October 12th, 2022 – Second Reading Podcast

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution, they have become the norm.

At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recogniz? Over the male colleagues in the room

[00:00:33] Jim Henson: and welcome back to the second Reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, Director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Very happy to be joined again by Josh Blank, Research director of the same Texas Politics Project.

How are we this morning, Josh? Wonderful. Ready to talk? Very much so. Now, you know, a lot of the time that we’ve spent here and the coverage of elections in Texas is now focused on the day to day of the election races, I think, and blow by

[00:01:02] Josh Blank: blow

[00:01:02] Jim Henson: accounting. Yeah. I mean, and, and which is understandable. We’ve, you know, we expect that from the cycle and there are, there are a lot of storylines in this race from, you know, to, to be explored that we’re seeing at the, the kind of blow by blow.

That said, I thought it might be a good idea to step back a little bit and to some degree circle back to attitudes about elections in voting. You know, we’ve talked about this before quite a bit, but I, you know, even though we haven’t been hearing a whole lot about the subject, while news coverage has been in this kind of horse race boat, blow by blow, you know, where can I dig out a story, kind of campaign mode?

I, I think we have every expectation to, you know, we have every reason to, to expect that this subject is going to arise again and it’s gonna arise again soon. Yeah. Um. You know, it is interesting to some degree, you know, discussion of voting rules hasn’t been very prominent in the campaign. It’s not much on voter’s radar per our recent polling.

I think only about 6% cited it as the factor most important to their vote. Mm-hmm. . You know, Democrats more likely to do that than Republicans, but not in a way that, well, right. Is take, you know, dominate or predominates the agenda given what else is out. Well,

[00:02:19] Josh Blank: well it’s one of those things I think we’ll get to a little bit further in this, you know, discussion.

But obviously when we’re talking about voting and the elections and the issues around those things, Republicans and Democrats can both feel like those are issues, but they can be talking about in. Different sets of issues, different concerns, and

[00:02:31] Jim Henson: so, and, and there are other things going on that are also pushing that out a little bit.

Right, Right. So, you know, while election issues might not be taking up a lot of real estate in voters’ minds right now, you know, I would expect that at the very least we’ll begin to see an uptick in stories about voting in the, in the Texas political press as we get closer to the beginning of, of in person early voting.

Now there’s mail-in voting. Mm. Uh, already going on for, for, for a, a pretty small slice of the electorate, Right. But early voting’s, getting pretty close October 24th as we record this, uh, less than two weeks away. Mm-hmm. . Um, and again, I, you know, I don’t want to say like, The issue is gone. There’s been complete silence about it, uh, especially nationally and especially in places where, you know, there are election officials like secretaries of state that are elected mm-hmm.

and they’re on the ballot this time. And among those candidates, there are in some prominent battleground states, there are, you know, essentially election deniers and, you know, unabashed advocates of more partisan administration of elections. on the ballot in these states. Now it looks a little differently here now, not completely differently, right?

Cause we’ve seen things going on at the local level on the podcast. A couple of, you know, several weeks ago, you know, we talked about things going on in Fredericksburg, a couple other areas of the state. And of course, Beta O’Rourke has incorporated voting into his campaign platform. So it’s, you know, we don’t want to imply that there’s a absolute silence out here, right?

And not that we’re trying to get in front of, you know, a non-response response we might be expecting or I might be expecting. But it hasn’t been especially central since the rise in salience of abortion gun violence, and it was never gonna be particularly central to the Abbott campaign. Um, nonetheless, all that caveating and all the, you know, all that sort of weaving and bobbing going, uh, uh, not withstanding.

Uh, you know, I think both of us probably think it’s not far below the surface, and especially in light of widely covered and, and discussed democratic efforts in 2021 to un, you know, which were unsuccessful to, uh, thwart the Republican’s main voting bill, SB one during, uh, uh, the last legislative session, including their exodus to Washington, DC.

I left a lot of scars in the chamber and I, you know, lingering bad feeling. I think, um, you know, that came up. You and I were, were both at Speaker Feelings interview with Evan, which is Evan Smith. We just come up a couple of times at the Texas Tribune Festival and Evan Smith asked the speaker about this and he did say basically, Yeah, there’s some bad feeling out there and the members kind of gotta get over it a

[00:05:14] Josh Blank: little bit.

Well, I mean, almost, he almost kinda said, Hey look, you know, that’s the Democrat’s problem a little bit, right? And basically, you know, hey, I, I mean, whether you believe or says, Look, you come to me with a clean slate, but you got, you gotta work your colleagues

[00:05:25] Jim Henson: or your co, I’m unusually magnanimous speaker said, basically, Basically

[00:05:29] Josh Blank: he said that, I mean, you know, more or less we didn’t say that to be, to be fair.

No. But more or less was, Hey, you gotta clean slate with me, but you gotta. Everybody else.

[00:05:36] Jim Henson: Right. And, and you know, look, there were some, you know, there was some ill will that came out of that, which, you know, to be expected. And again, for the way the Democrats left and then the Republican response, there was a lot, there were a lot of, you know, hot

[00:05:48] Josh Blank: feelings around just, just to say like, look, have you been following, you know, the.

Let’s say politics and the politics of, of voting and election rules for a while here, you know, there’s not, it’s not unreasonable to think that this would’ve been a big mobilizing issue for Democrats, especially when you look at the role that, let’s say voter ID had in mobilizing Democrats around sort of, you know, Right.

