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      Alarm as Texas quietly restarts controversial voting program

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      Alarm as Texas quietly restarts controversial voting programProgram asks people on voter rolls to prove citizenship, sparking concern that eligible voters could be wrongfully targeted Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterTexas officials have quietly restarted a controversial program to ask people on the voter rolls to prove their citizenship, sparking alarm that thousands of eligible voters could be wrongfully targeted.The Texas secretary of state’s office has identified just under 12,000 people it suspects of being non-citizens since September, when the program restarted (there are more than 17 million registered voters in Texas). About 2,327 voter registrations have been cancelled so far. The vast majority of cancellations were because voters failed to respond to a notice giving them 30 days to prove their citizenship.Texas Republicans pass voting maps that entrench power of whitesRead moreThe secretary of state flags anyone as a suspected non-citizen if they register to vote and then subsequently visit the Texas department of public safety (DPS), the state’s driver’s license agency, and indicate they are not a citizen.Local election officials in Texas’ 254 counties are then asked to review the names. If those officials cannot verify citizenship, they are required to send them a letter asking them to prove their citizenship within 30 days or else their voter registration gets cancelled.But election officials in Harris county, the most populous in the state, are concerned about the accuracy of the data being used to challenge voters.After the county mailed proof of citizenship requests to 2,796 people, 167 voters – nearly 6% of those contacted – responded with proof of citizenship. The state removed an additional 161 people from the list of people whose citizenship needed to be verified, according to a county official.“We are not confident in the quality of the information we are being mandated to act upon,” Isabel Longoria, the county’s election administrator, said in an email.In Fort Bend county, just outside of Houston, officials mailed notices to 515 people in October. About 20% responded with proof of citizenship and the rest were removed from the rolls, according to John Oldham, the county’s election administrator. Many of the people who responded said they had accidentally checked a box during their DPS transaction indicating they were not citizens, Oldham said.In Cameron county, along the US-Mexico border, election officials have sent out 246 letter since September, almost all to people with Hispanic surnames, according to the Texas Monthly, which first reported the program restarted. About 60 people have been cancelled so far.After the notices went out, a married couple who had heard about the notices came into the elections office to provide their naturalization papers, even though the couple’s citizenship wasn’t challenged, said Remi Garza, the county elections administrator.“It saddened me too,” Garza said. “People who shouldn’t have to be concerned about this type of proving citizenship felt that they had to do that.”Voting rights groups say they are trying to better understand the process the state is using, but are concerned eligible voters are getting targeted.“​​A US citizen voter who gets a challenge letter is understandably intimidated. And especially for naturalized US citizens, who went through an entire bureaucratic process to be able to vote, getting a letter that accuses them of being an ineligible voter is particularly intimidating,” said Nina Perales, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “People will naturally assume, based on this official correspondence, that they might have made some kind of mistake, or that they are not proper voters.”The program had been on hold since 2019, when a federal judge ordered Texas to stop a similar, error-filled, effort that he described as “ham-handed”. As part of a settlement in that case, Texas agreed to only flag people if they registered to vote prior to the DPS visit in which they indicated they weren’t a citizen. It also agreed to reinstate and challenge voters who provided proof of citizenship, even if it was outside the 30-day window.The citizenship check comes as Republicans have moved to blunt the rapidly growing political power of Texas’ non-white population. Texas prosecutors have sought criminal punishments for people, including non-citizens, who make voting mistakes and the attorney general, Ken Paxton, has zealously pursued claims of voter fraud, which is exceedingly rare in Texas and elsewhere.Bruce Elfant, whose office oversees voter registration in Travis county, said his office so far has internally been able to confirm that less than 100 of the 300 to 400 people flagged by the secretary of state’s office were citizens. Most in the group had been flagged because of clerical errors, he said. His office has not yet sent out any challenge notices and is waiting for more information before it does so.In El Paso county, state officials referred 4,000 suspected non-citizens for review, and around 300 had already offered proof of citizenship, said Lisa Wise, the county’s election administrator. The county isn’t currently cancelling the registration of any voter who doesn’t respond, she said.Federal law prohibits officials from conducting mass voter cancellations within 90 days of a primary election. Texas’ primary is on 1 March, so the state can’t remove anyone who doesn’t respond to a proof of citizenship letter until later this spring.Thomas Buser-Clancy, a senior staff attorney with the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said his organization was trying to understand why eligible voters were being flagged, but it was clear “something is not going right”.“Even if your system flags one eligible voter and threatens to remove them, that’s a problem,” he said. “If you have hundreds, and if you add it up across counties, you’re probably getting to thousands of eligible voters, being threatened with removal.”Sam Taylor, a spokesman for the Texas secretary of state’s office said he was confident in the data.“We’re following the settlement agreement exactly as we’re supposed to. If the counties have additional information where they’re able to cross people off the list who have in fact become citizens and they’re lawfully registered to vote, that’s great. That’s how the process is supposed to work.”But Buser-Clancy noted that those who were able to affirm their citizenship likely only represented a fraction of the eligible voters who were probably affected.“Those people are the lucky ones that both received the notice, like actually went through their mail, looked it up, and had the documentation on hand to send in,” he added. “What that tells you is that there’s some other percentage of people who are going to be removed from the rolls even though they’re eligible voters.”Download original documentTopicsTexasThe fight to voteUS voting rightsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Phil Waldron's Unlikely Role in Pushing Baseless Election Claims

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      Phil Waldron, who owns a bar in Texas, is a case study in how pro-Trump fringe players managed to get a hearing for conspiracy theories at the highest level during the presidential transition.A few days after President Biden’s inauguration put to rest one of the most chaotic transitions in U.S. history, a former Army colonel with a background in information warfare appeared on a Christian conservative podcast and offered a detailed account of his monthslong effort to challenge the validity of the 2020 vote count.In a pleasant Texas drawl, the former officer, Phil Waldron, told the hosts a story that was almost inconceivable: how a cabal of bad actors, including Chinese Communist officials, international shell companies and the financier George Soros, had quietly conspired to hack into U.S. voting machines in a “globalist/socialist” plot to steal the election.In normal times, a tale like that — full of wild and baseless claims — might have been dismissed as the overheated rantings of a conspiracy theorist. But the postelection period was not normal, providing all sorts of fringe players an opportunity to find an audience in the White House.Mr. Waldron stands as a case study. Working in conjunction with allies of President Donald J. Trump like Rudolph W. Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, a member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus — and in tandem with others like Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser and a retired lieutenant general — Mr. Waldron managed to get a hearing for elements of his story in the very center of power in Washington.Last week, the House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 issued a subpoena to Mr. Waldron, saying that it wanted to know more about his role in circulating an explosive PowerPoint presentation on Capitol Hill and to Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s last chief of staff.The presentation, which Mr. Meadows gave to the committee (and which he said he never acted on), counseled Mr. Trump to declare a national emergency and to invalidate all digital votes in a bid to stay in power — the same advice that other election deniers gave him at the time.Committee officials have given Mr. Waldron, who retired from the military in 2016 and now owns a bar in Central Texas, until Jan. 10 to turn over any relevant documents. They have also tentatively set a deposition for the week after.When The New York Times sent a reporter last week to Mr. Waldron’s bar, outside of Austin, he told the reporter to leave his property immediately. He then called the local sheriff and described the reporter’s car, adding that the reporter was slurring his words and seemed impaired.Mr. Waldron, who owns a bar in Texas, above, became part of a network of Trump supporters pushing election fraud claims.ReutersIt remains unclear whether Mr. Waldron will cooperate with the House committee. But the account he gave in January to the podcast, Flyover Conservatives, and in recent news articles, may give investigators plenty to work with.Mr. Waldron opened his story by saying that his “research” into the 2020 election began that summer, when he started to examine what he described as a network of nonprofit groups connected to Mr. Soros, an outspoken supporter of liberal causes who has long been at the center of right-wing, often antisemitic conspiracies.Understand the U.S. Capitol RiotOn Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.What Happened: Here’s the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.Timeline of Jan. 6: A presidential rally turned into a Capitol rampage in a critical two-hour time period. Here’s how.Key Takeaways: Here are some of the major revelations from The Times’s riot footage analysis.Death Toll: Five people died in the riot. Here’s what we know about them.Decoding the Riot Iconography: What do the symbols, slogans and images on display during the violence really mean?Around that time, Mr. Waldron said, he and his associates — whom he has never named — developed a relationship with a Texas cybersecurity company, Allied Security Operations Group, which was co-founded by a man named Russell J. Ramsland Jr.According to Mr. Waldron, Mr. Ramsland and his team had made a startling discovery: that the Chinese Communist Party, through software companies it controlled, had developed a way to flip votes on American tabulation machines, particularly those built by Dominion Voting Systems. (Dominion has adamantly denied its machines have security flaws and has filed defamation suits against some of those who have repeated the claims, including Fox News, Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell.)Beginning in August last year, months before Election Day, Mr. Waldron started to “raise an alarm,” as he put it, and tried to get anyone he could interested in his claim that the country’s voting machines were susceptible to hacking.He told the podcast hosts that he and his partners had reached out to officials in the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, all of which were run by Trump appointees at the time. Mr. Waldron said he also sent an email to Mr. Trump’s director of strategic communications, but all of it “fell on deaf ears.”But there was one person who listened, Mr. Waldron said: Mr. Gohmert, the Texas Republican and a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group that was traditionally loyal to Mr. Trump and ultimately played an outsize role in his efforts to overturn the election. By Mr. Waldron’s account, Mr. Gohmert promised to pass along his concerns about voting machines to the president, but apparently failed to do so until after the election. (Mr. Gohmert did not respond to questions seeking comment.)Representative Louie Gohmert, Republican of Texas, expressed concern this month over the treatment of the Capitol rioters.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesOnce the votes were cast and Mr. Trump was declared the loser, Mr. Waldron embarked on what amounted to a two-pronged assault on the election. First, with Mr. Ramsland’s company, Allied Security, he funneled information about supposedly suspicious spikes in votes and other dirt on Dominion Voting Systems to Ms. Powell, a pro-Trump lawyer who filed four unsuccessful lawsuits accusing Dominion of a conspiracy to hack the election.According to court papers filed by Dominion, Mr. Ramsland was hired that summer by Patrick M. Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com and a Trump supporter, to “reverse engineer” the evidence needed to “mislead people into believing” that the 2020 election had been rigged.When the legal challenges failed, Mr. Waldron took a new tack. He partnered with Mr. Giuliani, who was spearheading Mr. Trump’s attack on the election, and joined him at a series of unofficial election fraud hearings conducted by lawmakers in a handful of swing states. Mr. Giuliani did not respond to questions seeking comment on Mr. Waldron, but he has testified in a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion that he not only knew and admired Mr. Waldron, but also had “substantial dealings” with him.Even as he toured the country with Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Waldron appeared to have been working on a third attack on the election results: assembling the 38-slide PowerPoint presentation that ended up in Mr. Meadows’s possession. In his podcast interview, Mr. Waldron said that he and his associates had managed to get a nascent version of the proposal — to declare a national emergency and use the crisis to order a recount of paper ballots in eight key counties — to Mr. Trump around Thanksgiving, far earlier than public accounts had suggested.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 9The House investigation. More

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      Texas governor Greg Abbott stays silent on whether he will pardon George Floyd

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      Texas governor Greg Abbott stays silent on whether he will pardon George FloydParole board unanimously recommended pardon for 2004 drug arrest by ex-officer whose work is no longer trusted by prosecutors Doling out pardons is a Christmas tradition for Greg Abbott, who grants them typically for minor offenses committed years or decades ago. This year, one name stands out on the Republican Texas governor’s desk: George Floyd.Abbott has not said if he will posthumously pardon Floyd for a 2004 drug arrest in Houston by a former officer whose work is no longer trusted by prosecutors.Floyd, who was Black, spent much of his life in Houston before moving to Minnesota, where his murder by a white police officer, who knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes, led last year to a global reckoning on race and policing.Texas’ parole board – stacked with Abbott appointees – unanimously recommended a pardon for Floyd in October.Abbott, who is up for reelection in 2022, has given no indication of whether he will grant what would be only the second posthumous pardon in Texas history.“It doesn’t matter who you think George Floyd was, or what you think he stood for or didn’t stand for,” said Allison Mathis, a public defender in Houston who submitted Floyd’s pardon application. “What matters is he didn’t do this. It’s important for the governor to correct the record to show he didn’t do this.”A spokeswoman for Abbott did not respond to requests for comment.Pardons restore the rights of the convicted and forgive them in the eyes of the law. Floyd’s family and supporters said a posthumous pardon in Texas would show a commitment to accountability.In February 2004, Floyd was arrested in Houston for selling $10 worth of crack in a police sting. He pleaded guilty to a drug charge and served 10 months in prison.His case happened to be among dozens that prosecutors revisited in the fallout over a deadly drug raid in 2019 that resulted in murder charges against an officer, Gerald Goines, who is no longer with the Houston force.Prosecutors say Goines lied to obtain a search warrant in the raid that left a husband and wife dead, and the office of the Harris county district attorney, Kim Ogg, has dismissed more than 160 drug convictions tied to Goines.Goines has pleaded not guilty and his attorneys accuse Ogg of launching the review for political gain.Abbott has several primary challengers from the far right. His silence about a pardon for Floyd has raised questions over whether political calculations are at play. His office has not responded to those charges.Abbott attended Floyd’s memorial service last year in Houston, where he met family members and floated the idea of a George Floyd Act that deals with police brutality.But Abbott never publicly supported such a measure when lawmakers returned to the Capitol, where Republicans instead made police funding a priority.State senator Royce West, a Democrat who carried the George Floyd Act in the Senate, said he understands the politics if Abbott was waiting until after the primary in March. But he said the governor should act on the recommendation.“As he’s always said, he is a law and order governor,“ West said. “And this would be following the law.”TopicsGeorge FloydGreg AbbottTexasLaw (US)US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Map by Map, G.O.P. Chips Away at Black Democrats’ Power

