October 20th, 2020 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Speaker 1] 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

[0:00:17 Speaker 0] problem is these departures from the Constitution. They have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raised her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room on

[0:00:34 Speaker 1] Welcome Back to the second reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, and we’re joining you for the week of October 19th in kind of getting into the final countdown for the election. I’m joined by my colleague Josh Blank, keeper of the calendar and director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. And Josh, Have you voted yet?

[0:00:58 Speaker 0] Not yet. I’m waiting. I’m watching. I’m watching the wait times. I’m trying to figure out what is what is the optimal time in between virtual learning from my son to take him with May.

[0:01:07 Speaker 1] But you are in capital letters planning your vote.

[0:01:10 Speaker 0] Oh, it Oh, it’s plant. It’s plant. I just need to decide on execution time.

[0:01:14 Speaker 1] Uh, I think we need to take it easy on language, like execution in the current political climate. Well,

[0:01:20 Speaker 0] I’m not going. I’m not going to watch the polls. I’m just voting, just voting nothing.

[0:01:24 Speaker 1] Just gonna go cast the voter to

[0:01:25 Speaker 0] just what I’m breaking

[0:01:27 Speaker 1] the sun. So So today what we thought we would talk about along these lines are attitudes about voting in elections. Um, as if you’re listening to this, You probably know that a couple of weeks ago we released the most recent University of Texas Texas Tribune poll, which included, among lots of subjects ah, battery of questions about Texans, expectations about not just their who they wanted to win or who they planned on voting for, but about how the election might be executed. What their expectations were about the voting process where they saw potential problems. And, you know, I think, Josh, both you and I, even though this was not our first rodeo with questions like this, we’re fairly disconcerted with what we found.

[0:02:18 Speaker 0] Yeah, that’s right. I mean, we we sort of We expanded on a battery that we we’ve asked before. So we’ve asked questions about election threats, you know, particular situations that people might think, or, you know, serious problems or or maybe they’re just They’re somewhat their their little problems or they’re not really problems at all. And the sort of thing that you kind of imagine we asked about. You know how serious of problem votes being counted and accurately is, or people voting who are not eligible or eligible voters being prevented from voting. We talk about misinformation being sort of me. All is basically potential threats to the election. And we’ve asked these questions before, so we know, you know, to some degree that you know, these attitudes of these air problems run pretty rampant. But, you know, really, the last time we we sort of did this extensively was back during the 2016 election when we were talking about this a lot. We’ve done some little little half measures in between, and then we’d sort of rolled out the full battery again, and yeah, I mean, even though we knew that people thought that these things were problems, you know, the the magnitude and the intensity of it is kind of amazing. So, you know, again, people could say it’s an extra, you know, extremely serious problem. Or it’s a somewhat serious problem if we just look at these, these issues that people are thinking about going to this election and the share of Texans who say they’re extremely serious. 62% of Texans say that misinformation spread on social media is extremely serious, and that’s the only sort of bipartisan result Democrats and Republicans agree about it. The same rates about that one votes being counted interest inaccurately. 43% of Texans think that is an extremely serious problem, literally the votes being inaccurately counted. Nothing about, you know, fraud per se or anything else we’re just talking about like, Can you, you know, say, Oh, that’s a check for Joe Biden. That’s a check The doctor can you count, right? 40% think that people voting who are not eligible is gonna be an extremely serious problem. 40% also think that eligible voters being prevented from voting is gonna be an extremely serious problem for government election interference. 39% extremely serious people voting multiple times 38% of Texans think this is an extremely serious problem, which tells me that a lot of voters have never tried to vote twice. Uh, increasing people voted by bale 33%. That would be extremely serious. And then people not voting due to co vid 32% of people thought that that would be a serious problem. And that’s actually I think that’s in line with other parts of the polar. We asked people, Is it safe to vote? And ultimately, I think more than three quarters of registered voters think it’s safe to vote in person at this point s so that’s not surprising. But