2008, 2012, really sort of, you know, becoming a mobilizing issue, especially in, you know, diverse usually largely African American, right? You know, states are states with large African American populations. You saw this, It was, was a tool used a lot. Again, it, it didn’t feel like the same emphasis as maybe we’ve seen in the past

[00:06:25] Jim Henson: on Yeah, in this moment.

Yeah, in this moment. I, I think that’s right. And I, and again, it’s pretty crowded out there as we’ve had expection to say, so just observing, not criticizing. So, so, so let’s, No, no. So, so let’s go back. Um, , you know, and, and, and unpack this a little bit, I think just for context. So we’ve, you know, we’ve talked from time to town about the arc of the politics around voting and elections on the podcast and various things we’ve done.

Mm-hmm. , and you just raise, you know, the voter ID debate and. You know, I, I think that while the heat of partisan politics can obscure the kind of more institutional political culture, for lack of a better term, the more, the more structural factors that have shaped the process in the state’s history, you know, the arc of that.

History is pretty clear.

[00:07:13] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, I mean, yeah. Well, I

[00:07:15] Jim Henson: mean, you know, I mean, look at, at a time when we’re arguing about how we present the very fundamental facts of history. I, I realize people, well, you know, Yeah. But the truth of the matter, I mean, it’s kind of hard to look at the empirical record in the long term of the state’s history.

You know, going back from independent civil war reconstruction from the very beginning of, of, at least you know, that that part of Texas history. It’s a pretty clear pattern in terms of how elections are organized and the fact that they are, they have been used as tools for exclusion, targeting, et cetera,

[00:07:47] Josh Blank: at various times.

Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest, the easiest and quickest summary statement of this that I always kind of return to is I think, you know, the state of Texas has been found to discriminate in its election rules or in its districting against racial and ethnic minorities in every decade since the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Right. So, I mean, that’s sort of the quick summary version. You can go into the specifics of the whys and the hows and, and all that piece, but I mean, but, but as you said, the arc of the history is, is pretty plainly and clearly laid out. And, and, and I

[00:08:13] Jim Henson: think there is, you know, there has been an effort in, you know, the 21st century in the sort of what we would think of as.

You know, the modern stage of that or the contemporary stage of that history to Alli that a little bit or to somehow, you know, interestingly enough, because of the nature of Texas history to say, well, yeah, and the Democrats did that right now. Yes. . Yeah. Um, period, full stop. But, you know, a very different party system than we’re looking at now.

An obvious point for our listeners, but one that, that one has the flag. So, so, you know, but if we look more recently, I, you know, starting with kind of the voting I, the voter ID fights of the two thousands, um, you know, this has been a. I don’t wanna say continuous, but it, it’s been a fairly steady presence.

It’s pretty active politics for all of the modern, you know, the contemporary period. No, there’s contemporary period of, of Texas electoral history. And what I mean by that, as you say, there’s not really been very many periods when Texas has not been in court. Yeah. For one reason or another over its voting rules.

[00:09:21] Josh Blank: Right. I mean, if you think about, but sometimes it’s been redistricting. Yeah, I was gonna say, you know, I mean if, I was trying to think, you know, over the modern period about when there was any sort of kind of steady state and you’d say, you know, maybe after, uh, the Democratic efforts to thwart the re the redistricting round after 2000, Right?

And then once sort of, if you look at the electoral results at that point, you know, that was a point which Republicans really entered into their dominant period. And ultimately, you know, in that sort of early part, mid part of the 2000. Especially with George W. Bush is probably, there wasn’t, didn’t seem to be as much discussion of this.

And then you got to the end of that cycle and you got into a more competitive environment as you know, and you started to see this more discussion about voter. Id go further and we see, you know, increasingly competitive environment. And with with that, there hasn’t really been a stop in the discussion about, Right, at least, at the very least tinkering with voting rules.

[00:10:07] Jim Henson: Yeah, I mean I think I’d have probably have to go back and look at this and you know, people that know this history better than I. Or know the legal part of this better than I, you know, will be quick to see how, you know, this is too over a general, but it seems like, you know, there was kind of a preoccupation with the voter ID litigation.

Yeah. After, you know, that was passed and with the redistricting thing after 2003 as to say, and there was a, maybe a slight lull as that was getting hammered out, but then we saw it really kind of come back in full force, interestingly enough, in 2019. Right, right. And, and, and you know, as, as I’m looking at this, I’m realizing that the voting stuff is an interesting footnote.

On the common narrative that we use in here all the time and that I certainly use in talk and talking to people about this, It’s an interesting footnote to that 2019 session that we think of as being more moderated in response to the 2018 election.

[00:11:03] Josh Blank: Well, you know, it’s funny as you say that I think about the fact that, you know, the voter ID push, you know, the, the, so the voter ID push is, you know, they have a long, I have a longish history, but it really picked up in the United States broadly, kind of in the.

Early 2000, mid, early and mid two thousands. Right. Texas was relatively early in this, but not the earliest when it came to passive voter ID law. But when you think about when did Texas, you know, look into voter id, you know, kind of, And when did a lot of states look into voter ID was after sort of the Obama elections where there was, you know, I don’t, you know, it’s like there’s a lot discussion about the Ascendant Coalition, this big change in the electorate and then then pushback against that, and then the pushback against that.

And then to your point, and then you have another election in 2018. You know, a lot of Republicans kind of felt the brush back even if they won. Right. And then that was the moderate session, but it was also the session in which we saw, again, large

[00:11:50] Jim Henson: passage, a straight ticket voting. Now, you know, we’ve talked about that a little bit in here, that, you know, there’s a sense in which, you know, some people, you know, there were people that argued against that on the Republican side from the beginning, and there is a little bit more, a little bit of buyer’s remorse on that, I suspect.

