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      With 23 Candidates, Special Election in Texas Is Headed for Runoff

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      The front-runner was Susan Wright, who was endorsed by Donald J. Trump and is the widow of Representative Ron Wright, who died of Covid-19 in February.AUSTIN, Texas — Susan Wright, the Republican widow of a congressman who died of Covid-19, emerged on Saturday evening as the front-runner in a tight race to replace her husband in Washington.Still, Ms. Wright, whose husband, Ron Wright, died in February, could not avoid a runoff for the state’s Sixth Congressional District, which includes mostly rural areas in three Northern Texas counties and a sliver of the nation’s fourth-largest metropolitan region around Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington.Ms. Wright, who was assisted by a last-minute endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump, captured about 19 percent of the vote, far below the 50 percent required to avoid a runoff. It appeared she was headed to another contest with Jake Ellzey, a fellow Republican. Jana Lynne Sanchez, a Democrat, followed closely behind in third place.The results disappointed Democrats, who had hoped to tap a reservoir of shifting demographics and Hispanic and African-American growth in a district where Mr. Trump won by only three percentage points in November.Ms. Sanchez, who ran a tight race against Mr. Wright in 2018, held an election gathering at her home in Fort Worth and vowed to keep fighting for progressive values. The Sixth District was once a Democratic stronghold, until Phil Gramm switched party affiliations in 1983, turning the district into a reliable bastion of Republican strength for decades.In February, Mr. Wright, who had lung cancer, died after he contracted the coronavirus. His wife was an early front-runner to replace him, but her chances of outright victory narrowed after the field grew to 23 candidates, including 11 Republicans, 10 Democrats, a Libertarian and an independent.The battle took a bizarre turn in the final days when Ms. Wright’s backers reported receiving anonymous robocalls that accused her of killing her husband. She immediately sought an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the local authorities.Saturday’s results signaled that Mr. Trump continued to have a hold on the Republican Party in Texas months after losing an election he falsely claimed had been stolen from him. Mr. Wright had been a vocal ally of Mr. Trump and a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.This is the second time that the widow of a member of Congress who died from Covid sought to keep her husband’s seat. Last month, Julia Letlow, a Republican from Louisiana, avoided a runoff when she secured the seat of her late husband, Luke Letlow, who died before having the chance to represent the district, which includes much of the central part of the historically red state.In municipal races elsewhere in Texas, the mayor of San Antonio, Ron Nirenberg, easily won a second term. And voters in Austin overwhelmingly favored ending a ban on public camping, a decisive victory for those seeking to keep homeless people from erecting tents in certain spots across the city. Homelessness is a contested issue in the state capital, with critics arguing that the referendum didn’t offer alternatives to people with no place to sleep. More

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      Bush: ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ideals show pro-Trump Republicans ‘want to be extinct’

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      Ahead of a special election on Saturday to replace a Texas congressman who died after contracting Covid-19, former president George W Bush said the ascendancy of supporters of Donald Trump suggest Republicans “want to be extinct”.The special election is in the sixth district, whose Republican representative, Ron Wright, died in February. Twenty-three candidates will compete: all but one of the 11 Republicans are tied to the apron strings of Trump, the former president who still dominates the party.One candidate, the former wrestler Dan Rodimer, promises to “make America Texas again” and has said “commies in DC are ruining America”.Trump has endorsed another – Susan Wright, the former congressman’s widow who the former president said on Saturday “will be strong on the border, crime, pro-life, our brave military and vets, and will always protect your second amendment”.The one Republican not expressing fealty to Trump, former marine Michael Wood, told CNN he was “afraid for the future of the country”, given his party’s adherence to Trump’s lie that the election was stolen, its reluctance to condemn those who rioted at the Capitol on 6 January in support of that lie, and the prevalence of conspiracy theories such as QAnon.“I felt like I had to stand up,” Wood said. “Somebody needed to stand up and say this isn’t what the Republican party should be.”Nonetheless, it is. In a CNN poll released on Friday, 70% of Republicans said Biden did not legitimately win enough votes to be named president. Biden won more than 7m more votes than Trump and took the electoral college 306-232, the same score by which Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.Bush is promoting a new book, a collection of portraits and stories of immigrants. In an interview released on Friday by the Dispatch, an anti-Trump conservative podcast, he was asked about recent moves by pro-Trump extremists to form a congressional caucus promoting “Anglo-Saxon traditions”.