up, when you have so many people who are infrequent voters — voter registration drives cost money.”Cristina Tzintzún-Ramirez believes that young people are more motivated by issues than by individual candidates.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesMs. Tzintzún-Ramirez believes that young people are more motivated by issues than by individual candidates, and that the work of the group will supplement any campaign spending. Most campaigns, Ms. Tzintzún-Ramirez said, focus on reliable voters or swing voters, and “mobilizing young people doesn’t fit into that equation and simply isn’t cost effective for most campaigns.”Last year, roughly 50 percent of people under the age of 30 voted in the presidential election, an 11-point increase from 2016, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. Texas is the second-largest state in the country, and its population is also one of the youngest and most diverse, census data shows. People of color accounted for 95 percent of the state’s growth in the last decade, and white Texans now make up less than 40 percent of the state’s population.Flooding the state with money may not be enough at a time when the Democratic Party in Texas faces significant hurdles — flagging voter enthusiasm, shifting political attitudes, tighter voting restrictions and redistricting that favors Republicans. And while demographics have long been seen as a boon to Democrats as the state grows more diverse, a significant number of Hispanic voters near the border swung toward Republicans in the last election.For Republicans who believe the talk of flipping the state is nothing but Democratic hype, those seven-figure donations to their own party reflect the enthusiasm for the G.O.P.“Money certainly makes a difference, but Democrats have over and over again claimed that Texas was on the verge of turning blue only to have their hopes dashed,” said Senator Ted Cruz, who criticized Beto O’Rourke in their 2018 Senate race for attracting so many donations from liberals in other parts of the country.The difficulty for Democrats was on full display during a rally kicking off NextGen’s voter registration efforts at the University of Houston, where one Democratic leader after another took the stage to convince the small crowd of young voters’ power.But by the end, when Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green, two Black members of Congress, took the stage, the limits of that power became clear.The Republicans who drew the draft of a new congressional map merged their two districts into one — raising the possibility that two of the longest-serving members of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation may be forced to run against each other. Ms. Jackson Lee and Mr. Green have objected to the redrawn map, saying it appears to be discriminatory.“We are going to have to fight,” Mr. Green said in an interview. “That will take protest. That will take energy. That will take resources. And we will get them.” Tom Steyer, the billionaire and former presidential candidate, founded NextGen in 2013. Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesTexas — with more than 650,000 millionaires, more than any other state except California — has long been a kind of A.T.M. for candidates from both parties in other parts of the country, often to the detriment of local candidates.Just eight years ago, when Paul Sadler ran for the Senate seat against Mr. Cruz, then a newcomer, national Democrats did next to nothing to support his campaign, he said. Mr. Cruz raised more than $14 million. Mr. Sadler never even reached $1 million.“They played absolutely no role,” Mr. Sadler, a former state legislator, said of national Democratic groups. “They took the map and wrote off Texas completely. I was extraordinarily disappointed. They wouldn’t even try.”Instead, he said, national Democratic leaders treated Texas like a piggy bank, raising money from donors who lived there for campaigns in other states. “Nobody believed Texas could be won, but it is a different place today,” he said.Indeed, the margins for Republicans have shrunk or stayed the same in presidential elections in Texas over the last decade. In 2012, Republican Senator Mitt Romney won Texas with 57 percent of the vote. In 2016, Donald J. Trump earned 52 percent. Last year, Mr. Trump again won 52 percent.Democratic spending has at the same time grown over the last several cycles: While about $75 million went to Democratic candidates in the state in 2016, roughly $213 million went to Democratic candidates in 2020. That 2020 number was still dwarfed by the $388 million spent on Republican candidates, according to Open Secrets, which tracks political spending across the country.Because of Texas’ size, both Democrats and Republicans spend more money there than in nearly any other state in the country. But the percentage spent on Democratic candidates is one of the lowest in the country. Roughly 35 percent of all political spending in Texas goes toward Democrats, according to Open Secrets. In Wisconsin, a key swing state in every election, 49 percent goes toward Democrats.There have been some high-profile attempts at investing in the state before: Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaign spent several million dollars for Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential primary. In 2014, Battleground Texas, an effort led by former Obama aides, spent millions — only to have every Democrat lose in statewide elections.Rafael Anchia, a Democratic state lawmaker from Dallas who is the chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, said Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign was the only statewide Democratic effort in recent memory with a large enough budget to reach across the state. Mr. Anchia said that like other Texas Democrats, he has made the case to national funders that the state could be competitive.“No longer is Texas considered this fool’s gold,” he said. “It has demographics similar to California’s but has been a low-turnout, low-voting state.”Claudia Yoli Ferla, executive director of MOVE Texas, rallies the crowd at a NextGen event in Houston.  Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesOne of the most difficult hurdles to overcome may be apathy. At a NextGen organizing meeting in McAllen, along the Mexican border, several students said their biggest challenge would be convincing their peers to vote at all.“People see politics as this uncomfortable conversation, or something that really doesn’t impact them at all,” said Rebecca Rivera, 21, a student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. “They have lost their faith in government, or didn’t ever really have it to begin with.” More