Yeah. You know, I mean, I think it’s mixed and one can, you know, I mean, Democrats were benefiting. More than Republicans from straight ticket. It was more, there was more democratic straight ticket voting than Republican straight ticket voting and Sure numbers. Yeah. But the Republican numbers were not trivial.

[00:12:20] Josh Blank: Right. I mean, again, I think, you know, there’s probably a, you know, talk to someone down ballot and see what they think about that at other party. Exactly.

[00:12:26] Jim Henson: And, and then, you know, that that was also where we saw the restrictions on mobile voting. Mm-hmm. . Right. And we had seen in. To some degree to the anticipated increase in turnout.

I know, you know, you wanna talk a little, you know, you, you often remind people, and I is right about Houston being round zero of this. Mm-hmm. had a lot to do with, you know, accommodations that were made in Houston in 2018 and, and some other places in Texas. But Houston was kind of the target. Well, to your point of the restrictions on mobile voting here.

Yeah. And

[00:12:53] Josh Blank: I mean, that’s the, the general point is here, there’s been a, a pretty, you know, you can, you can focus on everything when you say mobile voting, just to be clear, you know, to. listeners here, you know, we’re not necessarily talking about, you know, sort of what happened in SB one in the 2021 session in band.

No, this is 2019. I know on, on drive through, we’re not talking about the voter being mobile, but the idea was that you could set up a polling place temporarily, let’s say on a college campus for three days of early voting. Yeah. And then you could move it, you know, to the senior center or whatever. And the idea was, is no, you can’t do that.

But the broader point, think mobile home, not Yes. But the broader point here is that, you know, the state has been engaged for the last few cycles and really, Uh, regulating and prescribing where and how many voting locations can take place or can exist right. In counties who actually run the elections throughout the states, and this has been an ongoing area of contention and how they can collect ballots,

[00:13:41] Jim Henson: and we did see some things in the, in that, that also the.

In that session, you know, ef, you know, there were efforts, not all of which they succeeded unevenly. Mm-hmm. compared to the straight ticket voting, the restrictions on mobile voting, you know, efforts to, you know, that seemed like they criminalized what could be seen as routine mistakes by voters, um, you know, into punish people that it just had made, increased the punishments for people that seemed to make what had been previously thought of.

A, just a mistake.

[00:14:06] Josh Blank: Right? Which, which is important to know. We’ll get into some of the underlying S here, but that’s something that’s never been popular. I mean, we’ve asked about this idea of, you know, what kind of punishments people should face for making errors, you know, in terms of, uh, on their ballots or, you know, trying to cast provisional ballots.

And for the most part, you know, most people do not think this should be a jailable offense. They don’t think it’s like a felony, right? They, you know, like mostly say, you know, Okay, we caught ’em. It’s probably a ticket in a fine or something like that. Yeah. There was

[00:14:29] Jim Henson: not a lot of public support for Jaline people that seemed to make mistakes when they were voting

[00:14:33] Josh Blank: well.

Right. And again, well, exactly, because in almost every case they’re verified mistakes. Right.

[00:14:40] Jim Henson: So, um, and then, and something else that we saw really kind of ramp up mm-hmm. after 2020, but they would again had its reach prior to that increased requirements for voter registrars and kind of, Making people sort of jump through more hoops to be a registrar, to sort of be a, you know, what we would call a poll worker, not a poll watcher.

And we’ll have to reiterate that. But then this really ramps up after the 2020 election. Uh, the discussion of election denial, the dispute over the 2020 election in the mind of the president. Um, but also I think equally important, the experience in 2020, again, going back to some of the major urban areas in Texas.

In efforts to accommodate voters, uh, in, you know, the, at, at the height of the

[00:15:25] Josh Blank: pandemic, right? So, I mean, a lot of counties in Texas, especially large urban counties, because they have, you know, to some extent a bigger task on their hand, you know, passed a lot, you know, basically made a lot of accommodations that would make it easier for people to, to safely cast ballots.

Couple problems here, right? Number one, you know, if half or more of the electorate as we know in Texas, didn’t really believe that covid was a problem at that point, you know, the rationale for making it easier to vote became kind of problematic. And two, the fact that it was, you know, largely the urban counties that support democratic candidates that were doing this made this an obvious political

[00:15:59] Jim Henson: target.

Yeah, and, and look, we can be adults here and say that, you know, if you are a Democratic official in a SI in a city, and you know there is a good policy. Straight ethical reason to do this in the midst of the pandemic, but you’re also gonna be more willing to do it because you are gonna see this to your advantage.

Well,

[00:16:17] Josh Blank: and I think we’ve been pretty consistent, you know, throughout everything we’ve ever said to point out that, you know, election rules, rules are not handed down from on high. They are not like, they don’t come from some normative principles. They are rules. Developed by the people who are trying to win the elections to determine,

[00:16:32] Jim Henson: and the normative principles are there to help you, you know, sell these ideas.

Exactly. not to say there’s no normative principles out there, but, And so, you know, SB one did a bunch of things banning drive through voting new regulations on early voting hours, including a ban on 24 hour voting, uh, you know, ban on the distribution of, uh, li you know, significant limitations on the distribution of mail in ballot applications.