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      Black elected officials in several states, from Congress down to the counties, have been drawn out of their districts this year or face headwinds to hold onto their seats.More than 30 years ago, Robert Reives Sr. marched into a meeting of his county government in Sanford, N.C., with a demand: Create a predominantly Black district in the county, which was 23 percent Black at the time but had no Black representation, or face a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act.The county commission refused, and Mr. Reives prepared to sue. But after the county settled and redrew its districts, he was elected in 1990 as Lee County’s first Black commissioner, a post he has held comfortably ever since.Until this year.Republicans, newly in power and in control of the redrawing of county maps, extended the district to the northeast, adding more rural and suburban white voters to the mostly rural district southwest of Raleigh and effectively diluting the influence of its Black voters. Mr. Reives, who is still the county’s only Black commissioner, fears he will now lose his seat.“They all have the same objective,” he said in an interview, referring to local Republican officials. “To get me out of the seat.”Mr. Reives is one of a growing number of Black elected officials across the country — ranging from members of Congress to county commissioners — who have been drawn out of their districts, placed in newly competitive districts or bundled into new districts where they must vie against incumbents from their own party.Almost all of the affected lawmakers are Democrats, and most of the mapmakers are white Republicans. The G.O.P. is currently seeking to widen its advantage in states including North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia and Texas, and because partisan gerrymandering has long been difficult to disentangle from racial gerrymandering, proving the motive can be troublesome.But the effect remains the same: less political power for communities of color.The pattern has grown more pronounced during this year’s redistricting cycle, the first since the Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and allowed jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination to pass election laws and draw political maps without approval from the Justice Department.How Maps Reshape American PoliticsWe answer your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.“Let’s call it a five-alarm fire,” G.K. Butterfield, a Black congressman from North Carolina, said of the current round of congressional redistricting. He is retiring next year after Republicans removed Pitt County, which is about 35 percent Black, from his district.“I just didn’t see it coming,” he said in an interview. “I did not believe that they would go to that extreme.”Redistricting at a GlanceEvery 10 years, each state in the U.S is required to redraw the boundaries of their congressional and state legislative districts in a process known as redistricting.Redistricting, Explained: Answers to your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.Breaking Down Texas’s Map: How redistricting efforts in Texas are working to make Republican districts even more red.G.O.P.’s Heavy Edge: Republicans are poised to capture enough seats to take the House in 2022, thanks to gerrymandering alone.Legal Options Dwindle: Persuading judges to undo skewed political maps was never easy. A shifting judicial landscape is making it harder.A former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Mr. Butterfield said fellow Black members of Congress were increasingly worried about the new Republican-drawn maps. “We are all rattled,” he said.In addition to Mr. Butterfield, four Black state senators in North Carolina, five Black members of the state House of Representatives and several Black county officials have had their districts altered in ways that could cost them their seats. Nearly 24 hours after the maps were passed, civil rights groups sued the state.Representative G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina said he was retiring next year after Republicans removed Pitt County, which is 35 percent Black, from his district.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesAcross the country, the precise number of elected officials of color who have had their districts changed in such ways is difficult to pinpoint. The New York Times identified more than two dozen of these officials, but there are probably significantly more in county and municipal districts. And whose seats are vulnerable or safe depends on a variety of factors, including the political environment at the time of elections.But the number of Black legislators being drawn out of their districts outpaces that of recent redistricting cycles, when voting rights groups frequently found themselves in court trying to preserve existing majority-minority districts as often as they sought to create new ones.“Without a doubt it’s worse than it was in any recent decade,” said Leah Aden, a deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. “We have so much to contend with and it’s all happening very quickly.”Republicans, who have vastly more control over redistricting nationally than Democrats do, defend their maps as legal and fair, giving a range of reasons.Kirk Smith, the Republican chairman of Lee County’s board of commissioners, said that “to say only a person of a certain racial or ethnic group can represent only a person of the same racial or ethnic group has all the trappings of ethnocentric racism.”In North Carolina and elsewhere, Republicans say that their new maps are race-blind, meaning officials used no racial data in designing the maps and therefore could not have drawn racially discriminatory districts because they had no idea where communities of color were.“During the 2011 redistricting process, legislators considered race when drawing districts,” Ralph Hise, a Republican state senator in North Carolina, said in a statement. Through a spokesperson, he declined to answer specific questions, citing pending litigation.His statement continued: “We were then sued for considering race and ordered to draw new districts. So during this process, legislators did not use any racial data when drawing districts, and we’re now being sued for not considering race.”In other states, mapmakers have declined to add new districts with majorities of people of color even though the populations of minority residents have boomed. In Texas, where the population has increased by four million since the 2010 redistricting cycle, people of color account for more than 95 percent of the growth, but the State Legislature drew two new congressional seats with majority-white populations.And in states like Alabama and South Carolina, Republican map drawers are continuing a decades-long tradition of packing nearly all of the Black voting-age population into a single congressional district, despite arguments from voters to create two separate districts. In Louisiana, Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, said on Thursday that the Republican-controlled State Legislature should draw a second majority-Black House district.Allison Riggs, a co-executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a civil rights group, said that the gerrymandering was “really an attack on Black voters, and the Black representatives are the visible outcome of that.”Efforts to curb racial gerrymandering have been hampered by a 2019 Supreme Court decision, which ruled that partisan gerrymandering could not be challenged in federal court.Though the court did leave intact Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial gerrymandering, it offered no concrete guidance on how to distinguish between a partisan gerrymander and a racial gerrymander when the result was both, such as in heavily Democratic Black communities.Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      ¿Qué hay detrás del giro a la derecha del gobernador de Texas?

