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United States | Voter suppression

At risk of losing Texas, Republicans scheme to limit

Democratic votes
The state is becoming younger and less white. It is not outlandish to imagine that
Republicans would try to keep turnout low

Oct 10th 2020 | WASHINGTON, DC

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O n the surface, the decision made almost no sense, but on deeper inspection its
insidious intent seems clear. Last week Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of
Texas, ordered counties to close extra drop-off sites for absentee votes until they have
only one each. The move means that the 4.7m residents of Harris County, which
surrounds Houston, will all have to converge on the same drop-box if they wish to cast
an absentee vote in person. Such restrictions might make sense for Loving County
(population 169), but the decision could deter many of Harris’s majority non-white and
b f lk f ti Th t i i il i th t t ’ th iti
urban folk from voting. The story is similar in the state’s other cities.

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Mr Abbott has cited voter fraud as a justification for his decision. According to the
governor, absentee voting (which is not common in Texas, as the state restricts the
practice mainly to disabled, sick or elderly residents) gives fraudsters a chance to
influence the election. Yet there is no evidence that such fraud takes place often
enough to be a real concern.

Instead, Mr Abbott’s critics allege that his move is meant to decrease turnout to keep
his party in power. Jeremy Smith, the ceo of Civitech, a company that works to get
Democrats elected, argues that Texas’s history of voter suppression has helped
politicians like Mr Abbott stay in office by decreasing turnout for non-whites and the
young. That, says Mr Smith, has made the government reflect an unrepresentative
electorate of whiter, older Texans.

Texas is undergoing a rapid shift in demography that promises to alter its politics
fundamentally. As Hispanics have become a bigger force, the share of white voters in
the state has fallen from 56% to roughly 50% over the past decade. Texas has become
younger, too. According to Mr Smith’s data, Texans under 30 now constitute nearly
20% of all registered voters, up from 18% four years ago.

Faced with these shifts, it is not outlandish to imagine that Republicans would try to
step up efforts to keep voter turnout low. This is not the first time that Texas has
adopted a policy that would disproportionately decrease turnout for Democrats. Mr
Smith highlights other aspects of the state’s voting-and-registration system that benefit
Republicans.

One is its requirement that anyone wanting to be a voter-registrar must be trained by a

local county official. Texas is the last state to stipulate that groups taking part in a
registration drive should undergo such training. Mr Smith says this hurts Democratic
groups, whose successes rely on registering new voters. Such laws reduce the pool of
people who can help other voters get registered, leading (in Texas at least) to the
electorate being whiter and older than it should be.
Second, Texas has no online voter-registration system. Everything must be done by
mail or in person. That makes it one of only ten states that have not caught up with
online procedures, although a federal judge recently ruled that it must establish such a
system for people who register for a driving licence.

According to The Economist’s modelling, 66% of Texans who actually voted in 2016
were white, compared with 53% among the population of eligible voters. And 17% of
voters were under 30, as against 24% who were eligible. If every eligible person in the
state cast a ballot, according to our analysis of polling and census data, Texas would
probably be a Democratic state.

In Texas the Republican Party has for years faced a puzzle: how do you win elections
when only a minority of potential voters supports you? Mr Abbott’s answer has been
to try his darndest to prevent opponents from voting. 7

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This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "A battleground in
Texas"

United States
October 9th 2020

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