Texas reaches over 18 million registered voters, the highest it's ever been

usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml to politics @lemmy.world – 456 points –
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If you live in Texas, make sure to register to vote! The deadline is coming up in a few days on the 7th. Note that for Texas you must register either in person or by mail, you cannot register online unlike most states


Find information on how to register to vote anywhere https://vote.gov/

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Ken Paxton will personally close all polling stations if more than 20 people show up to vote

Gonna repeat what I said in a different comment:

Encourage people to try to vote early everywhere. Texas has early in person voting from Oct 21 – Nov 1

If you vote early, you'll have time to come back again in case there's some last minute changes to the polling places open or some other problem. Plus you also don't then have to worry about something like being sick on election day

These are all excellent reasons. If I may add one.

I want to fuck Donald day one. So bad. Fuck him. My rage seethes waiting to be released into my ballot.

But otherwise spot on!

I have never understood why you need to register ahead of time to vote in US. It seems like an unnecessary blocker. In Denmark you just show up on the day, state your SSN, show ID and get a ballot.

You need to do it because it's an unnecessary blocker. That's the point. Poor people disproportionately struggle to jump through the hurdles in place for voting, and Poor people disproportionately vote D. R loves to make voting harder under the auspices of "fraud prevention".

Also a lot of federal centralization didnt happen until the great depression, we are a federation of states meaning that historically it most shit was handled by the states and not in a states rights way but a who runs the local library sort of way. It was easier bureaucracatically as well allowing the feds to focus on other things.

This is also why random bits of bureaucracy is not standardized across all states, like the DMV sure most states got the memo but then you have whatever the fuck Washington is doing.

It really is also a states rights thing. The federal government, by design, has no say in how elections or driver's licenses work.

That they have stepped in to the driver's license space is an overstep of their authority, honestly.

The federal government is not the sovereign entity, the many states are.

That's no longer true, the 14th amendment effectively made the constitution sovereign over all the states, period. That's how incorporation works, otherwise states could have handgun bans again like in the 19th century.

The feds have nothing to do with driver's licenses. States have agreements to honor each other's licenses.

R loves to make voting harder under the auspices of “fraud prevention”.

They say, while their supporters are the ones committing all of the fraud.

I have never understood why you need to register ahead of time to vote in US. It seems like an unnecessary blocker.

No, you absolutely do understand perfectly.

Yes, it's utterly stupid. One reason I can point to is that the US never really had a national ID system. The social security number is a hack to get something along the lines of an ID, but it's not reliable enough to make it viable for elections.

It's not "stupid." To call it stupid is to gloss over the fact that it's a calculated, deliberate, malicious tactic of targeted voter disenfranchisement meant to swing elections.

That's because a national ID requirement is illegal.

I can't find the law because I now suck at searching and searching has gotten worse.

Social security number is a national id isn't it?

Technically, the SSN is not and was never supposed to be used for identification.

It's intended as a "this is the John Doe I'm talking about" kind of id, not a "the person with this card is John Doe" kind of id.

We don't have national ID or election systems. So with early voting it would be legitimately possible to register and vote multiple times in multiple places without the deadline.

Why would your SSN not suffice?

The SSN isn't an identification. In fact, it specifically says on the back of mine that it is not to be used for identification.

It was intended intended to do one thing only: track lifetime earnings to determine retirement benefits. The thing is since there isn't a national ID everyone is required to get, businesses started using it to track people.

gives all the smaller governmental departments(like the municipal courts) time to assimilate your info for future contacts like jury duty

Sounds like the least cynical answer I have gotten here.

Has piss baby Ken Paxton cut voting to only one polling locale yet?

Encourage people to try to vote early everywhere. Texas has early in person voting from Oct 21 – Nov 1

If you vote early, you'll have time to come back again in case there's some last minute changes to the polling places open or some other problem. Plus you also don't then have to worry about something like being sick on election day

you can vote at any polling place within your county if you vote early

Early Voting Locations

Voting during the early voting period couldn’t be easier and more convenient! Registered and eligible voters may vote at ANY early voting location located in their county of residence. Whether you are at home, work or out running errands, you will be able to find a polling place near you. Early voting locations will be populated in our search site "My Voter Portal" two days prior to the first day of early voting. Here, you can enter your Name, County, Date of Birth and ZIP code to look up your registration information and find your nearest polling location. You may want to contact the Early Voting Clerk for State and County Elections in your county for early voting locations. Also, many newspapers publish early voting polling locations.

