What is happening in Texas is absolutely unprecedented and could make for shocking results Tuesday night. Lets start with this: from Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman:
That’s right, I had to read it three times too. Texas has achieved 95% of its last presidential election year turnout with 2 days of early voting and election day still to come. Importantly, the high turnout is being driven by younger, urban, and suburban turnout that bodes well for Team Blue. And lets be honest, given the anti-democratic and amoral character of Trump and his subjects in the Republican party, at this point Team Blue pretty much translates to Team America. But I digress.
The following are highlights from an excellent article from NBC News. It tells the story of how changes made by Lina Hidalgo and the other local leaders that ousted Republicans in local government in the 2018 Blue wave in Harris County made it dramatically easier for people like Hector Martinez to vote.
Four years ago, the early-voting location nearest his office closed at 5 p.m. most weeknights, making it impossible for Martinez to get there after his evening shift as a maintenance worker. As a result, he wound up waiting in line for nearly an hour to vote on Election Day in 2016. This was much easier,” Martinez, 47, said Tuesday, after voting at the Bayland Park Community Center in southwest Houston. “No line. No problem.”
In 2016, under Republican leadership, Harris County spent about $4 million to administer the elections. After Democrats took control of every countywide office, officials increased the election budget to a staggering $31 million this year.
That’s allowed election officials to triple the number of early-voting sites in the county of 4.7 million residents. They vastly expanded voting hours so residents like Martinez could come after work. During the final days of early voting, some locations will be open 24 hours. And officials also opened 10 drive-thru voting sites across the county, making it possible for residents worried about the coronavirus to cast ballots from the safety of their cars.
Lina Hidalgo
It was a big deal in 2018 when Lina Hidalgo won an upset in the race for Harris County’s most powerful elected office. She beat an eleven year Republican incumbent and got right to work leading transformational change. Here is the key quote on the voting access changes detailed above: “What we're seeing is, when you build it they come,” said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the county’s top elected official, who is the first woman and the first Latina to hold the job. “We’ve learned that we can't blame the historic lack of participation on the voters themselves. It's been these obstacles.”
I have seen a lot written over the years about awakening the “sleeping giant” in the Texas electorate. Well, it is awake. Certainly having evil guy Trump as a motivator helps. And the groundwork laid by the Beto campaign in 2018 and beyond helps. But the key is to make real investment in making it easy for everyone to vote and turnout will go up, way up. The Democrats are likely to have long term control of local leadership in Harris county. Yes, Republicans at the state level will continue to try to block easier access to voting there, but they are having limited success because of the creative and dedicated work of the new local Democratic leaders. Back to the NBC article:
Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston estimates at least 1.5 million voters need to turn out in Harris County for Democrats to have a reasonable shot at winning Texas. With another two days left of early voting, it’s possible the county could hit that total before Election Day.
So vote Biden/Harris, and keep voting Blue all the way down the ballot. Those local races have big local consequences, including ones that loop back to have national and global consequences.