Yeah. New ID requirements and verification procedures for voting by mail, which will come back to, you know, also a correction process for mailin voting. Right. Um, and then I, I think things that are really gonna be out there, uh, one of the things that’s really gonna be out there enhancing poll watcher protections, right?

So that, and by poll watchers is, I flagged earlier, we mean, you know, non-official. Yeah. Not people that are helping to operate the election, but people that are there designated from outside entities that are designated to watch from the outside and conduct, you know, a kind of oversight, if you will.

Right on. On behalf of the parties. On behalf of the parties. Um, the way that legislation was done, Yeah. Finally came out. Um, Establishing monthly citizenship checks, which is an interesting piece. Um, you know, and then also I think really something that we’re watching, I think, you know, at least I think is gonna be important as we start seeing the elections actual happen.

You know, new rules for voter assistance, which were essentially limitations on the kind of guidance response that can come from poll workers. at voting

[00:18:07] Josh Blank: sites. It’s some of that, but that’s part of it. But also, I mean, kind of, it depends. This could mean a couple different things. Right. The other thing has to do with is, you know, for example, oh, and also, yeah,

[00:18:14] Jim Henson: third parties helping

[00:18:15] Josh Blank: people, third parties, helping people vote.

So you know, if you’re bringing your grandfather to vote or something, or if someone you know has, doesn’t speak the language and needs to help translating a ballot and they don’t have that ballot language and sort of what that person can do. Right. And handing out in assistance, handing out water,

[00:18:29] Jim Henson: things like that.

Yeah. Things like. So there’s, Yeah. So the, that piece of the voter assistance, Yeah, there’s like, there’s the voter, there’s the poll worker, voter assistance and feedback piece. And then there’s the Right, more general, you know, how much can people get help in voting? Right, Exactly. So you know what to make of this.

I mean, where do you wanna start? I mean, you know, I think as we get into public opinion on this, I mean, you know, we’ve sort of. Summarize this arc or been talking about this arc from a kind of institutional Mm. More or less elite perspective in terms of what the legislature is doing. But this is part of a dynamic we talk about all the time here in terms of elite signaling, public opinion response and the kind of reinforcing cycle that we see here.

So we have tons of public opinion date on this cuz we’ve been checking on

[00:19:21] Josh Blank: it. Right? I mean, it’s almost like, what, which, which of the results should we look

[00:19:24] Jim Henson: at? So, Right. And this is, you know, and this is part of the, you know, then, you know, and this is part of the granding for the argument other than. You know, it being part of the brand to go to talk about the polling, but it is also one of the reasons we expect that it’s gonna come

[00:19:36] Josh Blank: up right?

Because ultimately, you know, we’ve been asking a series of questions, you know, not only just about the specific legislation that we’ve been talking about here, but also about kind of the underlying attitudes that really inform people’s reactions to that legislation. Because ultimately we don’t expect people to have, you know, Really deep thought out attitudes about specific policies around voting in elections, but we do know that they have general attitudes about the conduct of those elections.

Right. And we also know that, you know, the, the, the attitudes of Democrats and Republican in this. In Texas differ dramatically. Right. And so for example, if we look at, you know, Republican voters first, you know, what we find is that when we ask, you know, how often do you think that ineligible voters basically cast a ballot in Texas elections?

Nearly a third of Texas Republican voters, 31% say this happens. Frequently, another 35% say it happens sometimes. So you have 66% of Texas Republicans saying that ineligible voters are casting ballots at least sometimes, if not frequently in elections. Only 3% say this never happens. Only 16% say this happens rarely.

So on balance, most Republicans think that, you know, this is a relatively widespread occurrence. Right? Additionally. Now again, talking about penalties and things like that, we’ve asked, Well, how often do you think that? Knowingly break election laws. Cause we said, you know, there’s sort of this being this sort of criminalization or attempts more, more so attempts than actual following through to criminalize routine mistakes.

And so this assumes that people are actually going out trying to gain the system at least, you know, as part of the underlying, I think logic here. And again, what we find is, you know, while. 57% of Democrats say this rarely happens. You know that 13% say this never happens. One in five Republican voters, 20% say this happens frequently.

So one in five Republican voters say that frequently voters are knowingly breaking election laws. Another 44% say this happens some times. And

[00:21:16] Jim Henson: this is where we, you know, we add, there’s virtually no evidence that this

[00:21:20] Josh Blank: is the case. Thank you. Moving on . So then, You know, so then the next question becomes, you know, okay, so we’re getting all this policy in response.

What we ask this question kind of regularly as a heat check, right? So, you know, should the rules for voting to Texas be more or less strict than they are now looking at February, 2022. So pretty recent data, the plurality of Republicans. Now this is, again, I should be, we ask this in February 22, so all.

Policy stuff had already happened. Has already happened.

[00:21:47] Jim Henson: That is, I should be more specific in others. This is after the 2020 ones. Well, after the 2021 legislative session when SB one was passing all this new right and sort of set of rules and and restrictions that we had talked about had gone into place.

And on

[00:22:01] Josh Blank: the heels of all the 2019 legislation and on the heels of a decade of almost a near decade of voter id, you know, basically litigation and still a plurality of Republicans, 48% say the law should be more strict. The 39% say should be left as there now. Only 7% say less strict as opposed to 58% of Democrats.

So ultimately there’s still an appetite for these laws, but also the other effect of this sort of, you know, constant attack on the system. But also, you know, on the one hand in terms of, you know, the accuracy of election results and things like that, the, the presence of fraud, even though there’s no evidence of fraud.

