Had to Wait in a Long Line to Vote? Thank a Republican
In Harris County yesterday, lines of voters were long and the wait was up to 5 hours. Why? There are two primary reasons:
- Since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act Texas has closed 542 polling places, most in historically black and Latino areas. If you include 2012 closings, that number rises to 750.
- In Harris County at least, the Republican party refused to allow a joint primary with Dems. What that meant was that the voting machines were divided in 2, half for Repubs, half for Dems. Since Trump essentially had no opponent, turnout in the GOP primary was very low so HALF of voting machines remained essentially unused.
Both of these moves by Republicans made it harder for Texans to vote, which has been their goal for over 20 years as demographics started moving against them. I got to experience their strategy yesterday since my polling place was one of those closed. It took me three attempts at two different polling places to finally cast my vote, and I had to drive 15 minutes from one polling place to another to accomplish that. After discovering my polling place was closed, I drove to my old polling place only to find the line out the door and down the block. I went to have some lunch and returned about an hour later to find the line almost as long. A nice young poll worker for Ben Rose had information on other polling places, so I drove all the way out to Buffalo Speedway to vote at a church there. The line there was about half an hour (and it was air-conditioned) so I waited it out. When I got into the polling place, HALF of the voting machines were being unused while Republican poll workers twiddled their thumbs. On the other side, Dems were forced to wait in multiple lines to access the other half. Total time not including lunch was about two hours of waiting and a lot of driving just to vote in a goddam primary.
It’s shameful that the Republican party has been allowed to continuously and increasingly restrict access to the Constitutional right to vote. Their rationale, of course, is based on lies since their actual goal is voter suppression not “election integrity” which is one of their standard lies. Texas Republicans are perfectly happy to make the lives of their fellow Texans miserable simply for political gain. This reason alone should be enough to vote the bastards out.
The trumpkin has NOT CHANGED the rePUKEian party, he empowered the rePUKEians to show what they really have been for a very long time.
1International poll monitors! How we gonna het us some of those? It behooves the rest of the world for us to get our elections straightened the hell up!
2I feel the pain. My voting yesterday was only a matter of minutes. early morning. Plus it had rained the night before and everything outdoors was WET. The elections officer signed me in with my driver’s license on a miniature iPad that had all my info. I marked a paper ballot in secret. The ballot was run through a counting machine. In and out in less than 10 minutes. This was universes different than it has been in past years when the officials struggled with oversized “books” to check people in. It only enhanced the long miserable lines. I hope that President Biden can do something about this election mess when he is sworn in. It is nothing less than a mortal sin.
3Our (my son and I) had a similar experience in Vienna VA … one surprise was that the majority of voters was male!
4Mail-in ballots would alleviate a lot of that crying the voting blues!
5Hooray for Texas going BLUE!
Glad to see this story. Voters need to get ready for more and worse of this in November. If you possibly can, vote early or absentee. That will help shorten the lines for others, and enable you to help others get to the polls.
We will ultimately need a legislative solution to this, such as the House Bill currently rotting on Moscow Mitch’s desk, but first we have to get where we can enact one.
6For everything that’s screwed up about this election? Thank the DNC.
It’s the state parties that run primaries, what on earth does the GOP have to do with Democratic primaries? Oh, right! Both the DNC and the RNC are the OLIGARCHY.
And they can screw with the primaries all they want. The only thing that’s going to happen is that this cold revolution will go hot. And if they’re going to insist on cheating and propping up Biden, all the way to the nomination, he will LOSE, because real liberals will NEVER vote for that senile, sniveling, war mongering, social security killing, empty suit. You can only play the clear- the- field- ploy ONCE.
Why do you think the overarching commentary is uniform, and so pervasive? That Biden won more states? What is that? What difference does that make, other than for pure propaganda purposes? For uninformed voters to swallow, hook, line, and sinker? THE NUMBER OF STATES DOES NOT MATTER. It’s about the number of DELEGATES– and California isn’t done counting, yet.
7El Jefe, check the morning paper. After all the mess, it was the Harris county democratic party that screwed up. This woefully inadequate voting machine screw up was approved by them. They were informed, but did not snap to how it would really play out in a real world.
The Rs will do everything they can and always have to keep Ds from voting.
Perhaps Bloomberg can use some of his money to sponsor a meeting of all the Ds in charge so they can learn just how the Rs have been screwing them for the last 75 years. The Ds haven’t figured it out yet.