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      La efectividad de la transformación de Greg Abbott, quien ha implementado medidas cercanas a la base más conservadora del Partido Republicano, se pondrá a prueba en las elecciones del próximo año.AUSTIN, Texas — El gobernador Greg Abbott sorprendió a algunos de sus colaboradores cuando este otoño llegó a su despacho con los planes de un nuevo decreto pandémico: una prohibición para que los empleadores privados de Texas no pudieran exigir la vacunación a sus empleados.La decisión marcó una transformación dramática para el gobernador, quien ya lleva dos mandatos, un tipo de intromisión en los asuntos de las empresas que Abbott siempre ha rechazado. De hecho, solo dos meses antes se había opuesto a este tipo de medidas. “Los negocios privados no necesitan que el gobierno maneje sus negocios”, dijo una portavoz en aquel momento.Su cambio de actitud suscitó críticas de los principales grupos empresariales de Texas, desde corporaciones como American Airlines, y de un importante actor de la política republicana local, Texans for Lawsuit Reform. También provocó frustración entre algunos integrantes del personal del gobernador.Quienes han conocido a Abbott y visto su ascenso —de abogado a juez de una corte estatal a procurador general y, finalmente, a gobernador— han quedado sorprendidos con su súbita decisión de alinearse con los activistas más estridentes del Partido Republicano.Pero como un gobernador que tiene un sentido atento de los vientos políticos, en un estado en donde el dominio republicano sigue siendo total, su prohibición a los mandatos de vacunación era una forma de ser coherente con su afición por interpretar el momento. Y en este momento, incluso en un estado como Texas, donde todo gira en torno a los negocios, los intereses corporativos están fuera de lugar y los culturales están en boga.Está supervisando una auditoría de los resultados electorales de 2020 en cuatro grandes condados de Texas, un estado en donde el expresidente Donald J. Trump ganó por más de 5 puntos. Pidió y aprobó legislación que restringe a los atletas transgénero luego de que cuatro años antes parecía haberse alegrado de que no avanzaran las restricciones en los baños para las personas trans en el estado ante la oposición de los empresarios. Pasó de ordenar el uso de mascarillas el año pasado, a prohibir dichas órdenes esta primavera.Su giro a la derecha será puesto a prueba el próximo año, cuando encara a su oponente más conocido y con más financiamiento hasta el momento: Beto O’ Rourke, quien anunció su candidatura a finales del mes pasado. Su enfrentamiento hace preguntarse cuánto puede ir un gobernador de Texas hacia la derecha y mantenerse frente a una ola creciente de demócratas en las principales ciudades y suburbios del estado.La elección también es una prueba importante de la fuerza de Abbott a nivel nacional, donde a menudo se le menciona junto con otros posibles candidatos presidenciales alternativos a Trump, como el gobernador Ron DeSantis de Florida, aunque sus asesores insisten en que no está interesado. Sus ataques a O’Rourke, así como al presidente Biden, se han intensificado.Estos días, Abbott se encuentra dividido entre el enfoque conservador balanceado que le ha ganado popularidad entre los círculos empresariales de Texas y un enfoque intenso en ganar en un Partido Republicano que evoluciona, según entrevistas con muchos asesores y exasesores y más de una veintena de amigos, excolegas, funcionarios electos y estrategas políticos..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Su prohibición a los mandatos de vacunación no fue suficiente para los ultraconservadores que han estado exigiendo una sesión legislativa especial para reglamentar su orden. Al mismo tiempo, negocios y hospitales han avanzado en sus requerimientos de vacunación, planeados o existentes, mientras que el estado ha hecho poco o nada para que la prohibición entre en vigor, indicaron los grupos industriales.Más de 200 vidas se perdieron durante la última tormenta de invierno, que causó cortes en la electricidad en Texas en febrero,Tamir Kalifa para The New York TimesCuando Abbott postuló por primera vez a la gubernatura, en 2014, presentó un rostro más moderado al enfrentarse a la legisladora estatal demócrata Wendy Davis. Un anuncio en español mostraba a su esposa Cecilia, nieta de inmigrantes mexicanos. En otro aparecía en su silla de ruedas —está paralizado de la cintura para abajo después de un accidente en 1984— desplazándose por un mapa para mostrar cómo los negocios se iban de California a Texas.Pero mientras que los republicanos han fortalecido su control del gobierno estatal, Abbott ha enfrentado desafíos de la base de su partido. Este año, Abbott se unió al revoltoso vicegobernador, Dan Patrick, para respaldar quizás las sesiones legislativas más conservadoras en la historia de Texas.Lo ha hecho incluso a pesar de que ya disponía de fondos de campaña por casi 60 millones de dólares y el apoyo anticipado de Trump, quien a menudo llama por teléfono celular al gobernador. (Trump lo ha llamado para ejercer presión por la auditoría del voto de 2020).Ha mantenido una actitud segura y ofrecido asesoría a otros gobernadores republicanos, en especial a los que han sido electos recientemente. Al llegar la pandemia, Abbott organizó llamadas semanales con sus pares para discutir las políticas y los ha liderado a plantar oposición contra la gestión de Biden y crear un enfoque separado, estatal, de justicia penal hacia los migrantes.Y sus ataques agresivos contra Biden en temas fronterizos le han asegurado apariciones regulares en Fox News.“Greg es un conservador archi archi ultraderechista, lo cual sigue sorprendiéndome”, dijo Pearson Grimes, socio en el despacho de abogados en el que Abbott trabajó en los años ochenta después de que la caída de un árbol lo paralizó de la cintura para abajo. Grimes ayudó al futuro gobernador a encontrar un abogado para su demanda por el accidente.“Cuando lo conocí hace mucho”, dijo Grimes, “nunca hubiera imaginado que esta sería su política”.Abbott, quien lleva a cabo pocas conferencias de prensa, rechazó las solicitudes de declarar para este artículo. Renae Eze, su secretaria de prensa lo describió por correo electrónico como “un líder conservador inquebrantable” y “defensor de los derechos constitucionales y fundamentales”, un hombre impulsado por su fe en el “excepcionalismo de Texas” y la necesidad de protegerlo.El expresidente Donald Trump y el gobernador de Texas, Abbott, visitan una sección incompleta del muro fronterizo en Pharr, Texas, en junio de 2021.Eric Gay/Associated PressUna lesión que le cambió la vidaAbbott, de 63 años, nació en el pueblo de Wichita Falls, Texas, una pequeña comunidad al noroeste de Dallas, y luego se mudó a Duncanville, al sur de la ciudad. Su padre murió de un paro cardiaco cuando Abbott estaba en el bachillerato y su madre, que se dedicaba al hogar, se puso a trabajar para mantenerlo a él y a su hermano mayor, Gary, quien es conocido como Bud.Para cuando acudía a la Escuela de Derecho de Vanderbilt, Abbott ya se había casado. Conoció a su esposa en la Universidad de Texas. “Tal como lo recuerdo, en aquellos años