“To me that basically says that we want to be extinct,” he said.If such trends continued, Bush said, in three to five years “there’s not going to be a party. I mean I read about that and I’m saying to myself, ‘Wow, these people need to read my book.’ And I mean, it’s like saying when I was running for governor of Texas, you’ll never get any Latino votes because you’re Republican. And I said you watch. And I worked hard.“And the key thing was to let them know that I could hear their voice. I mean, democracy is great in that sense. And the idea of kind of saying you can only be Republican ‘if’, then the ultimate extension of that is it ends up being a one-person party.”Asked if he agreed with “more than 50%” of Republicans who think the election was stolen, Bush said: “No. I guess I’m one of the other 50%.“By the way, I’m still a Republican, proud to be Republican. I think Republicans will have a second chance to govern, because I believe that the Biden administration is a uniting factor, and particularly on the fiscal side of things. So, you know, we’ll see. But I know this – that if the Republican party stands for exclusivity, you know, used to be country clubs, now evidently it’s white Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, then it’s not going to win anything.”Wood, the anti-Trump Texas Republican, said he voted for Trump in 2020. But he also said he thought “the party is going to get to where I am eventually. I want that to happen without having to lose and lose and lose. Political parties sometimes only get the message they need to try something different after a string of losses. I think we should do that now as opposed to doing it after we lose in the midterms or lose another presidential election.”The Texas sixth district has trended towards Democrats in recent elections but remains unlikely to flip.Earlier this week, Trump told Fox Business he was “100% thinking about running” in 2024.Rodimer, the former wrestler who is among the top money raisers in the field in Texas, told CNN: “President Trump is still the leader of the Republican party. I don’t think he’s going to go anywhere, ever. I hope he doesn’t. If he runs again, I’ll be fired up, I’ll be excited.” More

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      23 Candidates Are on Ballot for Open Texas Congressional Seat

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      The front-runner in Saturday’s election is Susan Wright, who has been endorsed by Donald J. Trump and is the widow of Representative Ron Wright, who died of Covid-19 in February.AUSTIN, Texas — Not long ago, Texas’ Sixth Congressional District seemed to be securely in Republican hands. Ron Wright, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, was poised to advance the G.O.P.’s agenda after he was elected in 2018.But this year Mr. Wright, who had lung cancer, contracted the coronavirus and became the first member of Congress to die from Covid-19. His unexpected death led his wife, Susan Wright, to run for his seat, and she was expected to take her husband’s place in Washington with little pushback.Instead, a field of 23 candidates crowded into Saturday’s special election, all competing for a spot in a likely runoff if no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote.Mrs. Wright, long considered the front-runner, is seeking to capitalize on a recent endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump to establish herself as the undisputed favorite among 11 Republicans, some of whom were also hoping to be anointed by the former president.Ten Democrats led by Jana Lynne Sanchez, who ran against Mr. Wright in 2018, are tapping into a reservoir of Hispanic and African-American growth that has stirred hopes among party leaders in a district that Mr. Trump won by only three percentage points in the 2020 election.The Sixth District had been a Democratic stronghold until 1983, when the Democratic incumbent, Phil Gramm, changed party affiliations, turning the district into a reliable bastion of Republican strength for nearly four decades.The race also includes a libertarian and an independent.“It’s pretty crazy,” said Cathy Stein, an independent voter in the Arlington area, referring to the long list of options. “I definitely have a short list now. But I won’t know until I have the ballot in front of me. I’m not a fan of having too many candidates running for the same seat.”Ms. Stein will most likely remain undecided until she shows up to her polling site on Saturday. She said she was looking for a candidate willing to work with others in Washington.The district cuts across three North Texas counties and sprawls along the lower edge of the nation’s fourth-largest metropolitan region, anchored by Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington.The ultimate outcome of the race could shed new light on Mr. Trump’s continued political hold in Texas, the growth of Hispanic and African-American political power and the impact of the savage pandemic.In endorsing Mrs. Wright, Mr. Trump said in a statement that Mr. Wright voted along party lines during his short tenure in Congress — 96 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight. Before his death on Feb. 7, he was among 139 Republican members of the House to vote against certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.Former Representative Ron Wright, right, in 2019. His wife, Susan Wright, center, is considered the front-runner for his vacant seat.Susan Walsh/Associated PressBut the election on Saturday could help indicate whether Mr. Trump’s hold on the party took any kind of hit after a mob of his supporters ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.