Is the fact that you also have, you know, democratic attitudes towards the system, uh, you know, hemorrhaging in a pretty negative way as well, right? Right. So we ask, you know, we ask for example, well, how often do you think eligible voters are prevented from voting? Now, not surprisingly, 51% of Republicans here saying never.

If you’re an eligible voter, you are never prevented from voting for Democrats. We see, again, a similar pattern to what we saw the Republicans a little more than a third, 36% say this. Frequently we asked about, you know, we asked about whether or not the Texas election system discriminates against racial or ethnic minorities.

87% of Republicans say no. 79% of Democrats say yes. And so what you have is

[00:23:10] Jim Henson: you have, and that, you know, we stuff that’s kind of like, in some ways when I see that response, right? On one hand it’s un nuanced. On the other hand, it’s one of those heat check questions. Mm-hmm. , where you use that when you ask somebody to.

Overarching question like that without a lot of, you know, there’s no place to hide from that.

[00:23:29] Josh Blank: Well, the thing about, and I’ll just say, you know, I think someone might wanna know.

[00:23:31] Jim Henson: That’s why we asked that as a yes no. Just to get that basic.

[00:23:34] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I think one thing I should add, just for the sake of this, and it’s one of these things about this argument that is, You know, it’s, It’s one of those things that it makes it more complicated, but it’s definitely a part of it, which is this question about race and ethnicity and the role of that plays in all of this.

But when we ask that same question about discrimination in the election system, we look among racial and ethics subgroups. We find the majority of white people, 60 white voters, 63% say no. It does not. Only 29% say it does among African Americans. 76% say that the system discriminates against racial and ethnic minorities.

Only 12, 12% say it doesn’t, and among Hispanics, it’s nearly split. 42% say it does. 41% say it doesn’t. Right. And so this is, you know, this is a

[00:24:12] Jim Henson: versus is a lot of interesting questions in the discussion we’re having right now. Another discussion we’re having right now about Latino attitudes, partisanship, right?

[00:24:20] Josh Blank: The system, So, so when you consider these underlying attitudes towards the system and there, and again, there are many others that we could sample from that would also help kind of illustrate why this. Remains, you know, if not front and center, certainly on one of the burners, right, Right

[00:24:32] Jim Henson: there for the activating.

It’s certainly on the right

[00:24:34] Josh Blank: circumstances, it’s certainly there for the activating, but it does kind of again, raise this question of like, you know, why it might not be talked about more and why we might expect it to be talked about more as we get closer to the election. Right? Yeah. I mean,

[00:24:47] Jim Henson: you know, the why doesn’t get talked about more.

Kind, You know, that whole space has gotten Yeah. Got complicated. You know? Very, Yeah, very complicated. I mean, you know, I mean, you know, we’re talking about the, you know, the broader level, even it being a crowded issue agenda, but it’s also, um, you know, there’s a lot of dimensions to this and I, and I do think that both parties have settled into waiting for triggers to some degree.

Yeah. You know, Republicans probably a, Well, you know, there are different timing issues. There’s a rhythm to this. But I, you know, but I mean, to go back to where we started, I, you know, I, I find it hard to imagine that we’re not gonna start hearing about this soon. I mean, mail in ballots are a good example, right?

[00:25:31] Josh Blank: Mail in ballots are a great example. You know, we saw during the primary surge in the rejection rate of mail in ballots from about, you know, 2% in the 2018 election to 12, over 12%, uh, in the 20, or in the 2022 primaries. And we’re just looking at midterms, I think was the reason for that comparison. Yeah.

Ultimately this was not, you know, I don’t wanna say this was not a huge deal. It was less problematic in Texas’s low turnout primaries. Right.

[00:25:59] Jim Henson: However, but there were election officials were flying, you know, were definitely raised trying to raise the flag at that point, and I think they just didn’t get a lot

[00:26:05] Josh Blank: of response.

Well, well, I think they did get a response actually. So they, so they raised the flag about, They said, Hey, look, you know, and I, I think I have a tweet somewhere that says, Hey, multiply this out to your average Texas election cycle and the number of mail ballots you’ve got, and you know, you’re rejecting, you know, hundreds of thousands of ballots.

Now, the thi the response from I think state leaders has been, Well, look, you know, this really. This was really only a problem in a few counties right now. Which counties were those? Fvu large ones. A few large counties. Now it’s like, well yes, number one, we’d expect the problems to be larger in large counties cuz there are more people and therefore more votes.

But also these are the counties in particular Harris County, that the voting law, you know, that SB one was made in some ways to combat the efforts of, Right. And so the fact that these problems are now occurring in sort of, you know, the larger, and in many cases, you know, democratic leading counties, even though you know the rejection rates.

Parties were, were pretty comparable, right? It wasn’t as though this was like a democratic primary Republican problem per se. But the idea that this would, would, you know, not be something that’s concerning to Republicans and Republican state leaders and election administra, let’s say state level election administrators going into the general election is sort of not surprising from just a raw politics standpoint.

Right. And to fill

[00:27:12] Jim Henson: in a couple of gaps there, I mean, just to, you know, connect the dots. I mean, one of the changes in the voting laws was. , pardon me, Which was much disputed during the discussion on the floor of the law, um, was that, you know, the, the increased requirements for validating mail-in ballots, Right.

And for authenticating your vote were likely to lead

[00:27:38] Josh Blank: to this. Yeah. I mean, everybody knew this would be a problem because it was just more complicated. And I mean, that is what, And look, that’s, and I’m saying that with no judgment at all. Definitionally was more

[00:27:46] Jim Henson: complicated. Well, you know, I, I would say this, It’s a judgment.