no era especialmente político”, dijo Fred Frost, un amigo de la facultad que ahora es el asesor legal ejecutivo de ExxonMobil.Fue cuando trotaba con Frost por el acaudalado barrio de River Oaks en Houston que la vida de Abbott cambió: un roble le cayó encima con tal fuerza que aplastó un Cadillac que estaba cerca. Abbott, quien solo tenía 26 años, perdió la sensibilidad en las piernas de inmediato.Estaba dispuesto a recuperarse. Frost recuerda una noche al salir en Houston que vio a Abbott estacionar su sedán dos puertas color guinda en un restaurante, tomar su silla de ruedas, subirse de un salto y dar la vuelta al lado del pasajero para abrirle la puerta a su esposa.Abbott consiguió un acuerdo que incluye pagos por el resto de su vida, que hasta el momento ascienden a unos 8 millones de dólares. El arreglo no impidió que más tarde Abbott fuera un defensor firme de poner límites a las demandas civiles por lesiones. Cuando era un abogado joven en Houston defendió al sistema municipal de autobuses en casos personales de lesiones.Después del accidente, su silla de ruedas ha quedado entrelazada con su identidad profesional. Como gobernador, le ha permitido conectar con los demás en momentos de tragedia, dijeron sus colaboradores, como sucedió tras el tiroteo masivo de 2019 en un Walmart de El Paso que dejó a 23 personas muertas, o luego del huracán Harvey en 2017.Aún así, a pesar de su historia personal, los analistas políticos en Texas a menudo se lamentan de que Abbott carezca de la gran personalidad de sus predecesores inmediatos: Ann Richards, George W. Bush y Rick Perry.“Es un conservador con ‘c’ minúscula, es decir, cuidadoso”, dijo Robert Stein, profesor de ciencia política de la Universidad de Rice.Abbot se ha erizado ante los desafíos que se le prestan desde la derecha por parte de Don Huffines, un exsenador estatal, y por Allen West, un excongresista por Florida que lideró fugazmente el Partido Republicano de Texas. Aunque los sondeos muestran que Abbott es muy popular entre los votantes republicanos, ha parecido concentrarse en una pequeña cantidad que lo ha abandonado.Incluso antes de empezar su campaña, ya recorría el estado para reunirse con votantes republicanos y organizaba asambleas telefónicas por invitación. A menudo reserva parte de su agenda diaria para dedicar ocho horas a hacer llamadas de recaudación de fondos.El gobernador de Texas, Greg Abbott, reza después de una vigilia en El Paso después de que más de 20 personas murieran en un tiroteo masivo en un Walmart.Ivan Pierre Aguirre/EPA vía ShutterstockLa prueba del primer mandatoUna primera prueba de su liderazgo se presentó durante el primer año de Abbott como gobernador, cuando entre los círculos conservadores se originaron teorías de la conspiración de que un ejercicio militar estadounidense, conocido como Jade Helm 15, en realidad era un plan secreto para invadir Texas. Abbott quería decir algo.“La gente había estado interactuando con él por Twitter”, dijo un asesor. “Se sintió obligado a responder. Para él, esta es la gente de base que participa en la política partidaria. Son los que van y tocan puertas en tu nombre” para hacer campaña.Al final el gobernador decidió enviar a la Guardia Estatal de Texas, que forma parte del departamento militar del estado, a “monitorear” la operación.Para algunos de sus aliados fue un error. Para sus críticos demócratas, fue un momento emblemático de un gobernador que no estaba dispuesto a enfrentar a los marginales de su partido.“Abbott es simplemente un tipo que, en mi opinión, siempre está temiendo algo”, dijo Chris Turner, el líder demócrata en la Cámara de Representantes de Texas.Antes de la pandemia, Abbott había logrado unir al ala afín al empresariado del partido con el extremo más de derecha. Pero en tanto el virus dividió al estado el año pasado, Abbott enfrentó un momento crucial. En julio de 2020 emitió un mandato estatal para usar cubrebocas, una decisión que sus colaboradores dicen que tomó siguiendo su propio lema de ignorar la política y “hacer lo correcto”.A algunos conservadores no les sentó nada bien. La reacción ayudó a impulsar la energía insurgente y le dio una bandera a sus contendientes republicanos.Huffines, su opositor más vocal en las primarias, también empujó al gobernador hacia el muro fronterizo, al pedir que el estado construyera uno en mayo. Para el mes de junio Abbott ya había anunciado que tenía intención de erigir un muro.Y, días antes de que Abbott decidiera prohibir que los negocios exigieran la vacunación obligatoria, Huffines pidió al gobernador que hiciera justo eso. “Ningún texano debería perder su trabajo porque no quieren vacunarse contra la covid”, dijo Huffines en un comunicado de prensa.Abbott ha adoptado políticas idénticas a las de miembros mucho más conservadores de su partido.Callaghan O’Hare para The New York TimesEra el mismo mensaje que los asesores de Abbott dijeron que el gobernador había estado escuchando durante semanas en sus eventos por todo el estado.Cuando Abbott le comunicó a su personal que quería emitir la orden, los asesores dicen que se desató una discusión. Algunos se oponían a la medida. Luego del debate con sus colaboradores, Abbott decidió avanzar con la orden.David Carney, su asesor de campaña, dijo que Abbott quería proteger a los pequeños negocios de tener que despedir a los trabajadores por la política “torpe, incoherente” de requerir vacunación obligatoria para las empresas con 100 o más empleados, que entrará en vigor el 4 de enero y que el mes pasado Abbott desafió en una corte federal.“Esto siempre ha sido impulsado por los pequeños negocios”, dijo Carney, y no por la política republicana.J. David Goodman es el jefe del buró de Houston, que cubre Texas. Ha escrito sobre gobierno, justicia penal y el papel del financiamiento en la política para el Times desde 2012. @jdavidgoodman More

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      For Texas Governor, Hard Right Turn Followed a Careful Rise

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      Greg Abbott’s shift will face a test in next year’s election, but he has demonstrated during his career a keen sense of the political winds.AUSTIN — Gov. Greg Abbott surprised some on his staff when he arrived at his office this fall with plans for a new pandemic decree: a ban on mandated vaccinations by private employers in Texas. The decision was a stark departure for the two-term governor, an intrusion into business decisions of the sort Mr. Abbott had long opposed — and had indeed opposed just two months earlier. “Private businesses don’t need government running their business,” a spokeswoman had said then.His about-face drew criticism from major Texas business groups, from corporations like American Airlines and from a powerful player in local Republican politics, Texans for Lawsuit Reform. It also prompted frustration among some of the governor’s staff.Those who have known Mr. Abbott and watched his rise — from lawyer to state court judge to attorney general and, ultimately, to governor — have been stunned at his sudden alignment with the Republican Party’s most strident activists.But as a governor with a keen sense of the political winds, in a state where Republican