SAN ANTONIO – The coronavirus pandemic could challenge Latino voter turnout this year, and voting advocates say this will only add to the barriers deliberately put in place to deter Latinos and color voters from casting their ballots.
“Texas has a long history. It is the state with the most distinctive, overt, and racist electoral suppression tactics we know, ”said Lydia Camarillo, president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, founded in 1974 when Mexican Americans were still being banned from voting.
Latinos make up nearly 40 percent of the population and are well on their way to being the largest demographic in the state by next year. Voter turnout in Latin America has increased, but those who try to increase the bloc’s vote in the state have to overcome laws and measures each year that prevent them from voting.
Of more than 15,000 Covid-19 deaths in Texas, 56.1 percent are Hispanics and 30.1 percent are white.
But Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott has refused to expand his mail-in voting to include people who are concerned about exposure to the virus if they vote in the polls.
Abbott has extended the early vote by six days, but others in his party are suing to prevent that extension.
Abbott went further by announcing the closure of satellite locations to Texans who can vote by mail. It allows one tax box per county – a step that would protect the integrity of the elections and stop illegal voting.
The announcement met with immediate criticism and a lawsuit from the League of United Latin American Citizens.
The governor’s decision will have a major impact on the major Texas boroughs where the Democrats have won, including Harris County, the third largest county in the country.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo slammed the governor’s decision, finding that the county she serves as the chief elected official is larger than the state of Rhode Island. “This is not security, it is repression,” she said in a tweet.
Harris County is bigger than the state of Rhode Island and should we have 1 location? This is not security, it is oppression. Mail ballot voters shouldn’t have to drive 30 miles to cast their ballot or rely on a mail system to face cuts. https://t.co/IeKwzdB0Hb
– Lina Hidalgo (@LinaHidalgoTX) October 1, 2020
If Texas were to enable broad participation, it would ensure remote and early voting, as well as multiple, convenient, and generally available polling stations, were widely available, said Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
“That’s not what Texas does,” Saenz said. “There is a reason. The Texas authorities know they are suppressing the vote. “
“The Infrastructure of Oppression”
The history of the disenfranchisement of voters in Texas – from holding primaries for whites only to banning voting based on English language skills, to outright intimidation and closing of polling stations in minority locations – was so infamous that the state held the Department of Approval for years Justice for election changes in accordance with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
There is no question that Latino youth and the differences in education and income among the population are factors in turnout. Younger people appear less often in the elections. Voters who do this are often better educated and have higher incomes, Saenz said.
However, the voter registration of Texas Latinos is lower than that of Hispanics in other parts of the country, so demographics and disparities are not the only explanation. “Given the history of Texas, you’d have to believe some of this is obviously race-related,” he said.
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In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the voting rights law, and within hours, Texas was enacting a tough voter ID bill. For example, it only allows certain types of ID – such as a gun permit – but not a college ID like many young voters have. An early version of the law was found to deliberately discriminate against blacks and Latinos.
“Texas has been perfecting the science of ballot box suppression for 144 years,” said Beto O’Rourke, former presidential candidate and former congressman, at a recent virtual democracy event. The preference for gun permits over college cards is part of an “infrastructure of oppression,” he said.
Without the supervision of the federal government, the state became a national leader in reducing polling stations, according to a study by the Leadership Conference Education Fund.
Last year, the state tried to clear its electoral roll from tens of thousands based on inaccurate Texas driver’s license data. The attempted purge followed a year in which Latinos had doubled their turnout in the elections. Although the state was halted, the tactic may have terrorized some voters who fear doing the wrong thing to skip the vote, Saenz said.
An obstacle course for voter registration
After Monday, October 5th, it will be too late to register for a vote in Texas.
The state has one of the earliest filing deadlines – while also rejecting online filing. Federal law requires states to allow individuals to be registered for voting when applying for a driver’s license. The state finally began complying this week after a federal judge ordered it. In Texas, people who upgrade or renew their licenses can now also be elected on the electoral roll. Otherwise, people have to fill out an application, print out the completed form and send it in or hand it in.
Texas has also made it difficult to register voters, requiring that people be represented through training and passing an exam. The person who registers must be able to vote in Texas and can only register voters for a limited time in the county in which they are represented. There are 254 counties in Texas.
In 2017, Republican-led Texas legislation ended direct ticket voting – when one person votes for all candidates from a single party by checking or clicking a box.
It came when more Democrats were voting directly. Democrats won a direct ticket reinstatement, but a three-person jury from the 5th Court of Appeal overturned the decision this week after Republicans appealed.
A caucusgoer marks an official vote during the Nevada Republican President’s Caucus in Las Vegas on February 23, 2016.Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg via Getty Images file
Jason Villalba, a former Republican state official who founded the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation, said his Republican counterparts in the legislature never deliberately restricted or restricted the choices of Latinos.
Republicans, however, were very concerned that Democrats would “play the system” and “get votes” in constituencies that historically do not vote, economically disadvantaged and colored, said Villalba, now an independent voter. He acknowledged that there was “an extraordinary ignorance of our community”.
The non-profit Move Texas has been working on registering voters, especially young blacks, since January. 400,000 applications were sent with postage-paid envelopes.
The pandemic halted work that consisted of going to campus and other places with clipboards and registering people – and underscoring the difficulty of registering in Texas, said Drew Galloway, executive director of Move Texas.
“Voter suppression is alive and well, and we’ve known it since Move Texas started in 2013. We really had to help young people overcome these state-created barriers,” said Galloway. He said 41 percent of the state are under 30 years old and 63 percent of that group are young blacks, mostly Latinos.
Despite the stricter registration rules, Latino voting has grown simply because of numbers. Albert Morales, senior political director of the Latino Decisions election bureau, said 730,000 Latino-Texans have turned 18 since Hillary Clinton’s inauguration in 2016.
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Camarillo’s Southwest Voter Registration Education Project had planned to visit high school classrooms to enroll at least 140,000 students who will be old enough to vote by election day.
According to Texas law, schools must offer registration twice a school year. However, according to Camarillo, compliance will not be enforced. School closings from the pandemic hurt Camarillo’s plans and now the group is relying on school principals to encourage students to reach out to their group.
The state’s secretary of state announced last month that 16,617,436 million Texans had signed up to vote, a record.
This year 5.6 million Latinos are eligible to vote. However, by 2018 only 2.7 million were registered to vote and 1.9 million were voting in the medium term in November.
Camarillo said she expected 2 to 2.1 million Latinos will still get to the polls despite the obstacles.
Mary Moreno is the spokesperson for the Texas Organizing Project, which plans to produce 800,000 Latinos in November. The governor prides itself on Texas being number one in everything, but not when it comes to turnout, she said. “Everything he did effectively suppressed the vote,” she said. Abbott’s recent restrictions on balloting “is the latest example.”
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