It’s just a, it’s a fair empirical judgment, not a moral judgment or political

[00:27:52] Josh Blank: judgment. I’m not, Well, I’m choosing not to make either of those. I’m just saying it just from a, just from a, just from on its face, you’re asking voters to do more, right? Yeah. You’re asking them to do more in a very specific way and, And what, And you’re increasing more opportunity for error.

Yeah. And that’s it. And that’s just, That just is what it is.

[00:28:06] Jim Henson: Yeah. Okay. I would still say that’s a judgment. It’s just, you know. Yeah. The fair one, . , you know, and so I, I, you know, I think so, you know, so that is going on there and I, and I we’re gonna, so that is definitely gonna be, I mean, I’d be shocked if that’s not an issue.

Well, the thing, and

[00:28:22] Josh Blank: you know, we saw it on the premise, we’re gonna know about it before we get to the election. And to your point about the rise rhythms of these things, we’ll start seeing rejection rate information. You know, if, if Travis County or Harris County starts rejecting five, six, right, 10, 12% of its male in ballot in the first, let’s say couple weeks of early when, when release, just start to review these things.

Well, we’re gonna hear

[00:28:41] Jim Henson: about it, right? Because, because there are, because there are notification requirements for the rejection. Exactly. Right. So it, it, you know, which, which I think the author’s Bill would say, See there’s a mechanism for people

[00:28:49] Josh Blank: to fix this. As long as you get it, you’re mail in ballot in early enough, check it early enough and then get it fixed early enough, right?

Yes.

[00:28:56] Jim Henson: And so, you know, so we’re gonna see that. We know that. But I, and I, I guess the other open question then is, you know, to what degree do we see a resumption of the. The kind of freelance, you know, non-official activities that we saw in 2020. Mm-hmm. , you know, I mean, one piece of this, I mean, that is now not quite so much freelancing now, but you know, will the law encourage more?

You know, election observers to be present in, in places where voting is going on and to be interventionist, and how much will we hear about that? What will that look like? What will the responses be? And then of course, you know, in 2020 we also saw some of the more. You know, frankly, kind of wild incidents like the Steve Hoey employed guy who, you know, drove, you know, was following a white van around, that he was convinced, you know, had stolen ballots in it, turned in, turned out to not be the case, and legal difficulties ensued for the people involved there.

But I mean, there was a lot of. Encouragement of that kind of activity and, and out there freelancing in 2020. And I, you know, I don’t see a lot of reason to not think that’s gonna happen

[00:30:10] Josh Blank: again. Yeah. I mean, I would surely expect it to have that happen after the election. And, and you already alluded to this and the point you alluded to earlier, but, but I think the thing that we’re gonna see in this election’s, like, or, or what, you know, I expect to be, you know, a story we’re gonna be hearing soon is, is, you know, how do partisan pole watchers.

You know, behave, behave. I mean, and this is within a context in which, you know, there have been constant attacks on election administrators, va, you know, volunteer, you know, poll workers, the people trying to actually like, you know, run the election, you know, for these counties. And, you know, the, the, the SB one has, has given these poll, you know, partisan and Pole Watchers, greater protections.

It. Greater penalties and obstacles in the way of, uh, you know, poll workers and election administrators. And the question is, you know, take those two things, add in sort of inflammatory rhetoric about, you know, the, the desires of these, you know, administrators and. It is, Well, their motivation. Yeah,

[00:31:08] Jim Henson: motivation.

It’s questioning everybody’s motivations. And

[00:31:10] Josh Blank: so what, so what happens? I mean, I think, you know, there’s this sort of, I mean, I think, you know, I’m really interested both in terms of the way that, you know, partisan poll watchers behave, vis-a-vis, you know, their, their interactions with poll workers. But I think there’s another thing about this, which is, you know, how do they behave with respect to their interactions with voters, which they should have.

Few, if any interactions. Right. You know, and I, you know, I’m wondering, you know, how much, again, and part of this too, is like, there may not be necessarily a lot of cases of sort of specific, you know, misconduct, but how much intimidation is going on. Right. You know, and that’s something I think is, you know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna be hearing about this,

[00:31:46] Jim Henson: this alleged cycle, right?

Because, because, you know, and part of this is that, you know, the, the look, the rewriting of the law was in. I wouldn’t even say motivated, but it’s going to have the effect of creating more space for Poll Watchers to have a presence that they can then say, Look, we’re not being intimidated, we’re not being intimidating.

We’re just doing what the law allows us to do. Yeah. And that’s gonna be the discourse that’s gonna come out of that. Right. Right. And so, you know, I expect, I, you know, I, I do think that’s gonna be very interesting and I, you. If I was to give somebody was to call and ask me about this. I mean, I think what’s gonna be interesting about that is where those incidents take place.

There inevitably are going to be some mm-hmm. , And I’m not saying that all will turn out to be intimidation, but look, the boundaries have changed. Yeah. And so there those boundaries are gonna be, are now gonna be open to contestation from both

[00:32:44] Josh Blank: sides. Yeah. The legal boundaries have changed. And the rep rhetorical boundary has moved.

Well,

[00:32:49] Jim Henson: Norm, Yeah. Normative. That reflects these kind of norm change in the normative

[00:32:52] Josh Blank: boundaries. Right? Yeah. I mean, one, I mean, one of the things that I was thinking about during this whole debate about the partisan poll watchers is it seems to me that, you know, one thing that could have been done to help this a little bit would be to say, you know, the partisan poll watcher has to reside either, you know, in the county or the precinct in which they’re watching the poll.