domination remains complete, his ban on vaccine mandates was in keeping with his penchant for reading the moment. And at this moment, even in business-centered Texas, corporate interests are out and cultural concerns are in.He is overseeing an audit of the 2020 results in four large counties in Texas, a state that the former president, Donald J. Trump, won by more than 5 points. He called for and signed into law restrictions on transgender athletes after appearing content, four years earlier, to watch bathroom restrictions on transgender Texans fail in the face of opposition from businesses. He went from a mask mandate last year to a ban on such orders this spring.His rightward shift will be tested next year as he faces his most well-known and well-funded Democratic challenger yet, Beto O’Rourke, who announced his run late last month. Their contest raises the question of how far right a Texas governor can go and still hold on against a rising tide of Democrats in the state’s largest cities and suburbs.The election is also an important test of Mr. Abbott’s strength on the national stage, where he is frequently mentioned alongside potential non-Trump presidential candidates like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, even as his aides insist he is not interested. His attacks on Mr. O’Rourke have doubled as attacks on President Biden.These days, Mr. Abbott finds himself torn between the even-keeled conservative approach that has brought him favor in Texas business circles and an intense focus on winning in the evolving Republican Party, according to interviews with many current and former advisers and more than two dozen friends, former colleagues, elected officials and political strategists.His vaccine mandate ban was not enough for ultraconservatives, who have been demanding a special legislative session to codify his order. At the same time, businesses and hospitals have largely moved forward on existing or planned vaccination requirements, and the state has done little if anything to enforce the ban, industry groups said.More than 200 lives were lost during the winter storm that caused power outages in Texas in February.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesWhen Mr. Abbott first ran for governor, in 2014, he presented a more moderate side when facing the Democratic state representative Wendy Davis. An ad in Spanish featured his wife, Cecilia, the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants. Another had him rolling in his wheelchair — he is paralyzed from the waist down from an accident in 1984 — across a map to show businesses leaving California for Texas.But as Republicans have strengthened their hold on state government, Mr. Abbott has seen challenges from his party’s animated base. This year, Mr. Abbott has joined with the firebrand lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, backing perhaps the most conservative legislative sessions in Texas history..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}He has done so even with a nearly $60 million campaign war chest and an early endorsement from Mr. Trump, who often calls the governor on his cellphone. (Mr. Trump has done so to press for the 2020 audit.)He has maintained an air of confidence and has offered guidance to fellow Republican governors, particularly those recently elected. As the pandemic hit, Mr. Abbott organized weekly calls among them to discuss policy, and he has led them in bucking the Biden administration and creating a separate, state-run criminal justice approach to migrants.And his aggressive attacks on Mr. Biden over the border have garnered him regular appearances on Fox News.“Greg is an arch, arch far-right conservative, which remains a shock to me,” said Pearson Grimes, a partner at the law firm where Mr. Abbott worked in the 1980s after a falling tree paralyzed him from the waist down. Mr. Grimes helped the future governor find a lawyer for his suit over the accident.“When I knew him long ago,” Mr. Grimes said, “I never would have dreamed that this would be his politics.”Mr. Abbott, who conducts few news conferences, declined requests to speak for this article. His press secretary, Renae Eze, described him in an email as an “unwavering conservative leader” and “defender of constitutional and fundamental rights,” a man driven by his belief in “Texas exceptionalism” and the need to protect it.Former President Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott visit an unfinished section of border wall in Pharr, Tx., in June.Eric Gay/Associated PressA Life-altering InjuryMr. Abbott, 63, was born in the small town of Wichita Falls, Texas, northwest of Dallas, and later moved to Duncanville, just south of the city. His father died of a heart attack while Mr. Abbott was in high school, and his mother, who had been staying at home, went to work to support him and his older brother, Gary, who goes by the nickname Bud.By the time he attended Vanderbilt Law School, Mr. Abbott was already married, having met his wife at the University of Texas. “He wasn’t particularly political as I recall in those years,” said Fred Frost, a law school friend who is now executive counsel at ExxonMobil.It was during a jog with Mr. Frost through Houston’s affluent River Oaks neighborhood that Mr. Abbott’s life changed: An oak tree crashed down on him with enough force to crush a nearby Cadillac. Mr. Abbott, who was just 26, immediately lost sensation in his legs.He was determined to rebound. Mr. Frost recalled one night out in Houston watching Mr. Abbott park his maroon two-door sedan at a restaurant, grab his wheelchair, vault himself into it and roll around to the passenger side to open the door for his wife.Mr. Abbott secured a settlement including payments for the rest of his life, so far about $8 million in total.The settlement did not stop Mr. Abbott from later becoming a strong advocate for limits to personal injury lawsuits. And as a young lawyer in Houston, he defended the city’s bus system in personal injury cases.Since his accident, his wheelchair has been intertwined with his professional identity. As governor, it has allowed him to connect in moments of tragedy, aides said, such as after the mass shooting in 2019 at a Walmart in El Paso that left 23 dead, or after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.Still, despite his personal story, Texas political observers often lament that Mr. Abbott lacks the outsized personality of his immediate predecessors, Ann Richards, George W. Bush and Rick Perry.“He’s conservative with a small ‘c’ — that is, careful,” said Robert Stein, a Rice University professor of political science.Mr. Abbott has bristled at challenges from his right by Don Huffines, a former state senator, and by Allen West, a former Florida congressman who briefly led the Republican Party of Texas. While polls show Mr. Abbott broadly popular among Republican voters, he has appeared focused on the small number who have shifted away from him.Even before his campaign began, he was crisscrossing the state to meet Republican voters and holding huge invite-only telephone town halls. He frequently blocks out his daily schedule for eight hours of fund-raising calls.Texas Governor Greg Abbott prays after a candlelight vigil in El Paso after more than 20 people were killed in a mass shooting at a Walmart.Ivan Pierre Aguirre/EPA, via ShutterstockFirst-term TestAn early test of Mr. Abbott’s leadership came during his first year as governor, as conspiracy theories grew in conservative circles that a United States military exercise, known as Jade Helm 15, was actually a secret plot to take over Texas. Mr. Abbott wanted to say something.