“We shouldn’t be afraid of Donald Trump. His endorsement can sometimes backfire,” said Nathalie Rayes, president of Latino Victory, an advocacy group that seeks to strengthen the political power of Latinos.Latinos, who tend to lean Democratic, make up nearly 20 percent of the population in the district, which has made this crowded race more competitive for left-leaning candidates, Ms. Rayes said. Her organization is backing Ms. Sanchez, who lost to Mr. Wright by eight percentage points in the race for the seat in 2018.If elected, Ms. Sanchez would be the first Latina to represent the district.Whoever ultimately wins will join the second-largest congressional delegation in the country, one that will be expanded by two seats next year because of new census data. The delegation now has 36 members — 22 Republicans and 13 Democrats, along with the vacancy in the Sixth District.Whether someone other than Mrs. Wright and Ms. Sanchez can get into the two-person runoff remains unclear, but the likeliest candidate seems to be State Representative Jake Ellzey of Midlothian, a Republican.Mr. Ellzey, a former Navy fighter pilot and a commercial airline pilot who ran against Mr. Wright in the 2018 Republican primary, also brandishes his own high-profile endorsement. He has been supported by Rick Perry, Texas’ longest-serving governor and energy secretary during part of the Trump administration.Although Mr. Perry’s support of Mr. Ellzey puts him at political odds with his former boss in Washington, the former governor is a longtime friend of the congressional candidate.Another Republican contender, Brian Harrison, is a former chief of staff at the Department of Health and Human Services who touts his service in the Trump administration. A website photo shows him standing next to Mr. Trump in the Oval Office.While the Republican candidates offer differing styles and backgrounds, they appear to be fundamentally in agreement in calling for a strong border enforcement, low taxes, gun rights and other G.O.P. priorities. “There are differences in life experiences, but not on the issues,” Craig Murphy, Mr. Ellzey’s campaign spokesman, said.One outlier is Michael Wood, a business owner who has gained attention as an anti-Trump Republican. He has said that the former president bears much of the responsibility for the Capitol riot and that many traditional Republicans are looking for an alternative to Trumpism.The challenge for other Democrats in the race is to topple Ms. Sanchez’s status as the Democratic front-runner and land a spot in the runoff. Leading contenders include Lydia Bean, a teacher and business owner, and Shawn Lassiter, an educator.“It’s anybody’s race at this point,” Ms. Rayes said.Dave Montgomery More

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      US split on vaccine passports as country aims for return to normalcy

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      With summer around the corner, Americans are desperate for some sense of normalcy as the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine continues. Some businesses and lawmakers believe they have a simple solution that will allow people to gather in larger numbers again: vaccine passports.But as with so many issues in the US these days, it’s an idea dividing America.Vaccine passport supporters see a future where people would have an app on their phone that would include their vaccine information, similar to the paper record card from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that is given when a person is vaccinated. People would flash the app when entering a large venue for something like a concert or sports game.While many other countries have implemented or are considering vaccine passports, in a country where political divides have determined belief in mask usage, social distancing and even the lethality of the virus, it comes as no surprise that there is already a political divide over whether vaccine passports should be used at all.Leaders of some Democratic states have embraced the idea of vaccine passports at big events like concerts and weddings.New York launched its Excelsior Pass with IBM in late March with the intention of having the app used at theaters, sports stadiums and event venues. California health officials will allow venues that verify whether someone has gotten the vaccine or tested negative to hold larger events. Hawaii is working with multiple companies on a vaccine passport system that would allow travelers to bypass Covid-19 testing and quarantine requirements if vaccinated.“Businesses have lost a lot of money during this whole period here so there’s a lot to recoup,” Mufi Hannemann, president and chief executive of the Hawaii Tourism and Lodging Association, told local news station Hawaii News Now. “We’re anxious to get this economy moving forward in a safe and healthy manner.”On the flip side, a growing number of states are passing laws banning vaccine passports, citing concerns of privacy and intrusion on people’s decisions to get vaccinated.“Government should not require any Texas to show proof of vaccination and reveal private health information just to go about their daily lives,” said Governor Greg Abbott, who ordered that no government agency or institution receiving government funding should require proof of vaccination.The governors of Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, Arizona and Indiana have passed or voiced support for similar laws.Splits have already taken place. Norwegian Cruise Line, for example, told the CDC it would be willing to require passengers be fully vaccinated before boarding, but Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, said his ban on vaccine passports prohibits such a mandate.Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, like many colleges and universities, said they would require students to be vaccinated before returning to campus in the fall, but the school is considering backtracking the policy following DeSantis’s order.Though conservative figures like Donald Trump Jr, who called vaccine passports “invasive”, have started to broadly attack Democrats for backing vaccine passports, the White House has made it clear the federal government has no plans to release a vaccine passport, or require mandatory vaccines.“The government is not now nor will we be supporting a system that requires Americans to carry a credential,” said Jen Psaki, White House press secretary, earlier in April.Psaki said the White House would release guidance for businesses and local governments who wish to implement vaccine passports.Vaccine passports have historically been used when crossing country borders. For example, some countries, including Brazil and Ghana, require people to have the vaccine against yellow fever before entering their countries. And while vaccine passports have not been used widely domestically in the US, vaccine mandates, and the proof of vaccines needed to carry them out, are common. Many schools require students to get a host of vaccines, while many healthcare systems often require the annual flu vaccine for employers.Sensitivity around a vaccine passport is probably an offshoot of a broader vaccine hesitancy. Recent polling has shown that vaccine skepticism has a partisan bent: 30% of Republicans said they would not get the vaccine versus 11% of Democrats, according to the Covid States Project. David Lazer, professor of political science at Northeastern University and a researcher with the Covid States Project, said “partisan divides on behaviors and policies have been acute throughout the pandemic”, but Democrats and Republicans are more evenly split on vaccines compared with other policies against Covid-19, like mask-wearing and social distancing.The term “passport” could also be turning people away from the concept, said Maureen Miller, an epidemiologist with Columbia University, as it implies that verification requires more personal information beyond vaccination status. A recent poll from the de Beaumont Foundation confirmed this, with Republican respondents being more supportive of vaccine “verification” over a “passport”.Miller said the World Health Organization, which is developing its own Smart Vaccine Certificate and standards for vaccine verification programs, has been adamant about making the distinction between a certificate and a passport.“A passport contains a lot of personal information, and a vaccine certificate does not,” Miller said. “It contains only the information necessary to convey the fact that the person has been vaccinated.”Other groups including the Vaccine Credential Initiative and the Covid-19 Credential Initiative are working on coming up with standards for digital vaccine passports with the aim of building trust in vaccine verification programs.Miller said the ultimate goal would be to reach herd immunity in the US, which would nix the need for vaccine passports but would require working through the skepticism that exists in the country.“People are not going to feel comfortable in large numbers, in social environments until we hit a kind of herd immunity, where, when you bump into someone, the risk of an infectious person bumping into someone who’s susceptible is decreased tremendously,” Miller said. 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      Texas Republicans Targeting Voting Access Find Their Bull’s-Eye: Cities

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      In Houston, election officials found creative ways to help a struggling and diverse work force vote in a pandemic. Record turnout resulted. Now the G.O.P. is targeting those very measures.HOUSTON — Voting in the 2020 election presented Zoe Douglas with a difficult choice: As a therapist meeting with patients over Zoom late into the evening, she just wasn’t able to wrap up before polls closed during early voting.Then Harris County introduced 24-hour voting for a single day. At 11 p.m. on the Thursday before the election, Ms. Douglas joined fast-food workers, nurses, construction workers, night owls and other late-shift workers at NRG Arena, one of eight 24-hour voting sites in the county, where more than 10,000 people cast their ballots in a single night.