Paxton's Voter Suppression

In a throwback to the Civil Rights era Texas Republicans are using the power of government to once again suppress the vote of minority Americans. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent armed teams to the homes of half a dozen Houston area members of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Squads of armed officers banged on doors at 6 a.m. to execute search warrants and seize cell phones and other possessions at the homes of folks like 87-year-old Lidia Martinez, apparently for exercising her right register people to vote.

Voter suppression is a tried and true method for retaining power. Paxton’s actions are suspect given that the allegations are related to the 2022 election and it seems strange that after nearly two years his investigators suddenly got to the point where they are ready to seized “evidence” given that we’re ramping up for another election. We also know that while Paxton’s office has investigated hundreds of people for voter fraud and other election related crimes spending millions of dollars yet has only led to a handful of convictions. None of those alleged “crimes” involved enough voters to even change the election outcome of a city council member let alone a member of congress or the governor.

Paxton has proven time and again that he’s willing to use Texas taxpayer dollars to fund specious lawsuits and prosecutions if it means helping Republicans win elections. In 2020 he sued four other states claiming they didn’t run their elections properly. Needless to say all four were swing states where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump. All four lawsuits were laughed out of court, just like so many of his other stunts.

It’s important to remember that Paxton is so corrupt that he was impeached by the Texas House with plenty of Republicans supporting that vote last session.

Paxton is satisfied with just harassing a handful of voting rights activists, he is also threatening to sue Bexar, Travis, and Harris Counties, where Biden/Harris won by large margins, over their efforts to send voter registration cards to everyone. Apparently Paxton doesn’t want private groups to help people register to vote but he also does not want the government to people register to vote.

These tactics are the same sort that led to the Voting Rights Act and in fact were Section 4b of that legislation still in force today many of the Republican voter suppression tactics would be prohibited and the Department of Justice would have sued to enforce it. Unfortunately a decade ago the Supreme Court held that even states with a history of voter suppression can’t be pre-empted from doing it again.

Texas isn’t the only state where Republican voter suppression is going today, Ohio and Alabama are in the act along with several other southern states. Voter suppression can’t just be overwhelmed by getting out the vote, remember that Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes and still lost the election due to the electoral college.

It’s going to take patriotic Republicans like former Vice President Dick Cheney who has put aside his partisanship and endorsed Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to restore out democracy.

Hypocrisy Thy Name is Republican

 The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines hypocrisy this way: "a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not, behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel; especially, the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion." Today's Republican Party and most of its elected officials and candidates seem to embody hypocrisy, let me count the ways.

While claiming to support parental choice as an excuse to provide public tax dollars to private for profit schools the Gov. Abbott and the Texas legislature also banned parents from providing gender affirming medical care to their children. The parents most likely to send their children to private schools either already do or are in the upper income range and likely vote Republican.

The Texas legislature passed another book ban measure that Gov. Abbott signed all in the name of protecting children while the state cut Medicaid for thousands of Texas children preventing the most vulnerable from accessing healthcare. The standards set in the Texas book ban bill are so vague, they are likely to snag books that are not inappropriate, and materials dealing with LGBTQ+ subject matter are more likely to be targeted for bans. Texas has the highest percentage of children in poverty, without medical insurance, and unsure they’ll have enough to eat on any given day.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick got all lathered up over children attending drag shows with their parents; remember these are the same people with their hair on fire about parental choice. The legislature started out with a bill to ban children at drag shows then caught wind of the fact that they might have trouble in court so they went with more general language that is so vague it may even ban padded bras on female performers. The public and children have been exposed to performers in drag since before I was born, in fact in 1959 the movie “Some Like it Hot” appeared in theaters starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon in drag. The movie was a box office success and won 6 Academy Awards. Then there’s Bugs Bunny in drag in at least 40 cartoons and you can’t tell me that’s not aimed at children.