“People had been engaging him on Twitter,” one adviser said. “He felt compelled to respond. To him, these are the grass-roots people who are engaged in the politics of the party. They’re the ones who knock on doors for you.”The governor eventually decided to direct the Texas State Guard, part of the state’s military department, to “monitor” the operation.To some of his aides, it was a mistake. For his Democratic critics, the moment was emblematic of a governor unwilling to stand up to his party’s fringe.“Abbott is just a guy who, in my opinion, he’s always afraid of something,” said Chris Turner, the Democratic leader in the Texas House.Before the pandemic, Mr. Abbott had been able to unite the business-oriented wing of the party with its right-most fringe. But as the coronavirus tore across the state last year, Mr. Abbott faced a critical moment. In July 2020, he issued a statewide mask mandate, a decision aides said he made by following his own mantra to ignore the politics and “do what’s right.”It did not go over well with some conservatives. The backlash helped spur insurgent energy and gave his Republican challengers an issue.Mr. Huffines, his most vocal primary opponent, also pushed the governor on a border wall, calling in May for the state to build one. By June, Mr. Abbott had announced his intention to construct one.And days before Mr. Abbott decided to bar businesses from mandating vaccinations, Mr. Huffines called on the governor to do just that. “No Texan should lose their job because they don’t want to get a Covid vaccine,” Mr. Huffines said in a news release.Mr. Abbott has taken up policies that are identical to much more conservative members of his party. Callaghan O’Hare for The New York TimesIt was the same message that Mr. Abbott’s aides said the governor had been hearing for weeks from everyday Texas at events across the state.When Mr. Abbott told his staff that he wanted to issue the order, a discussion followed, aides said. Some opposed the move. After a debate among staff, Mr. Abbott decided to go ahead with the order.David Carney, his campaign adviser, said Mr. Abbott wanted to protect small businesses from laying off workers because of President Biden’s “bumbling, incoherent” policy of mandating vaccinations for those with 100 or more employees, which is set to take effect Jan. 4 and which Mr. Abbott contested last month in federal court.“This always was driven by small businesses,” Mr. Carney said, and not by Republican primary politics at all. More

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      Republicans in Texas County, in Unusual Move, Upend Primary System

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      The G.O.P. in Potter County is planning to break away from a nonpartisan election board and hold its own primary next year, in a move criticized by election experts.The Republican Party in the second-largest county in the Texas Panhandle is planning to conduct its own election during the state primary in March, breaking away from a nonpartisan county election board in a highly unusual move.The G.O.P. in Potter County, which includes Amarillo, plans to use ballots that will be marked and counted by hand, rather than employ the electronic systems that the county has relied on for decades. Election experts said the changes would confuse voters and create more potential for fraud.Under Texas law, county parties are allowed to run their own primary elections, but the vast majority have contracted with local boards of election for decades. The decision, which was reported by Votebeat, an election news website, comes as Republicans nationally have continued to push baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election and sow doubts about the reliability of election machinery.Daniel L. Rogers, the chairman of the Potter County Republicans, said that he made the decision this week because “a lot of voters have concerns” with the electronic counters and “don’t feel comfortable with them.” He did not cite evidence of any problems arising under the current system, and studies have shown that hand counting leads to more inaccuracies. He argued that paper ballots would be more secure.“The parties have become lazy and complacent, but the primaries are actually the party’s responsibility,” said Mr. Rogers, a real estate broker whose office was decorated with red Make America Great Again hats when a New York Times reporter interviewed him last year. “The counties are spending millions of dollars on electronic systems, but this way it’s a true secret ballot.”He said that “the voters are smarter than our elected officials, than administrators — they don’t trust the voters. I do.”Mark P. Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University in Houston, said the move “removes the Republican Party one more step away from the standard electoral procedure.”He added: “The integrity of our electoral system depends on institutionalizing and professionalizing election boards. There will be more doubts about the overall outcome, or it will lead to more slip-ups and more potential flaws and problems than if the professionals ran it.”Potter County has about 57,000 registered voters, and they are overwhelmingly Republican: Roughly 70 percent cast their ballots for Donald J. Trump in 2020.Mr. Rogers, when asked if the election results nationally were valid, responded, “I don’t have any idea and that’s the problem — I don’t know if it was accurate or not.”Under state law, the county elections board will still be responsible for absentee and early voting, which a majority of voters in Texas use to cast their ballots. But the two systems, experts said, could complicate the process and make it easier for voters to cast ballots twice.“It opens the door wide to fraud,” Dr. Jones said. “It doesn’t close the door to fraud.”The legal office of the Texas secretary of state, who oversees elections in the state and who was appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, raised several concerns about the move.“Any time that a party conducts their own election rather than contracting with a county, it is more confusing to voters,” said Sam Taylor, the assistant secretary of state for communications. Still, he added that “ultimately it’s their decision to go at it alone.”One risk, Mr. Taylor said, is that candidates in contested races could file election challenges to prompt a court to order a new primary election. “It’s not unprecedented,” he said. “But county parties usually do not invite that opportunity upon themselves.”“They have every legal right to do so,” he added. “We can’t really intervene.”Melynn Huntley, the Potter County elections administrator, said that she had been taken aback by Mr. Rogers’s decision and that she was most worried about the potential to make it easier to vote twice.“The biggest worry I have is that those two systems will not talk with each other,” Ms. Huntley said. “His desire is to eliminate fraud, but there is a vulnerability in the plan. I am concerned whether this can function with high integrity.”Ms. Huntley, who has served as elections administrator for eight years, said that when she took on the job, she pledged not to vote in either party’s primary so that she could maintain her role as a nonpartisan overseer.“I am truly trying to figure out how this is going to work,” she said. More