“I can distinctly remember people still in their uniforms — you could tell they just got off of work, or maybe they’re going to work; a very diverse mix,” said Ms. Douglas, 27, a Houston native.Twenty-four-hour voting was one of a host of options Harris County introduced to help residents cast ballots, along with drive-through voting and proactively mailing out ballot applications. The new alternatives, tailored to a diverse work force struggling amid a pandemic in Texas’ largest county, helped increase turnout by nearly 10 percent compared with 2016; nearly 70 percent of registered voters cast ballots, and a task force found that there was no evidence of any fraud.A voter in a car used a drive-through voting station at NRG Arena in Houston to cast a ballot in the presidential election.Go Nakamura for The New York TimesYet Republicans are pushing measures through the State Legislature that would take aim at the very process that produced such a large turnout. Two omnibus bills, including one that the House is likely to take up in the coming week, are seeking to roll back virtually every expansion the county put in place for 2020.The bills would make Texas one of the hardest states in the country to cast a ballot in. And they are a prime example of a Republican-led effort to roll back voting access in Democrat-rich cities and populous regions like Atlanta and Arizona’s Maricopa County, while having far less of an impact on voting in rural areas that tend to lean Republican.Bills in several states are, in effect, creating a two-pronged approach to urban and rural areas that raises questions about the disparate treatment of cities and the large number of voters of color who live in them and is helping fuel opposition from corporations that are based in or have work forces in those places.In Texas, Republicans have taken the rare tack of outlining restrictions that would apply only to counties with population of more than one million, targeting the booming and increasingly diverse metropolitan areas of Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas. The Republican focus on diverse urban areas, voting activists say, evokes the state’s history of racially discriminatory voting laws — including poll taxes and “white primary” laws during the Jim Crow era — that essentially excluded Black voters from the electoral process.Most of Harris County’s early voters were white, according to a study by the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit group. But the majority of those who used drive-through or 24-hour voting — the early voting methods the Republican bills would prohibit — were people of color, the group found. “It’s clear they are trying to make it harder for people to vote who face everyday circumstances, especially things like poverty and other situations,” said Chris Hollins, a Democrat and the former interim clerk of Harris County, who oversaw and implemented many of the policies during the November election. “With 24-hour voting, there wasn’t even claims or a legal challenge during the election.”The effort to further restrict voting in Texas is taking place against the backdrop of an increasingly tense showdown between legislators and Texas-based corporations, with Republicans in the House proposing financial retribution for companies that have spoken out.American Airlines and Dell Technologies both voiced strong opposition to the bill, and AT&T issued a statement supporting “voting laws that make it easier for more Americans to vote,” though it did not specifically mention Texas.American Airlines also dispatched Jack McCain, the son of former Senator John McCain, to lobby Republicans in Austin to roll back some of the more stringent restrictions.Republicans in the State Legislature appear unbowed. In amendments filed to the state budget this week, House Republicans proposed that “an entity that publicly threatened any adverse reaction” related to “election integrity” would not be eligible for some state funds.While those amendments will need to be voted on, and may not even rise to the floor for a vote, placing them on the record is seen by lobbyists and operatives in Austin as a thinly veiled warning to businesses to stay quiet on the voting bills.The Perryman Group, an economic research and analysis firm based in Waco, said in a recent study that implementing controversial voting measures could lead to conferences or events being pulled from the state, and prompt businesses or workers to shun it. The group estimated that restrictive new laws would lead to a huge decrease in business activity in the state by 2025 and cost tens of thousands of jobs. Among the restrictions in two omnibus bills in the Texas Legislature are a ban on 24-hour voting, a ban on drive-through voting and harsh criminal penalties for local election officials who provide assistance to voters. There are also new limits on voting machine distribution that could lead to a reduction in numbers of precincts and a ban on encouraging absentee voting.The bills also include a measure that would make it much more difficult to remove a poll watcher for improper conduct. Partisan poll watchers, who are trained and authorized to observe the election on behalf of a candidate or party, have occasionally crossed the line into voter intimidation or other types of misbehavior; Harris County elections officials said they had received several complaints about Republican poll watchers last year.Mr. Hollins, the former Harris County clerk, said Republicans recognized that “Black and brown and poor and young people’’ use the flexible voting options more than others. “They’re scared of that,” he said.While Republican-controlled legislatures in Georgia and Arizona are passing new voting laws after Democratic victories in November, Texas is pushing new restrictions despite having backed former President Donald J. Trump by more than 600,000 votes. The effort reflects the dual realities confronting Republicans in the State Legislature: a base eager for changes to voting following Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss and a booming population that is growing more diverse. Bryan Hughes sponsored the bill in the State Senate that seeks to add voting restrictions.Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman, via Associated PressSenator Bryan Hughes, a Republican from northeastern Texas who sponsored the State Senate bill, defended it as part of a long effort to strengthen “election security” in Texas.“I realize there’s a big national debate now, and maybe we’re getting sucked into that, but this is not something new to Texas,” Mr. Hughes said in an interview. He said that lawmakers were seeking to roll back mail voting access because that process was more prone to fraud. He offered no proof, and numerous studies have shown that voter fraud in the United States is exceptionally rare.Mr. Hughes said that the proposed ban on drive-through voting stemmed from the difficulty of getting access for partisan poll watchers at the locations and that 24-hour voting was problematic because it was difficult to find poll watchers for overnight shifts.But many voters in Harris County, whose population of 4.7 million ranks third in the country and is bigger than 25 states’, see a different motive.Kristie Osi-Shackelford, a costume designer from Houston who was working temporary jobs during the pandemic to help support her family, used 24-hour voting because it offered her the flexibility she needed as she juggled work and raising her three children. She said that it had taken her less than 10 minutes.“I’m sure there are people who may not have gotten to vote in the last couple of elections, but they had the opportunity at night, and it’s kind of sad that the powers that be feel like that has to be taken away in order to, quote unquote, protect election integrity,” Ms. Osi-Shackelford said. “And I struggled to find words, because it’s so irritating, and I’m tired. I’m tired of hearing the same stuff and seeing the same stuff so blatantly over and over again for years.”Brittany Hyman, 35, was eight months pregnant as Election Day was drawing near and was also raising a 4-year-old. Fearful of Covid-19 but also of the sheer logistics of navigating a line at the polls, Ms. Hyman voted at one of the drive-through locations.“Being able to drive-through vote was a savior for me,” Ms. Hyman said. She added that because she had been pregnant, she probably wouldn’t have risked waiting in a long line to vote.Brittany Hyman, who was pregnant as Election Day approached, used drive-through voting.Mark Felix for The New York TimesHarris County’s drive-through voting, which more than 127,000 voters took advantage of in the general election, drew immediate attention from state Republicans, who sued Mr. Hollins and the county in an attempt to ban the practice and discard any votes cast in the drive-through process. The Texas Supreme Court ruled against the Republicans in late October.Other provisions in the G.O.P. bill, while not aimed as directly at Harris County, will most likely still have the biggest impact in the state’s biggest county. One proposal, which calls for a uniform number of voting machines to be deployed in each precinct, could hamper the ability to deploy extra machines in densely populated areas.This month, in a further escalation of public pressure on legislators, Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston, a Democrat, gathered more than a dozen speakers, including business executives, civil rights activists and former athletes, for a 90-minute news conference denouncing the bill.“What is happening here in Texas is a warning shot to the rest of the country,” said Lina Hidalgo, the Harris County judge and a Democrat who has pushed for continued expansion of voting access in the county. “First Georgia, then Texas, then it’s more and more states, and soon enough we will have taken the largest step back since Jim Crow. And it’s on all of us to stop that.” More

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      ‘Shameless’: Texas Republicans lead the charge on voting clampdown

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterTexas Republicans are at the vanguard of a national push to curtail voting rights, with lawmakers targeting the voters and policies that helped Democrats make inroads in the 2020 election.Texas legislators have introduced 49 bills restricting voting access, far more than any other state, even as major Texas-based corporations such as American Airlines express fervent opposition.The sweeping provisions could deal an outsized blow to low-income residents, people with disabilities, city dwellers and Texans of color, many of whom belong to diverse, youthful cohorts whose political views spell trouble for the GOP.And, in a twist that differentiates Texas from other states such as Georgia and Arizona that have instituted or are planning voting restrictions, some of the proposals impose extreme penalties on people who make even innocuous missteps.“When you make making a mistake on a voter registration application a second-degree felony, that’s the equivalent of arson and aggravated kidnapping,” said Sarah Labowitz, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.Conservative politicians have tried to justify the rollback by hiding behind Donald Trump’s claim that last year’s presidential contest was stolen – despite a complete lack of evidence, and even though their party won handily in Texas.Allegations of widespread voter fraud have almost become a “litmus test” among Texas Republicans, said Juan Carlos Huerta, a professor of political science at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi.Conservatives’ political futures could hinge on whether their base believes they are cracking down on the non-issue. And, as a new generation of voters comes of age, the specious talking point provides cover for politicians who can see that their party’s prospects may be dimming.Although Republicans maintained their ironclad grip on Texas last year, Trump’s margin of victory in the presidential race winnowed to less than six points, from a nine-point lead four years earlier. Democrats also gained significant ground during the 2018 midterm elections, when former representative Beto O’Rourke lost his Senate bid to incumbent Ted Cruz by fewer than 215,000 votes.The state’s current officeholders know they will not be able to get re-elected on the issues alone, so they are moving the goalpost, said Claudia Yoli Ferla, executive director of civic engagement non-profit Move Texas.