Turns out that the state legislature in Texas is poised to
pass new legislation that would, I mean, it looks like,
target the most Democratic and largest county in the state
because they don't like the way people there vote.
Okay, so what are they doing?
Well, they want to concentrate more power for
the Secretary of State to overturn the results of the elections
if there's a paper ballot issue, which doesn't sound too crazy, right?
Paper ballots seem important.
But let me get to the details here and more importantly, which counties
would be impacted by this and which counties wouldn't be impacted by this.
So the Republican state lawmakers in the Lone Star State are advancing a bill this
week that would allow the Secretary of State, who is handpicked by the governor.
And we all know who the Governor of Texas is, Greg Abbott,
to overturn the results of an election.
According to Newsweek's reporting on this,
according to the text of the bill SB 1993 the Secretary of State, a position
appointed by Republican Governor Greg Abbott and currently held by Jay Nelson,
would have the authority to throw out election results in counties wherein 2% or
more of the polling locations ran out of ballot paper for more than an hour.
So that more than an hour part of it is fascinating because that didn't
happen during the midterm elections.
And the election officials managed to get the paper for
the ballots within a few hours, but not within an hour.
So if this law were in effect during the midterm elections,
one particular county in Texas that's been voting Democratic
since 2008 would have the election results thrown out, okay?
They could do a reelection.
Like they could vote again.
But think about what that means.
That means that people need to spend time and
resources to go back to the voting place and cast another ballot.
>> Wait, I'm not sure that Abbott and the Republicans have yet realized that maybe
less people would vote the second time because he's already had the election.
>> Maybe they hadn't considered that.
>> We should call them.
I think people should write letters because that's a consequence they haven't
considered.
>> This proposal, by the way, really reminds me of what Texas did in the very
beginning of rolling back reproductive rights in the state.
So they passed laws indicating that an abortion clinic would need to shut
down if their hallways weren't a certain width.
And it's nonsense.
It means nothing, right?
It has no impact on the safety of the procedure.
It has no life threatening consequences whatsoever.
They just wanted to make it incredibly difficult to have
an abortion clinic in the state.
>> Well and also both of these instances of the government looking for
specific facts they can exploit, >> Right.
>> To shut something down that they don't like, down to the level of measuring
the space between the top of the door and the ceiling is exactly the sort of
bureaucratic nonsense that conservatives have always said that they hate.
But in this case, they like the outcome.
So they're fine with it.
>> No, 100%.
And so let's get to the county that this would impact because that's
the other thing they're so obvious about what they're doing here.
So it targets Harris County in particular.
While the text of the legislation does not explicitly mention Harris County,
the authority it would vest in the Secretary of State applies only
to counties with populations higher than 2.7 million.
Harris is the largest county in Texas with nearly 4.7 million residents and
the only one to meet this requirement,
with the second largest Dallas County boasting only 2.6 million residents.
>> I didn't quite get there.
So this is like when for decades, there was extra strict scrutiny on
election laws that certain southern states were coming up with.
This is a great demonstration of why that was necessary, and not just because this
is obviously specifically targeted at Democrats or that it's transparent in
the way that it's trying to apply to certain counties and not others.
But it's also, in this case, very intentionally targeting a county that has
a lot of people of color and living in it.
So it's the exact same thing that the Voting Rights Act was intended to stop.
And that's why it was such an amazing thing for the Republicans when they
decided that that was gonna be gone, they weren't gonna be doing that anymore.
>> Now Republicans in the state are arguing that, listen, this is just
a response to something disastrous that happened during the midterm elections and
we just want to right that wrong, okay?
We want to protect democracy.
That's how they're trying to sell it to people, right?
So it's a response to what happened in Harris County in 2022,
where some Republicans tried to use Election Day problems in the county to
justify overturning the results of the midterm elections there.
So in Harris County during the 2022 midterm elections,
26 out of the county's 782 polling locations.
>> So a narrow majority >> Exactly were affected,
according to the Houston Chronicle.
Despite the relatively small number of locations affected, the issue was seized
upon by Texas Republicans, some of whom claimed that the shortages cost them their
races, ultimately leading to the push for legislation that resulted in SB 1993.
Harris county has also,
as I mentioned earlier, tipped Democratic in every presidential election since 2008.
>> Think about how much they are actively spitting in your mouth with this argument.
They are actively targeting this county.
You know it because it's Democratic.
And the Republicans are pretending that there is something unique about these 26
counties that meant that they were disproportionately conservative and
that's why their vote briefly being hampered,
resulted in them losing their election, even though
it's a couple of percentage points of the total number of polling places.
This is as insulting a political argument as I can come up with.
>> It's embarrassing.
>> I'm going to try to come up with more, but for now, this is more.
>> Have some dignity, right.
How embarrassing is it that you lose in this county?
And rather than maybe do it a little self reflection, why is it the fine people of
Harris County for some reason, are not favoring the Republican candidates?
I mean, you could do that self reflection, make some changes,
propose things that are appealing to the voters, the constituents there.
But you could also cheat.
>> Difficult.
>> And it seems like they're going in the cheating direction.
>> Yeah, now I have heard in the wake of this
coming out some really simple minded supposed solutions.
Some people are saying that rather than giving this huge amount of new power to
the Secretary of State and canceling elections and
holding another one, why not just have more paper available?
I don't know exactly why.
I'm assuming that there are rare earth elements that are needed for that paper.
And as we all know, China has really gobbled up a lot of the mines in Africa
where that stuff is produced.
No, but really think of it how stupid this is.
So they can't just make more paper available,
which would solve the problem of paper not being available.
So instead, they're going to throw away all of the results of the election and
hold another election where they're gonna need paper not only for
those 26 locations, but for the other 250.
So it would be like 20 times more efficient just in terms of paper,
let alone everything else, to just bring in some boxes of paper,
a few more reams, and we could avoid so much trouble.
>> Yeah, just make sure you got those reams, folks.
Bring the reams in.
All right.
>> You're licking Reame too much.
>> Well if you don't bring in the ream,
you'll get reamed by the Republican Party in the state of Texas.
So let's just call it what it is.