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      Sotomayor decries abortion ruling but court’s conservatives show their muscle

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      Sotomayor decries abortion ruling but court’s conservatives show their muscleThe highest court in the US has been defied by a group of extremist Republicans openly flouting the court’s own rulings Sonia Sotomayor, the liberal-leaning justice on the US supreme court, put it plainly. For almost three months, lawmakers in the Republican-controlled legislature of Texas had “substantially suspended a constitutional guarantee: a pregnant woman’s right to control her own body”.“The court should have put an end to this madness months ago,” Sotomayor said.But when the supreme court issued on Friday its majority opinion on SB8, the extreme Texas law that bans abortions effectively at six weeks, in blatant violation of the court’s own constitutional rulings, it still didn’t put an end to the madness.Biden ‘concerned’ over supreme court’s Texas abortion ruling, says White House – liveRead moreIt allowed the law, the most restrictive currently in force in the US, to remain in effect.And by varying margins, the new conservative supermajority of the court, consolidated by Donald Trump’s appointment of three new rightwing justices, restricted the legal route by which abortion providers could challenge the law.From now on the legal battle would have to be focused narrowly on just four state employees responsible for medical licensing in the state. Other Texas officials involved, notably the state’s attorney general Ken Paxton and clerks in state courts, would be let off the hook.Even more provocatively, while the court sent the abortion fight back to a federal district court in Austin, it let the ban itself stand. That adds insult to injury given the supreme court’s much-criticised refusal to stay the ban at the start, not to mention the many weeks it has taken to hand down its decision.Over those weeks, Texas women have paid a heavy price. “The court’s delay in allowing this case to proceed has had catastrophic consequences for women seeking to exercise their constitutional right to an abortion in Texas,” Sotomayor said in a powerful dissenting opinion.In September alone, the first month of the ban, the number of legal abortions performed in Texas plummeted to about half the level a year ago. That was the largest recorded decline in the state’s recent history, with untold numbers of women forced to seek abortions out of state or carry unwanted pregnancies to term.Sotomayor, who is emerging as a pivotal voice of resistance within the post-Trump court, was forthright in her choice of words. Her disagreement with the conservative justices went far beyond a “quibble” over which state officials abortion providers can sue, she said.The question was: is the supreme court prepared to stand up in the name of constitutional rights to the cynical antics of ideologically driven Republicans in states such as Texas?“The choice to shrink from Texas’s challenge to federal supremacy will have far-reaching repercussions,” Sotomayor warned. “I doubt the court, let alone the country, is prepared for them.”Nobody can doubt that SB 8 is a flagrant violation of the constitutional right to an abortion enshrined in the 1973 landmark ruling Roe v Wade. While Roe sets the bar of fetal viability at about 24 weeks, Texas now puts it at the point of earliest cardiac activity, around six weeks – before many women even know they are pregnant.Neil Gorsuch, one of the three Trump appointees, who wrote Friday’s majority opinion, said that the issue of the constitutional right to an abortion was not under consideration in this case. The matter at hand in the Texas law was whether abortion providers could press on with their challenge to the ban by suing specific state officials.That will do little to assuage the jitters of 80% of Americans who think that abortions should be legal in all or certain circumstances. In a separate case before the supreme court based on a new Mississippi ban at 15 weeks, which is now blocked by a lower court, Roe v Wade is very much up for grabs, and the signs are ominous.In oral arguments in the Mississippi case less than two weeks ago, several of the conservative justices indicated they were willing to sharply restrict or even overturn the right to an abortion despite its rock-steady standing as a pillar of constitutional law for almost 50 years.Nor does Gorsuch’s protestation that Friday’s case was merely focused on procedural matters offer much comfort. SB 8 was devised by Texas Republicans as a juridical trick to skirt around constitutional protections by making it more difficult for abortion providers to challenge the law in federal court.At the heart of the legislation is a ruse designed to make a mockery of federal oversight. Enforcement of the abortion ban is transferred from state officials who are vulnerable to federal challenge to private individuals, armed with financial inducements of up to $10,000 to cover legal fees.Supreme court rules Texas abortion providers can sue over ban but won’t stop lawRead more“SB 8 is structured to thwart review and result in ‘a denial of any hearing’,” Sotomayor decried. “The events of the last three months have shown that the law has succeeded in its endeavor.”That is why the vote of the court’s new post-Trump majority to issue such a narrow opinion over SB 8 is more than a “quibble”. The highest court in the nation has been defied by a group of extremist Republicans openly flouting the court’s own rulings.In response, the conservative majority emboldened by Trump has opted not to insist on respect for the constitutional law of the land, but instead to blithely play along.As Sotomayor put it: “By so doing, the court leaves all manner of constitutional rights more vulnerable than ever before, to the great detriment of our constitution and our republic.”Perhaps most tellingly, the idea of appeasing Texas Republicans in their attempt to undermine the supreme court’s own precedents proved too much even for John Roberts, the chief justice.In important aspects of Friday’s decision, he broke with his five fellow conservative justices and sided pointedly with Sotomayor and the liberal minority.“The clear purpose and actual effect of SB 8 has been to nullify this court’s rulings,” Roberts said, in words which may reverberate down the years.“The role of the supreme court in our constitutional system is at stake.”TopicsUS newsTexasAbortionUS politicsUS supreme courtnewsReuse this content More