“These legislators are seeing the writing on the wall, and they’re scared of the power of young people. They’re scared to have the true voices of our communities reflected,” Yoli Ferla said.Already Texas subjects its residents to a byzantine electoral system, giving it a reputation as thehardest place to vote in the US. Voters do not have access to same-day registration, and they can only register online if they are simultaneously updating their driver’s license.Then, at the ballot box, hardline documentation requirements honor handgun licenses as a form of accepted identification, but not student IDs. Mail-in voting is so limited that last fall, voters were forced to gather in long lines, in-person, regardless of the coronavirus pandemic.But despite Texas’s legacy of voter suppression, large, Democratic counties – most notably Houston’s Harris county – came up with innovative approaches to expand access to the polls last year. For instance, Harris county implemented 24-hour and drive-thru polling sites, while the local election administrator tried to send mail-in ballot applications to every registered voter.Instead of lauding those solutions, Republicans fought them hard. Now, the state’s leaders are working to ensure they are not an option for future elections.“Whether it’s the unauthorized expansion of mail-in ballots, or the unauthorized expansion of drive-thru voting, we must pass laws to prevent election officials from jeopardizing the election process,” said the Texas governor, Greg Abbott.In February, while Trump’s national defeat was still fresh, Abbott designated so-called “election integrity” as one of five emergency items for the legislature. As of late last month, Texas was leading the charge among 47 total states that had introduced 361 bills restricting the vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.One Texas bill would do away with drive-through polling places, allow partisan poll watchers to electronically record voters, and set limits on early voting hours.Another could consolidate voter registration responsibilities under the secretary of state, sidelining local governments.Yet another would dangle felony charges over basic activities, such as public servants proactively distributing applications to vote by mail.Texas is already known for criminalizing the ballot box, especially among communities of color. Under the state’s current attorney general, Ken Paxton, at least 72% of prosecutions by the so-called election integrity unit have targeted Black and Latino residents, according to the ACLU of Texas.Those severe penalties cause confusion and can have chilling effects on would-be voters. In the border community of Brownsville, people fear they can’t legally vote for reasons that should not be disqualifying, such as their family’s immigration status, said Ofelia Alonso, a regional field manager for youth organizers at Texas Rising Action.“It’s already such a hostile environment for folks that want to participate in the process, but these restrictions would make it even harder,” Alonso said.In an ironic turn, the proposed reforms may inadvertently affect senior citizens, who are among the few demographics eligible to vote by mail, and whose bloc trends right.As the Texas legislative session ramps up, voting rights advocates and experts are especially concerned by two omnibus bills filled with restrictions, SB7 and HB6. Both are already advancing through the legislature.“It’s kind of difficult to be able to have a strategy on, like, how to target this,” said Alonso, “when we know that the majority of the Republicans in the Texas legislature are very shameless.”Unlike in Georgia, where backlash from corporations such as Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines came retroactively, the Texas bills have already become a lightning rod.“Free, fair, equitable access to voting is the foundation of American democracy,” Michael Dell, chief executive of Dell Technologies, tweeted in early April. “Those rights – especially for women, communities of color – have been hard-earned.“Governments should ensure citizens have their voices heard. HB6 does the opposite, and we are opposed to it.”American Airlines similarly came out against SB7, saying the company is “strongly opposed to this bill and others like it”.But, emboldened by victory in 2020, the state’s conservatives don’t seem to care. When corporate giants decried the bills for being anti-democratic, Abbott simply warned them to “stay out of politics”.“Their priority’s to stay in power, with whatever means necessary,” Alonso said. “And election fraud is a good fearmongering way to rile up their base and not have to come out and say what they’re doing are Jim Crow tactics.“They won’t say it, but we know what it is.” More

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      Matthew McConaughey, Texas Governor? Voters Seem to Like the Idea.