Yeah. At the very least. So you’re not sort of, you know, seeming like you’re bringing people in from outside the community to police the community, whatever that means. Right. But obviously that. Not what’s gonna be happening in a lot of places. Yeah. I’m

[00:33:18] Jim Henson: trying to remember. I wonder if there was an amendment on that.

Probably not. I don’t think so. It’s probably acceding too much to the, to the premise from the people that would put an amendment forward. But I don’t remember. I watched a lot of that debate, but it was long. Yeah. Um, you know, so I think to sum up, I mean I, you know, this calm before the storm edition of second reading, Um, now, Yeah, that could be any reason.

Yeah. The day after election day, we can say, and by the way, you know, we can do like one of those pundit check things and go, well, you know, nothing happened. I don’t think that’s gonna be the case. I don’t think so. We wouldn’t have done this. But, um, you know, but, you know, I, I think where I would wanna leave it a little bit is, you know, as a kind of flag, very briefly, earlier in thinking, Kind of analytically.

And in the big picture about this, what we are talking about here is this ongoing shift in the discourse around elections. Yeah. Around democracy. That was, you know, has been part of a development that’s, you know, that’s been going on for a couple of decades now. Yeah. And you know, I, I think it’s one thing for us, you know, when we have our academic hats on to go, you know, just continue to in tone.

Look, elections are political. They election rules are points of dispute. Yeah. You know, the rules, you know, these changes are not neutral or they’re never neutral, et cetera, et cetera. You know, it’s, it is a, a related but different thing to say, you know, we are now entering a period that I think is a little unlike what we’ve seen before.

Yeah. In that, you know, in the, the rule, you know, we just kind of stumbled on it in a way. I mean, the. The shift in the legal boundaries is also reflecting a real shift in something that we’ve talked about here a bit, and that is democratic norms, you know, the degree to which people, uh, you know, have commonly shared assumptions about where the boundaries are around elections.

Yeah. And having people inside ballot, you know, uh, uh, voting locations. On the edge of intervention with, in particular, with, with particular voters and with the officials conducting the elections, because there is such a deep suspicion about the process is, you know, is a different

[00:35:42] Josh Blank: spot. Well, I almost say there’s such, there’s such a wellspring of deep suspicion about the process in the, in the public that’s been fanned repeatedly.

But now, you know, in some ways, You know, I think again, we are stumbling into something, you know, whereas if you think about that arc that we were talking about, you know, the previous sort of movements were either sort of very, you know, sort of traditional attempts to kind of, you know, uh, distribute power and redistrict, things like that.

And then even when you kind of move on to, to the voter ID era and pieces like that. I mean, I, I was saying this, even going into 2019, I’ll say is, you know, there’s a, there’s a. Fair argument that the architects of the state’s election laws could make about, uh, uniformity? Sure. They could say, look, Setting aside the fact that Texas is a very diverse place geographically, population density wise in terms of education levels, all these things, we think that each county should run the election essentially the same way.

And I think a lot of the laws could kind of fall into, into that bucket. Right. And the idea that we just wanna make sure that all the rules are the same. One could say that,

but

[00:36:42] Jim Henson: we’re moving into, well one, you know, several did, including Senator Hughes. Yeah. And yeah, early and often

[00:36:49] Josh Blank: tried. Um, and ultimately, you know, each of those efforts you.

Uh, in many ways reflected these underlying attitudes we’re talking about because, you know, they, they move the, you know, again, sort of in a way they move the election system towards, you know, something I think is more towards what, you know, I think Republicans would like. But as we move to this next phase of this, which we’re seeing is less, I think of a discussion about like making these little tweaks to the system and, you know, sort of things that would lead towards uniformity.

Whether uniformity leads to equal, you know, fair outcomes or not. Right. Set that aside to one in which we’re talking more about, like, is this gonna affect. The vote. And you see that with partisan poll watchers. That’s kind of the question we’re asking here. You know, are these people gonna affect the way that, you know, other citizens engage with the process?

And then further it connects to this broader discussion that we’ve, we’ve talked about before about this idea of like, democracy versus republic. I mean, you’re thinking about, you know, we’re gonna have people at the polling place sort of watching over you, and then the other guy. Maybe, maybe voters shouldn’t choose senators.

Right. And, and the legislature should,

[00:37:48] Jim Henson: you know, maybe, yeah, maybe under some circumstances the Secretary of State should be empowered to, to weigh in more heavily as, uh, maybe the attorney general should be a little bit more of a, you know, it’s almost, you know, more of a coach than an umpire.

[00:38:02] Josh Blank: Um, well, I was saying maybe not even the Secretary of State, but, but one of the big things I think is gonna come.

You know, probably, it’s probably gonna come up in the session as you know, is the legislature gonna give the attorney general the power to, uh, enforce election laws anywhere in the state or not? Right? Since the

[00:38:14] Jim Henson: Supreme Court, even in, in Texas seems to be res now, is resistant to that, has been,

[00:38:18] Josh Blank: has been resistant to that.

Even, even against political pressure. And so, you know, but that’s, again, it’s another one of these things where it’s like, we’re not even talking necessarily about, you know, adjusting sort of like, well, how you know? What idea do you have to show or when, when can you show up and vote earlier? What kind of information needs to go to the ballot to how much, you know, where can we put ourselves more into the process of voting?

