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?
But 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, uh, 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 Jane 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, one
particular county in Texas that's been voting Democratic since 2008
would have the election results thrown out.
Okay.
They could do a like a re-election, 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.
Oh, we should call them.
Like 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, you know, 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 like the
government looking for like specific facts they can exploit to
shut something down that they don't like, down to the
level of measuring like the space between the top of
the door and the ceiling is exactly the sort of
like 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, a hundred percent.
And so like 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 um 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.
Ah, 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 uh 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 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 write that wrong.
Okay, we're just we want to protect democracy.
That's how they're trying to sell it to people, right?
So it's uh response to uh 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, uh, 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.
They are tar 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 uh hampered
resulted in them losing their their election, even though it's
what is it, a couple percentage points of the total
number of polling places?
This this is as insulting a political argument as I
can come up with.
It's embarrassing.
I'm gonna try to come up with more, but for
now, this is more.
Like, have some dignity, right?
Like how embarrassing is it that like you lose in
this county, and rather than maybe doing 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, you know, do that self- reflection, make
some changes, propose things that are appealing to the voters,
to the constituents there.
But you could also cheat.
It's difficult.
And it seems like they're going in the cheating direction.
Yeah, 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 min.es in
Africa where that stuff is produced
No, but but but really think about 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 can avoid so much
trouble.
Yeah.
Just make sure you got those reams folks bring the
reams in.
Right?
You're looking ream too much.
I think the issue is that in some of these
parties they're gonna be readings they'll get reamed by the
Republican Party in the state of Texas.
So let's just call it what it is.
Thanks for watching the Young Truths really appreciate it.
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