On March 5, the Texas Democratic Party filed a lawsuit to require the state to restore the straight-ticket device. The legislature had repealed it in 2018, effective 2020. Bruni v Hughs, s.d., 5:20cv-35. Here is the Complaint. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Marina Garcia Marmolejo, an Obama appointee.
The only precedent for this issue is from Michigan. After the legislature repealed the straight-ticket device, the Democratic Party sued to retain it. A U.S. District Court agreed with the Democratic Party, but the Sixth Circuit reversed, and said nothing in the U.S. Constitution requires a state to have a straight-ticket device.
Later, though, Michigan voters passed an initiative, which restored the straight-ticket device and made several other unrelated election law changes. Therefore Michigan still has a straight-ticket device, even though the courts said Michigan was free to abolish it if it wished to.
That would be unfair to GLBTG candidates.
One more DNC machination —
for LOW IQ Donkey voters ??? Duh.
And, Texas doesn’t have initiative, anyway, and if it did, I’d vote against it here on this issue. Oy.
At the House Elections Committee hearing in 2017, a Hispanic Green Party official suggested that the Democratic Party wanted straight-ticket voting in order to maintain a plantation where minority voters were expected to toe the Democrat line and not have the intelligence to consider alternative candidates.
The basis for standing for the Democrat plaintiffs appears to be that they have a property right to minority voters and their votes.
The Libertarian and Green parties should intervene and have the Democrat lawsuit combined with the current lawsuit in Austin.
JR —
Thus — the Donkey logo = a badge of SLAVERY ??? —
in violation of the 13th Amdt — obtained at the cost of about 400,000 plus Union Army/Navy DEAD in 1861-1866 ???
I think an argument that was made in Michigan was that minority polling places were too few and too overcrowded, and, therefor, the straight ticket device makes in-and-out voting easier, and causes fewer long lines that discourage voters
How much quicker is straight-ticket voting? What does that have to do with waiting in line? You are waiting in line for other people to finish voting.
If you observed that voters in certain areas were quicker, perhaps because they straight-ticket voted, wouldn’t you direct voting machines where voters took longer? If you had 500 voters who averaged 15 minutes to vote, and 500 voters in another area who averaged 10 minutes to vote, shouldn’t you place more machines in the former area? 7500 voter-minutes vs. 5000 voter-minutes? Shouldn’t 60% of the machines go to slow-poke city? In effect, you are inducing behaviour.
But if election officials claim they distribute machines based on number of voters, is there actually an effect because of straight-ticket voting?