You see that at the attorney general level. You see that at these broad discussions about representation and federal elections, and I think, you know, you’re seeing it now even in terms of, you know, the rights that candidates and their, you. Uh, designated individuals have vis Avi the actual people who are supposed to administer the election.

[00:38:54] Jim Henson: Well, and I think, and, and again, in, in the, you know, in the broadest possible sense, I go back to, you know, one of my favorite borrowed, you know, figures of speech or comparisons, which is, you know, there there’s a certain amount of munchhouse and syndrome going on here in the sense of the cultivation of a problem over a long period of time.

Yeah. These incremental kind of, Actions that we’ve talked about that have a kind of, you know, you’re gonna laugh about this, but you know, there’s a, there’s, there’s a certain productive internal contradiction all along to this mm-hmm. , which is. On one hand, we’re going to like really fundamentally try to make interventions, even though they’re incremental things like voter id, all the little things we’ve talked about, but against the backdrop in which to accomplish these, we are eroding overall trust in the system on both sides.

Yeah. Right. And so by the time you get out to 19 to 20 19, 20 21, see what’s gonna happen in 2023. You’ve now exacerbated a problem that was not nearly as bad from a kind of nor, you know, democratic norms, systemic trust, right. Level as it was when you started. But now that you’ve exacerbated, you now have the rationale to solve the pro to address the problem, but to address the problem in a way that is you’re kind of getting at fundamentally changes the nature of the system, or at least crosses the, the norms that we had seen before.

Well,

[00:40:19] Josh Blank: it certainly has to because as we pointed out, there’s no evidence that the problem actually exists.

[00:40:24] Jim Henson: And so, you know, and then you, and, and what I worry about when we talk about, you know, the sort of mundane fact of the political nature of these disputes, right? Is that, you know, we’ve gone from. From a, the political nature of disputes that have to do with tweaking to, you know, the political nature of one that is fundamentally about changing some structural characteristics here.

So with that, you know, watch for it. , there we go. Uh, you know, we, you know, I, I, I, you know, I, and you know, I say that cuz I think it’s worth watching and Yeah. And you know, another thing that happens, you know, because of this trajectory is that we get used to these disputes is kind of, you know, the, the normal sort of, , you know, one of the normal things we’re gonna see at elections, I mean, we talked about, and this, this is a good back end plug.

You know, we talked about, you know, the piece you just put up on the blog site that people ought go look at about, you know, what is a likely voter mm-hmm. , right? And the likely voter screens. It becomes almost irregular thing. It’s like, well, it’s an election. People are gonna be arguing about this. There’s gonna be some irregularities to your average voter.

It’s, I think it becomes a little bit noisy. Yeah. Or to the extent that you notice, it then falls into the kind of partisan templates that we’re talking about here. Um, but it, you know, it is yet another thing in which it feels like we’re in a little bit of a watershed on this, and it bears watching to my mind.

Yeah,

[00:41:49] Josh Blank: and I mean, the only thing I’ll add to that, I agree, and I think the reason that I agree is because, you know, I think, you know, we’ve talked about this, but I mean, all the polling indicates that it’s pretty likely that Republicans are gonna, you know, maintain their, their dominance of statewide elections.

You know, if not, you know, because of the failings of Democrats or the, you know, party system, because, you know, it’s not, it’s a Republican year in a lot of ways. Right. I mean, just in general, there’s, there’s a lot of reasons to think that, Having said that, um, you know, if O’Rourke loses to Abbot by. You know, five or six or seven points.

Again, that’s a pretty big improvement for Democrats, you know, cycle over cycle in terms of their competition at the statewide level that’ll take place in, you know, increasingly restrictive voting regimes. And what I would expect to be ever more restrictive voting regimes Right. In the next cycle is if we continue to see the state becoming more and more

[00:42:38] Jim Henson: competitive.

Right, Right. I mean, yeah. Yeah. I think the fallout of this is that, you know, even if, and I’m not, you know, I’m. Saying this is gonna happen. But even if just to, you know, since we’re, you know, in a world of non-zero probabilities, even if the, the Democrats were to win a state right race, I think it only, it only, it only accelerates that incentive.

Yeah. For Republicans to continue, you know, the Republican, there will be a Republican majority in the legislature. Right. And it will only continue. That the incentives that they have to continue to make these kinds of

[00:43:10] Josh Blank: changes? Well, and if anything, it would inflame it because it would give them the one thing that they don’t have, which is to say, Yes, voter fraud is rampant.

We just happen to win all the elections except for this one. But, but, but that’s the thing though. But if they were to lose it, they could actually say, Aha. Right. We’ve had it. And the thing is, and you know, in the last election cycle, I mean, Dan Patrick wants so fare is the only way that Democrats are gonna win Texas.

Is if there’s massive voter fraud, right? And so the credit gets already being laid, you know, again, in a system that is by any definition, becoming significantly more competitive to say, Well, yeah, but if it actually like shows the manifestation of that competition, that can only be due to

[00:43:42] Jim Henson: fraud. Right. And we should add that, you know, the lieutenant governor barred that line from the president who said that in 2016 as well.

Sure. But again, fellow travelers though, I mean, yes, and, and you know, Kind Governor was arguably there first in a lot of other ways, but so, um, with that, uh, thanks to Josh for being here. Thanks to our, uh, excellent production team in the audio studio, uh, and the Liberal Arts development studio at UT Austin.

Uh, remember, you can find all the data we’ve referenced today much, much more at the Texas Politics Project website. That’s Texas politics dot u texas.edu. Thank you for listening and we will be back soon. With another second reading podcast. The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.