Note: Polling place hours vary at each early voting location.

source

My entire county only has one early voting location. I miss the convenience of voting in a random place like a nearby store when I lived in a more populated area instead of having to drive halfway across the county.

Could be worse, atleast Texas doesnt have a san Bernardino sized county. Biggest county in the US and thats after it was shrunk down, pretty sure Riverside and Kern used to be part of it.

AG Paxton's new rule would be that the entranceway of every polling location in Texas can only be open once every 10 minutes for 30 seconds at a time, to prevent voter fraud of course.

Ummmm.

In 2020, 11 million people voted.

Texas is going blue. Vote!

how many were registered though?

16.1mil

so at the same ratio you’re looking at about 12.4m voters so far.

A ~1.2 million increase in turnout could be significant enough to change the president and or senate race

Keep in mind trump only won texas by ~600 thousand votes in 2020

And Cruz won by only ~200 thousand votes in 2018

And Cruz literally abandoned them to freeze.

Shit even AOC didn't do that, and she is in New York. lmao

The difference is that AOC is a human being and not a blobfish who watched someone make fun of his wife

Hey now dont diss the blobfish, you wouldnt look good in an under pressurized environment either. Also I thought we all agreed Ted Cruz was the Zodiac killer.

Another million might've made us blue already. Trump had the smallest GOP margin of victory in Texas in decades! Texas picked Carter, LBJ, and JFK for President! If Harris wins Texas then there's basically no way Trump can sue his way to victory.

This would be the required level of over achievement to fuck over the Republicans. It may even be the parties first sign of death, if they lose Texas they will either need to reform or die.

Fuck, I hope so - but I'm not optimistic. When Obama won in 2008 asking with the House and a super majority in the Senate, I thought "finally, the death of the Republican party. Surely they'll be forced to move to the left to have any chance of winning another election."

Instead they doubled down, created the TEA Party, and eventually got is to where we are today.

"Nuh uh, it was the illegal immigrants we didn't kill with the razor wire", Ken Paxton after Harris wins Texas, probably.

I encourage people not only to check your registratio, but full on order a new ID, confirming it j’s your correct name, address, and a updated picture it poseible.

Understand, Texas has realistically been blue since at least 2000. Voter turnout is an existential threat to the Texas republicans, and they know it.

Fucking hell yes. Hoping that's our side and not maggots.

Encouraging news about that from the article

The biggest registration gains have been in the Democratic stronghold of Harris County and along the I-35 corridor, which now leans blue

Awesome! That's on me, should have read the article. Thanks for taking the time!

Yeah. That's how population growth is...

It'll be newsworthy when total votes/voters go down over time, this is like being surprised 12:30 pm happens after noon everyday.

The voter registration numbers are exceeding the population changes in Texas

This is great to see. Texas isn't so much a red state as a non voting state. The more people vote, the better democrats do generally. It's why Republicans are always pushing for voter roll purges.

Republicans lose the popular vote, period. When people actually vote, on every level, Republicans lose.

Point being percent is the metric to use here. Not total number

Yes, using either metric, you're wrong.

12/15.5=77%

18/22=84%

Saying that 18 million more registered voters is more I formative than the percent of registered voters has increased 7% is just ridiculous to me

One shows real useful to information, the other doesn't fucking matter.

If you think that's "wrong" then I'm not sure how to explain this in a way you can understand.

But I'm pretty sure youte assuming I'm saying something else

Saying that 18 million more registered voters

No one is saying that.

Also younger voters, especially young women are much more invested in politics and more likely to vote than ever.

Eh...

In the 1960s it was like 50%, I don't think we're there yet

And people talk about how today's violence, extremism, and division is new like the Civil Rights movement never happened and Malcolm just had that AK for a photo OP.

You're "than ever" isnt accurate.

The 1960s had political engagement and division, no one's denying that.

However it was surpassed in 2020 which was a record year for turnout of 66.8% of eligible voters. Specifically, 90.6% of eligible women were registered, and about 68.4% of them actually voted. Women outpaced men in both categories. Young voters, especially young women, were a big part of that surge.

Trump lost big then, imagine now with all the news about record registrations how much he might lose by now. Personally I think it would be very funny to see Harris break 100M votes,. Can you imagine how angry Trump would be :)