As I've said many times in this series, 2022 was a test run for massive voter nullification and disenfranchisement of tens of millions of voters in hundreds of races where Republicans control the levers of elections coming in 2024. In Texas, for example, Republicans like Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick are now calling for the entirety of Harris County and Houston to vote again, without any actual evidence of election fraud.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick this week joined other GOP state officials in calling for Harris County to redo its November 2022 election based on claims that voters were turned away due to alleged paper ballot shortages, though Patrick said he has no idea if any voters were actually disenfranchised.
Patrick's comments at a Magic Circle Republican Women's Club event on Monday were first reported by the Texas Tribune.
“How many people went to go vote that didn’t go back? We don’t know,” Patrick said at the event. “So we do need to have a new election.”
Now, let's dissect this.
According to Patrick, actual evidence of election malfeasance is not only non-existent, it's not even necessary for forcing Harris County and its 4.2 million residents to have an entirely new election because the theoretical hypothesis that someone in the county may have not gotten to vote is enough to nullify the entire actual, non-fraudulent vote that already took place.
This is like the Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot people saying "Well, your lottery ticket may be worth a billion dollars, but we're not going to pay out because someone out there may have been prevented from buying that winning lottery ticket with the same numbers and it's not fair to them. We have to have a new lottery drawing. Better luck next time!"
Keep in mind Harris County has 4.7 million people in it, roughly the same number of folks as the entire state of Kentucky. Imagine Kentucky saying "Well, we didn't like the way people voted, we have to hold new elections."
It would be absolute chaos. Which brings us to the next paragraph in the story as we resume.
A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office told the Texas Tribune only a court order could force a redo of an election.
Starting to dawn on you just how bad this is going to get, right?
Asked how many voters Patrick believes were turned away and based on what evidence, Patrick's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis on Tuesday issued a response to Patrick's comments. "Election deniers will stop at nothing to stay in power, even if it costs us our democracy," he said. "The ongoing attacks on Harris County come from the same playbook that drove extremists to storm the Capitol."
Patrick's comments come a week after Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted a similar assertion. Abbott, without citing any evidence or estimate of disenfranchised voters, said a Harris County ballot paper shortage was "so big it may have altered the outcome of elections" and "may necessitate new elections."
In response to Abbott's claim, the Harris County elections office repeated the response it has offered since election night: that while some voting locations did run low on their initial allotment of ballot paper, "supplies of additional paper ballots were delivered to locations throughout Harris County on Election Day."
An election post-mortem report from Tatum's office found that 68 voting locations reported running out of paper, 61 of which received additional deliveries. At nearly one-third of the locations with reported shortages, election workers gave the county conflicting accounts with some saying they did not run out of paper.
According to the report, "many of them provided confusing answers and some declined to speak after reportedly being advised not to do so by the Harris County Republican Party."
Harris County Republican Party Chair Cindy Siegel denied that claim, saying the party told its election workers: "If they call you, our advice is to talk to them. There's no reason not to."
Siegel added Republican precinct chairs may have discouraged election judges from talking to the county, but the party did not.
Harris County has had a countywide voting system in place since 2019. In the November election, residents were able to vote at any of the county's 782 voting locations on Election Day.
Like I said, a test run for stealing 2024. These assholes are normalizing the notion that the only possible "fair and just remedy" is making millions of Texans vote again because elections where Democrats actually win have to be fraudulent.
Twenty-two Republican candidates who lost their races have filed election contest lawsuits seeking new elections, including County Judge Lina Hidalgo's Republican challenger, Alexandra del Moral Mealer, who lost her race by 18,183 votes.
In November, Mealer quickly accepted the loss, tweeting a concession statement the morning after Election Day.
Mealer then reversed her position, filing an election contest petition on Jan. 6 that included no evidence or estimate of voters she said were disenfranchised. She went on to claim Harris County Elections Administrator Cliff Tatum "suppressed the voting rights of a not statistically insignificant number of Harris County residents residing or voting in high Republican turn-out locations" and "prevented eligible voters from voting.
What these assholes want is a roadmap to getting that court order in 2024 to redo elections in the most populous county in red state America, just ahead in population of Maricopa County in Arizona, and to provide that roadmap to other red states with large blue urban counties.
They're setting the table for massive vote nullification in 2024. Even if the corrupt Roberts Court somehow doesn't buy the legal theory that state legislatures, not voters, should determine presidential electors and elections, GOP-controlled states are going to do whatever it takes to disenfranchise their largest urban counties and cities in order to control local and state races too.
Oh, and the 2024 presidential race too.
To recap, the GOP Governor and Lt. Governor of Texas are calling for new elections in Harris County in order to normalize having the courts step in and nullify the 2024 elections in order to "redo" Democratic candidate wins, and to normalize the idea that "election fraud" doesn't need any actual evidence of fraud.
Imagine a twisted mirror of the Voting Rights Act, where a state like Texas decides that Harris County's election results (and Dallas County, and Bexar County, and...) are considered fraudulent until audited and "cleared" by the state, and that statewide elections (and local County elections) would not be determined until months after the actual election.
Imagine the impact that would have on turnout in those counties.
Again, are you starting to see where all this is headed in 2024 and beyond?
I hope you do. I really do.
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