Texas Republicans’ latest attempt to make voting harder in the pandemic didn’t get very far.
A lawsuit filed by the state Monday night challenging Harris County’s plans to operate “drive-thru” voting sites has already been thrown out by the court, according to the Texas Tribune.
Just in the first day that the drive-thru voting option was available to Harris County voters, more than 11,000 of them utilized it, according to the county clerk’s office.
The court knocked the state Republican Party — and an individual Harris County voter who joined the GOP in the lawsuit — for waiting until the month after the curbside voting plans became known to file the court petition. The court dismissed the lawsuit on procedural grounds, because the challengers had not proved they would suffer a particularized injury if Harris County offered drive-thru voting.
The lawsuit came after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott (R) had already limited to just one-per-county the locations where voters could submit mail-in ballots in person.
Additionally, the Texas GOP previously sued Abbott for his move to allow early in-person voting to begin a week earlier this year because of the pandemic.
Texas has some of the strictest voting laws in the country, and is one of just a few states that is not letting concerns about COVID-19 alone count as an excuse to vote absentee.
Democratic-leaning Harris County, which contains Houston and has a population of 4.7 million people, has been a flashpoint in pandemic fights around voting. The county was sued over its plans to proactively mail absentee ballot applications to all its voters, and thanks to the recent directive from Abbott, it had to reduce the number of locations for in-person mail ballot drop off from 12 sites to just one.
The latest Republican lawsuit, filed just before early voting was about the get underway, alleged that Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins was violating state law by operating drive-thru voting sites throughout his county.
Harris County is planning to offer ten “drive-thru” voting sites, where in-person voters can stay in their cars while an election worker checks their ID and lets them operate a voting machine through the window.
Since early voting started, turnout in the county has been through the roof.
In a statement about the lawsuit, the Texas Democratic Party said that the state GOP — along with Abbott and the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court — were “cowards” for “attempting to quash every opportunity to vote that is not the exact same as it was in 1900.”
“It won’t work,” the statement, from Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa, said. “Right now, millions of Texans across the state are doing everything in their power to make their voices heard. This terrifies Texas Republicans because they know Texans are fed up.”
Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins noted in a statement that his office had worked with Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughes to set up the drive-thru sites in a way that would “ensure the integrity” of the program.
“We are pleased with the court’s decision to not entertain this ridiculous attempt to disenfranchise thousands of Harris County Voters,” Hollins said.
Read court order dismissing the GOP lawsuit below:
I can’t believe Texas had drive-thru voting before California, as was discussed last night in the handoff between Rachel and Lawrence.
It really will be interesting to see what the effect of Republican interference is on the voting rate in TX…when you try to take something valuable away from people they will fight hard to keep it. Early voting is packed, and seems heavily weighted towards the Democrats, so this interference appears to be backfiring. And, pollsters build their models based on an assumed distribution of voters and participation rates…if Republicans have driven more Democrats out to vote because of their anti-voter behavior they could be swamped in a bigger blue wave than would have happened otherwise.
It would, of course, serve them right to be swept out of power by voters infuriated by their interference, but we’ll have to wait a few weeks to see if that actually is what comes to pass, or if the interference is effective and keeps them in more power than they would otherwise have. Hopefully the Democrats pulling enough votes to take the Senate and presidency, and can then remove the filibuster and pass new voting rights legislation so all of this nonsense is a thing of the past and voting becomes a fair, streamlined system that can’t be interfered with by partisans.
CA has mail-in voting already and many don’t have cars, not that having a car is an advantage in CA, depending on where you live.
Probably depends on what you mean by “drive-thru voting”. There’s been a dropoff box for absentee ballots at the county building here for as long as I can remember.
Until we had a President who was actively trying to undermine confidence in election procedures, nobody even gave it much thought.
How does the Texas GOP or any individual challenge something that makes it easier to vote. How are they harmed really. I guess they argue they are harmed because if citizens find it easy to vote they might not be able to win. That is a dog that doesn’t hunt since the goal of every election is to get every qualified voter to the polls.