While claiming that the Voting Rights Act was a burdensome over-reach preventing states from holding elections without federal interference Gov. Abbott and the Texas legislature banned cities from enforcing health and safety laws to insure that outdoor construction workers get adequate water and rest breaks in 100+ degree summer heat. In fact the bill bans cities from regulating anything that the legislature doesn’t give them explicit permission to regulate. You might notice that is exactly the opposite of the way the U.S. constitution is phrased as it says the federal government can only regulate what is specified therein while the states can address anything else. Texas has violated the letter and spirit of the Voting Rights Act for at least the last 3 redistricting cycles or more than 20 years, gerrymandering districts to protect their overwhelming majority in the legislature when based on statewide voting results the majority should be much thinner.

This list is far from exhaustive but it’s all I have the patience for as just reviewing this batch made me angry. Remember this when it is time to vote in 2024.

Texas Redistricting An Exercise In Racism

The Texas legislature is once again in special session, this time to draw new maps congressional, state senate, state house, and state board of education districts. The maps proposed are an exercise in using power to maintain power in that the districts are drawn to increase the number of districts that likely to be won by Republicans who already hold a majority that is not supported by the actual vote counts.

The Republican leadership has employed an out of state expert whose primary qualification for the job is successfully slicing up communities to enable Republicans to win more districts with fewer votes. The techniques for doing this are known as packing and cracking. Packing is when the mapmaker jams as many voters of the opposing party into as few districts as possible so while the opposition is guaranteed to win those seats they don’t have enough voters in other districts to win any others. Cracking is when the mapmaker spreads out opposition voters across enough districts that they can’t possibly achieve a majority in any of them. Careful use of such tactics has enabled Republicans to hold 64% congressional seats with only 52% of votes going to Republicans in 2020.

The newly proposed maps, providing two additional seats to Texas as required by the decennial census results, preserve the unwarranted Republican majority. Those two additional seats were necessary due to the population growth of which 95% was among people of color. It’s bad enough that Republicans skewed the maps to maintain a stranglehold on the vast majority of districts but they made it worse by doing it in the most disrespectful way possible. The 2020 census shows that Hispanics make up nearly the same percentage of the population as white Texans yet the new maps include 23 majority white districts and only 7 majority Hispanic districts. The new map removes the only Black majority district and one of the previous 8 Hispanic majority districts thereby diluting their voting power and reducing the opportunity to elect a representative of their own choosing.

House Speaker Dade Phelan admonished legislators not to use the term racist in their discussion of the maps yet looking at the demographic makeup of the proposed districts it’s hard not to conclude that there was racist intent in the process of drawing them. Until the Supreme Court gutted the bi-partisan Voting Rights Act the Department of Justice would have had to review and approve Texas maps. There is still hope that Congress will pass The Freedom to Vote Act which among other important provisions imposes new standards prohibiting partisan gerrymandering including maps drawn prior to passage.

Texas Senators Cornyn and Cruz both oppose The Freedom to Vote Act as do every other Senate Republican therefore passage through the Senate will require suspension or elimination of the filibuster something West Virginia senator Joe Manchin opposes. Our democracy is imperiled by power hungry Republicans supported by their Trump cultist voters. If this nation is to stand as a beacon of democracy for another century we must all hope that The Freedom to Vote Act is passed this year.

Why are they working so hard to suppress your vote if it doesn't matter?

As this is the week of the 242nd anniversary of the Declaration of Independence it seems appropriate to consider that document in the context of today. In particular I find a phrase from the preamble to be of import; “…Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”. This is one of several concepts related to the founding of this nation which set it apart from most other countries of the time. Sadly the concept of consent of the governed is under attack today and has been for some years.

Texas and other Republican controlled states have been using a variety of methods to prevent voters from getting the governance they would choose. Racial and partisan gerrymandering have received much attention from the courts and had been getting attention of the Department of Justice until the Republican controlled Supreme Court overturned important parts of the Voting Rights Act. Rulings this term have both given hope and caused despair to those advocating for fair districts. In some states the Republican party only gets about 40% of the votes but controls 60% of the state legislature. In Texas 55% of the votes allows control of 65% of the seats.

