3 Lies And A Truth: What's Behind The GOP's Voting Rights Ploy

DALLAS, TX —You know the old saying: "The floggings will continue until morale improves."

That's the attitude Gov. Greg Abbott is taking with errant Democrats, who have used their absence as a spoke in the wheel to stop — or at least delay — passage of onerous voting rights proposals now known across the country as Senate Bill 1 and House Bill 3.

At the heart of the controversy are some immutable falsehoods.

1. Texas lacks "election integrity." There is scant evidence of voter fraud in the Lone Star State, despite posturing from conservatives that began anew with the 2020 presidential contest.

As both The Washington Post and The Texas Tribune discovered, this legislation is a solution in search of a problem.

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In fact, as the Tribune points out, the office of the Texas Attorney General had closed cases on some 150+ of its offenses related to elections. And if that sounds like a big number, consider that those cases date from 2004, so we're talking about 99 million ballots cast, and just under 160 violations brought forth since then.

2. This is what the public cares about. No, it's not. It's what Fox News, Trumpists, QAnon subscribers and CPAC attendees care about. In other words, it's what conservatives and the Republican base in Texas cares about.

In fact, the opposite is true. Most voters care about ensuring the right to vote, rather than worry that the wrong people are casting ballots, according to polls.

3. Democrats are betraying their constituents by leaving. In Gov. Abbott's civics lesson on Lubbock's KYFO Chad Hasty radio show, he explained legislators needed to take their lickin', like the butt-whupped bunch they are. “They were not elected to run and hide,” Abbott, said on the air. “They were elected to make arguments that are best for their constituents and then cast votes.”

No. They were elected to represent the state according to the dictates of their conscience. The bills still call for additional mail-in ballot restrictions, eases restrictions for partisan poll watchers to monitor — and therefore challenge — a vote being cast (a strategy pinched directly from the days of Jim Crow) and bans both drive-through and 24-hour voting.

Abbott and his cavalcade of conservatives are playing to their base. The Democrats are trying to ensure that all Texans who are eligible have as easy a time as possible voting. Republicans know that the more people who vote, the less likely they are to win.

And here's the one truth: Republicans are frustrated and furious and they're lashing out in any way they can.

Tuesday, the Texas House voted in a landslide to send law enforcement in pursuit of the Democrats who left the state a day earlier to thwart the priority elections legislation the only way they knew how. As it stands, some 50 Democratic members of the House have decamped to DC to deny Abbott the quorum he needs to ram his legislation into law.

To up the ante, El Paso Democrat Joe Moody was removed Thursday as speaker pro tem of the House. As his colleagues in Washington turn up the lights, you can expect Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the rest of the Texas Republican Party to turn up the heat.

This is the GOP saying, "Go cut a switch from that tree, kid. I'm gonna beat the sass out of you."

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