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      A new poll may put some wind in the actor Matthew McConaughey’s sails as he considers whether to run for governor of Texas.Forty-five percent of the state’s voters said that they would vote for Mr. McConaughey if he were to challenge Gov. Greg Abbott next year, according to the poll, conducted by The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas, Tyler.An additional 33 percent of voters said they would support the incumbent, while 22 percent said that at this early stage, they would prefer to choose someone else.But such highly theoretical questions can sometimes produce wonky results, especially this far in advance of any actual campaigning. That’s doubly true when the hypothetical involves a figure with name recognition as high as Mr. McConaughey’s, particularly in his home state.The actor has repeatedly flirted with running for governor, though he has not said whether he would run as a Republican or a Democrat. Last month he said he was seriously considering a bid.“I’m looking into now again, what is my leadership role?” he said on a podcast. “Because I do think I have some things to teach and share, and what is my role? What’s my category in my next chapter of life that I’m going into?”His fortunes in the new poll were particularly good among independents, 44 percent of whom said they’d support him and only 18 percent of whom said they would back the governor, a Republican.Yet Mr. Abbott’s job approval rating was healthy, with 50 percent of voters giving him positive marks and 36 percent negative. Fifty-four percent said he had responded well to the state’s power failure crisis, driven by strong support from Republicans; independents tilted away from him here, with 50 percent saying he had handled it badly and 43 percent saying he responded well, the poll found.The survey was conducted from April 6-13 among 1,126 registered Texas voters, using a mixed-mode approach that included live phone interviews as well as online polling through the Dynata database. More

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      Texas bill to carry gun without permit advances to state senate

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      This week, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill dubbed “Constitutional Carry” that would allow citizens over the age of 21 to carry a gun without a license, drawing outrage from many state Democrats and gun-reform advocates.Texas law currently requires citizens to obtain a license to carry in order to carry a firearm openly or concealed. If passed into law, the new bill would remove that restriction, allowing Texans to carry guns without having to pass a background check or go through training. Texas would become the 14th state to implement such a law.The bill arrives on the heels of several recent mass shootings that have taken place around the country. On Thursday night, a gunman killed eight people including four members of the Sikh community in an Indianapolis FedEx warehouse. Earlier this month in Bryan, Texas, a man opened fire at a cabinet company where he was previously employed. One man died and five others were injured, including a state trooper.On Twitter, former congressman Beto O’Rourke expressed his support for those protesting the bill at the state capitol in Austin. He echoed their demands for common sense gun laws.“Grateful to @joecascinotx and those doing their best to stop HB 1927 and ensure that we have common sense gun laws in Texas,” O’Rourke tweeted. “Thank you for showing up and stepping up for Texas!”After a mass shooting in his native El Paso in August 2019 that left 23 people dead and another mass shooting that same month where 7 people were killed at a Cinergy movie theater complex in Odessa, O’Rourke had given an impassioned speech on gun reform and his proposal for a mandatory assault weapon buyback program.“Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore,” he said then.Protesting the bill at the state capitol, Becca DeFelice, a volunteer for Moms Demand Action Texas chapter, said: “It’s not complicated, and it’s not controversial: gun owners like me know that responsible gun ownership means going through a background check and safety training before carrying loaded handguns in public.”State Democratic representatives Rafael Anchía and Diego Bernal offered an amendment to the bill that would prevent “insurrectionists … or violent white supremacist extremist[s]” from possessing firearms, but it failed to make it in the bill because it did not gain enough votes.In addition to 84 state Republicans, seven democrats voted in favor of the Constitutional Carry bill. Representative Morgan Meyer of Dallas was the only Republican to vote against the bill. The bill will now advance to a Republican-majority Senate, where the fate of the bill will be determined. More