Rural Concern for Mail-in Ballots
To the Editor:
I can understand why Fayette County Republicans don’t take issue with the voting bills currently on the special session agenda. Most of the content in these bills actually target the large metropolitan areas that overwhelmingly vote Democrat and will most likely have very little effect in the red rural areas. One item that should concern rural voters has to do with mail-in ballots. Voters must include either their driver’s license number or their social security number on their ballot. The Secretary of State will only have one of those numbers on file which will be the number used when a voter registered. If the voter forgot which number they used and selected the other (valid) number on their ballot, it would be rejected and their vote not counted.
The Texas House Republicans were attempting to ram through their voting legislation. Ironically, the bill that aimed at prohibiting 24-hour voting didn’t open the floor for public testimony until 3:00 in the morning. Most often, the committees would not post that they would be in session until the last minute to prevent public input; once even adjourning the meeting to reschedule after hundreds of citizens made the trip to Austin to testify. Obviously, the two parties had little chance of agreeing on these bills as the Republicans are operating on “the big steal” and the Democrats on “the big lie.”
I don’t like when our elected officials feel they must step outside the job description that they are expected to perform. I certainly didn’t like it when Ted Cruz led a 13-day shut-down of the federal government to oppose the Affordable Care Act. What we are seeing is history repeating itself. When states, like Texas, resisted school desegregation and the elimination of Jim Crow voting laws it took the federal government to undo state legislation. Our Texas House Dems have been meeting with key federal government members and giving testimony to U.S. House committees concerning civil rights and voter protection. These Texas House members didn’t run away; they took our fight to a higher authority, as some of the other states should have.
David McCall
Waldeck