8Anything Bloomberg does will be pro- oligarchy.
Look… it’s like the scorpion, and the frog. You might never know when something’s nature will reveal itself, but rest assured: that nature will reveal itself.
And Bloomberg IS a Republican. That nature is rather obvious.
9Thankfully you were determined to vote – how many people gave up? I usually vote early, even when I worked, and that made it easier on me. In 2018 I still had to wait in the early voting because so many people turned out. This year will be even larger I think, so we need to be prepared and determined!
10Paul ADK – it depends on the state as to who runs the primaries. Here in NC, the state Bd of Elections runs everything, and for the past 10 years they’ve tried to mess with everything, until we got a local woman on the Board who knows her election law and won’t let them do stupid things (like approve unverifiable voting machines).
Our county Party also sues every time they try to close polling stations. And so far (because we keep Dem majorities on the state courts), we’ve beaten the bastards.
We’ll keep fighting until we get the Orange Fungus, Moscow Mitch, and all the rest of their ilk, out of office and take back the country…for the sake of the planet.
11I disagree with the whole Democrats own the long lines:
https://www.click2houston.com/decision-2020/2020/03/04/harris-county-clerk-blames-gop-for-refusing-to-allow-joint-primary-causing-long-wait-times-for-voters-on-super-tuesday/
If the republican party disagrees with a reasonable solution the County clerks hands are tied (at this time).
12For most of this we should blame the supreme court. Who the hell let Roberts or Thomas onto the ultimate bench? [Hint: it was Biden, the guy who thinks he can work with the Republicans in a Good Old Boy way to govern our country].
13Note to Republicans: It doesn’t have to be this way. You’re not losing because the demographics have changed. You’re losing because you haven’t.
You COULD HAVE moved to include more people instead of stubbornly remaining entrenched as the old, white, rich man’s party. You could have done well by the citizens of this country. You could have remained a competitive party in the US. Instead, you chose to disenfranchise as many people as possible in order to see to it that one tiny group of people has rights and the rest don’t.
What a surprise! The numbers are working against you and will bite you in the end.
14In every way that sentence can be interpreted.
On another note — what’s the situation on absentee voting in your state? Do you have to be able to prove that you have some sort of disability? If not, I urge you to sign up for absentee voting before November — actually, before whatever your deadline for signing up is.
Absentee voting solves all the problems listed here and a whole lot more:
1] Back when I used to schlep to the polls, I would inevitably get into the booth only to discover some judge or mandate on the ballot that I’d never heard of. How was I to make an informed decision, standing there in the booth, with no way to find out the first thing about the issue or the person I had to vote on?
Today, I sit down at the computer with my ballot and a cuppa. I google everyone and everything before setting pen to paper.
2] And that’s another thing. It’s a PAPER BALLOT. You already know why that’s important so I won’t belabor the point here.
3] Medical people are going on news shows, right now, and saying that Trump was right. For once. Kind of. There IS likely to be a drop-off of new corona virus cases this summer. Not due to some miracle but because that’s how viruses act.
And they’re saying, “Don’t get lulled into a false sense of security when it happens. It WILL be back come fall. Along with the warnings, “Don’t congregate together in large groups.” “Don’t touch anything a sick person might have touched.”
Oh wait. Hold up. What else is happening this fall? Oh, that’s right.
“Don’t congregate in large groups?” What are polls? Places where large groups of people congregate.
“Don’t touch anything a sick person might have touched?” Like voting levers? Like a ballot? Like a TOUCH screen fergoshsakes?
I’ll say it again, depending on the regulations in your state, if you can sign up to vote absentee, do it. Do it now — before the rush.
15Maggie, when you described the process of checking you in with your license, it sounded a lot like a sneaky way to use Voter ID.
Does everybody have to show their license? In PA, a judge struck down that nonsense.
Paul, I certainly agree that Biden has flaws, but Bernie does too. I gladly respect your support of Bernie, but ask that you
16respect our choices without venomous name calling, like senile, sniveling, empty suit.
The GOP tactics should make a nice ad or two, something along the line of:
‘Want to vote as easy as getting a 12 pack at Jimmy Joe’s Gas N Go ?
Vote Democratic.’
17Charles Pierce addresses this issue quite well over on Esquire:
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a31225619/texas-man-wait-7-hours-to-vote-super-tuesday/
I particularly like the idea of having UN election monitors, especially in our great state where the blatantly obvious suppression goes hand in hand with the gerrymandering of voting districts.
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