Gerrymandering isn’t the only method used to prevent the people from getting the government of their choice. The passage of the 15th Amendment, which gave freed slaves the right to vote shortly after the Civil War, and which required the passage in 1965 of the Voting Rights Act to enforce is again being undermined by numerous states. Instead of using outright voter intimidation Republican controlled legislatures like that of Texas have passed draconian voter identification regulations. Republicans in Florida and Houston use control of elections departments to purge voter roles in ways that unfairly target minority and low income voters. A Supreme Court ruling a few years ago voiding parts of the Voting Rights Act has made it difficult to prevent such heavy handed attacks on the right to vote. Now with Republican control of the Department of Justice the federal government has gotten out of the business of even attempting to enforce voting rights.

The Republican Party of Texas 2018 platform specifically calls for the repeal of the Voting Rights Act. Conversely the Texas Democratic Party calls for restoration and aggressive enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.

What is consent if not choice? How can you give consent if your right to choose is suppressed?

It’s unfortunate that too many Texans don’t even bother to vote which just makes the job of those seeking to suppress their votes easier. It’s been said many times that Texas isn’t a Republican state it’s non-voting state. I will be the first to admit that Democrats aren’t all angels and that far too many have not lived up to their promises or the values of the party they claim. On the other hand that’s why we have elections and in fact why we have primaries. I believe that if everyone voted in primaries we’d get better Democrats in office when we do elect them. For that matter if more Republicans voted in their primaries we’d probably seen fewer extremist Republicans in office.

So I ask those who think their vote doesn’t matter or that elections aren’t important to their daily lives to consider this; if their votes aren’t important why are Republicans working so hard to prevent people like you from voting?

Published in the Seguin Gazette - July 6, 2018

Wealthy Use Law to Maintain Their Wealth

Anti-drug laws, voter suppression and gerrymandering, and tax policy are all used by the wealthiest among us to maintain a fractured society. It’s in their interest to keep us at each other’s throats so we don’t turn our attention to their hoarding of assets and work together to develop a more equal and just society.

Using wedges to keep people with common interests separated has been a trait of the wealthy here since colonial times when plantation owners noticed that indentured servants were fraternizing with and sometimes escaping with slaves or running off to live with the Indians. In order to stop losing their enslaved workers the planters developed programs for the indentured servants wherein they would receive what was essentially a large bonus at the end of their servitude, assuming they lived through it. In addition they were made the supervisors of the black slaves and given the privilege of beating and otherwise abusing them.

Anti-drug laws such as the prohibition against marijuana were created expressly to enable the arrest and prosecution of black members of society since at the time of inception it was preferred over liquor and beer due to being cheaper because they could grow their own. The use of anti-drug laws has continued to be used for control as explained by former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman who was quoted in Harper’s magazine saying "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people, you understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities, we could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

Until the Voting Rights Act poll taxes and literacy tests were used to prevent “undesirables” so that the wealthy could continue to prosper at the expense of the lower classes. Now laws like Texas’ Voter ID bill seek to suppress the vote by only allowing forms of ID that tend to be held by wealthier white voters and not by poorer voters of color. Gerrymandering is used to prevent voters of color from electing officials who might be more sympathetic to their plight. Here again Texas is a prime example with a federal judge having found that the 2011 redistricting maps were intentionally discriminatory against voters of color.

Just look at Texas tax policy and the funding of public education. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick claims that property taxes are too high and he wants to set a maximum that cities and school districts can charge. Ironically he’s been instrumental in reducing the share of public school funding provided by the state thus requiring school districts to raise property taxes in order to provide an adequate education. The way this hurts people of color is that their school districts generally have overall lower property values so even if they could afford to raise the tax rates they’d still have less money to spend on educating children in their districts. Most of us would be very angry if our tax deduction for mortgage interest went away so it won’t but the people who get the greatest advantage out of it are the very wealthiest who buy multi-million dollar homes.

Nearly 400 years later and the wealthy still lead us by the nose.

Published in the Seguin Gazette July 14, 2017