On May 11, the Texas Senate Business & Commerce Committee passed HB 25 by a vote of 7-0. The bill eliminates the straight-ticket device. It had already passed the House.
On May 11, the Texas Senate Business & Commerce Committee passed HB 25 by a vote of 7-0. The bill eliminates the straight-ticket device. It had already passed the House.
Texas GOP pushing this to hang on to power as diversity increases in Texas.
Did any Democrats vote in favor?
How does having voters choose individuals for each office allow the GOP to “hang on to power” or harm the representation of “diverse” communities? If anything it stops people from missing certain races. If there is no one from a party running in a race then using the Straight-ticket device would have the voter skip that race which they might not even realize.
It is faster and easier to cast a single vote for many offices at once than to vote each individually. Of course, speed and easiness of voting are less of a factor if one can vote by mail, or early and on one’s own time (or on a holiday) rather than at normal working times.
But if you live in a state which only lets you vote at polling places, and if your precinct has insufficient equipment and long lines, and/or if you can’t afford to take a long time away from your work to vote, you may make that choice — even if that means you miss voting in non-partisan races (or races where the preferred party doesn’t have enough candidates for all seats) or on ballot issues. Even if it means you vote for some individuals you wouldn’t support if you were voting in each race separately.
And if this tends to happen more in poorer areas which tend to vote more D than R, then eliminating the option will tend to help Rs and hurt Ds (whatever other effects it may have). Does anyone here really not understand this?
No Democratic State Senators voted for the bill. The Committee has 7 Republicans and 2 Democrats. The two Democrats didn’t vote. They are John Whitmire and Judith Zaffirini.
Senators Whitmire and Zaffirini were not present when the vote occurred. Whitmire was present when the bill was discussed. Zaffirini was not present for the roll call. They may have had other committees, or were laying out bills in other committees.
If it is faster to cast a ballot using the straight ticket, it violates the right to cast a secret ballot. Back when paper ballots were used, Republicans were urged to vote every race, because otherwise unscrupulous Democrats would mark down-ballot races.
The length of time that an individual takes to vote, considering travel time, waiting in line, signing in, etc., has almost nothing to do with whether or not that individual voter votes straight-ticket or not. During the house debate, one representative suggested that mail-ballots that were not straight-ticket would cost more to mail and would result in fat envelopes. I doubt that would be true, even if the voter used lead-based paint or gold to mark their ballot. I think the representative must have been “thinking” that you could rip off the top part of the ballot and put that in the envelope.
If election officials take into account the speed at which voters can vote, then they may be inducing behavior. Let’s say that you could vote straight-ticket in five minutes, and not-straight-ticket in 10 minutes. If a precinct has 50% straight-ticket and 50% non-straight-ticket voters, then one voting machine could handle 8 voters per hour, or 96 per 12-hour voting day. But you will have busy periods in the early morning, and late afternoon, so let’s say 72 per day (8 per hour for 3 early hours, and 3 late hours, and 4 per hour during midday, when you will have idle machines). If there are 1000 voters in the precinct, you need 14 machines.
But if 70% vote straight ticket and 30% vote non-straight-ticket, then 9.23 can vote per hour, or 83 per voting-day. You only need 12 machines.
If you split the difference and deploy 13 machines in both precincts, then the 50/50 precinct will develop lines. And if there was a precinct with 30% straight-party and 70% non, then long lines would develop there.
So what happens if an election judge comes out and addresses the lines, “folks, if you want to speed things up, just vote straight ticket. One and done, two and through, three and free, four and score, it doesn’t matter which party you vote for, just so long as you vote straight ticket”. Alternatively, a party could hire a mother with four kids to stand in line, the baby is screaming, one urchin is blowing his nose on the pant legs of other voters, and the two old oldest are running around the parking lot. The mother sighs, and leaves, and another voter observes how she had been frustrated, and encourages the remainder of the queue to vote straight ticket. The mother and children then goes on to the next polling place and repeats the performance.
I learned in law school and in my practice that courts don’t decide cases on Constitutional grounds unless they have to — and no such case of outright illegal influence or fraud would have to be decided on Constitutional grounds. Nor would the corruption or fraud themselves justify labeling the practice as unconstitutional.
I’m not the world’s biggest fan of straight-ticket; as a practicing (and sometimes running) Green, I’ve suffered its side-effects myself. It’s hardly the only solution to the problems it seeks to address, o even the best. But at least I can recognize the potential advantages it offers some folks, and why they might support it.
And what makes you think either
(1) that people don’t consider voting straight-ticket the only control *they* have over how long voting takes for them; or
(2) that election officials *aren’t* taking voter behavior into account in how many machines (and ballots, etc.) precincts get?
Mind you, absolute levels of equipment and other facilities have an impact, too — and again tend to give more opportunities to voters in more affluent areas.
What really needs to happen is to have some cases brought against states that undersupply machines to certain (or all) precincts
That would certainly be a good thing — though in some places it might also be county and city authorities who are doing some of the allocation. (Better yet, we should *win* some cases!)
@JALP,
(1) Most voters would consider the amount of time they have to wait in line to be the primary constraint. Voting in Texas opens at 7 a.m. If you had to be at your job at 9 a.m., then your concern will be how long you have to wait in line before you can vote. There would be a similar concern at the end of the day.
Have you been waiting to turn right on a red light, but there were pedestrians present. The motorist in the truck behind you lays on his horn and flashes his headlights. Either he doesn’t see the pedestrians, or his understanding of the right-on-red law is that you can turn right so long as a car coming from the left doesn’t T-bone you, and you don’t have to stop until you are three feet into a traffic lane?
You might ignore him. Or you might put your car in reverse so that the back-up lights come on. But if you were a young driver, you might go ahead and turn, perhaps reasoning that anyone who walks on sidewalks and crosses streets in crosswalks, have enough sense to know that drivers are careless idiots.
Similarly, if you were waiting to vote, and the man in truck comes in and starts suggesting that everyone vote straight-ticket, voters might be induced to vote straight ticket.
(2) If elections officials are taking into account the time voters take to vote, then they may be inducing voting behavior. It is claimed that black voters are more like to be straight-ticket voters, and it appears to be true. In heavily Democratic precincts (95%+), nearly 80% of voters voted straight ticket. Election officials don’t have to say “those” people vote straight ticket. They can say that voters in precinct 123 tend to vote straight ticket. Or they might even be able to quantify the time they take to vote. If there is a limited amount of equipment, it should be allocated on the basis of need. You could calculate the total number of seconds needed to vote, and allocate machines proportionately.
But if voters change their behavior and start taking more time to vote, then lines will become longer.
Counties administer elections in Texas. They include a mix of voters.
The straight-ticket device is a Trojan horse that provides cover for unfortunate candidates who likely should not hold office. I hope more states eliminate this mechanism and that voter education on all candidates on the ballot increases so the best choice is individually selected.
@Jim Riley,
I agree that both your numbered hypotheticals are quite possible — but they don’t refute my numbered points, or the fact that the “truck driver” urging straight-ticket voting is committing fraud.
Allocation of equipment is likely made on the basis of how many people vote absentee as well. Does that make absentee voting unconstitutional? Of course not — the wrong is providing insufficient equipment/ballots/space/etc.
Counties generally administer elections in Michigan, too . . . and BTW, there is a section of the election law which empowers poll-workers (“election inspectors”) to *remove* from the voting booth/station any voter who takes more than two minutes to vote:
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/mileg.aspx?page=getObject&objectName=mcl-168-786
Anything like that in Texas statute?