[0:04:40 Speaker 1] although that’s gone, although that’s gone up,

[0:04:42 Speaker 0] that’s gone up and part of it is that gone up? Well, you know, in sort of safe, how safe, like medically safe. And then there’s also, like safe, like getting your vote counted right and so is concerned. Over mail in voting has gone down. I think the extent to which people think that in person voting is is unsafe is kind of decreasing almost as a justification. But that’s another story, so ultimately you know the thing that’s sort of striking about this and I think we talked about this. I mean, I’ve said this to you before. We got a bunch of questions about discrimination in the past. You kind of It’s easy to break these things down and say, You know, well, who’s the most discriminating scraper or who the Republicans think is most discriminations? Or who do Democrats think is most discriminate against or whatever. But ultimately, you look at a battery like that you kind of can’t come away with without thinking like, Man, this must be a lot of discrimination going on because people see it everywhere. And it’s sort of the same thing with this in a lot of ways, which is that, you know, it doesn’t matter whether you’re looking at sort of Republican tropes about, you know, voter fraud, unfounded though they are, or Democratic concerns over voter suppression. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter who you look at. They see problems with the system. Is that right?

[0:05:44 Speaker 1] Yeah, I think that’s right. And I think that what’s interesting about this that is that, you know there’s is that there’s so much structure on a partisan basis here is that, you know is you go through that laundry list of all the items we asked and you know, anywhere from basically a third to, you know, a little over 40 43% Think one of those multiple things is a problem. Not everybody thinks the same things or problems. And in fact, in most cases, members of if members of one party tend to think it’s a problem. Members of the other party don’t right. So for Democrats, the big problems or eligible voters being prevented from voting, foreign governments and and other bad actors interfering in elections and people not voting due to the virus I mean democratic, you know, you know the range of democratic belief that those air serious, extremely serious problems ranges from 48 to as high as 57% with the 57% is foreign governments interfering. But the Republicans cluster around a completely different set of ideas or, you know, perceived problems that Democrats don’t see is a problem. So 55% of Republicans say that people voting multiple times is an extremely serious problem on Lee. 18% of Democrats think it. It’s an extremely serious problem without going through all the numbers we’ll publish the graphics on our website, proximate to the to the posting of the of the podcast recording. You see this pattern, as you said, other than the social media threat throughout this whole battery of questions, Um and then, interestingly enough, is we, you know, we talk about independence, independence and almost all of these air almost exactly in the middle. It’s a It’s almost uncanny when you look at this. I mean, you know the only thing where, you know, in a couple of these counts they independence edge a little bit closer to Republicans and a couple of the edge a little bit closer to Democrats. But overall independence are kind of scattered across the partisan universe, which hey, makes sense to me and be tells me that actually, the polling is you know, that there are samples in this battery are working pretty well.

[0:08:03 Speaker 0] Yeah, I agree with

[0:08:04 Speaker 1] in terms of in terms of all of that.

[0:08:06 Speaker 0] Yeah. I mean, I think this is sort of one of these really interesting things. Like, you know, we have really talked about too much in this sense. But is a is a policy matter, you know, and If you listen to the discussion going on right now, clearly, you know policymakers could address people’s concerns about the election system. And I think what’s interesting about this is this isn’t really you know. I mean what’s striking to me. In some ways, I mean, like, it’s not striking because it’s political. I mean, like, I know the answer to why this has happened. But ultimately, you know what strikes me about this is there’s clearly like room for good faith efforts to basically try to improve. You know, the system overall, if you think about it, right? I mean, we’ve sort of talked about this, but if you imagine pairing proposals together, you know, let’s say, you know, online voter registration on the one hand with like or I actually I prefer this one, like, you know, strict voter idea. On the one hand, which we already have a Texas with the automatic provision of an I D to every registered voter. I mean, you could do that and say, Hey, look, if you really want to make the process extremely well monitored, why don’t you just do that right? You could

[0:09:04 Speaker 1] way should give some credit to our senior colleague Brian Jones, who we talked to about that recently and was really promoting that idea, which has been out there but interestingly, given political culture in the United States and certainly in Texas, you know, you don’t hear the suggestion of an official universal voter I d State issued voter I d. Very much because you get pushback, I think, from from, you know, the sector of the electorate that are they’re very nervous about federal federal authority and the idea of, you know, a national I D card.

[0:09:39 Speaker 0] Yeah, but even a state level, I mean, I think the thing about that is for most of those people, I mean, I agree there is definitely gonna be that resistance, but it’s also how is this different from a driver’s license or a concealed carry permit, for that matter? Ultimately, it’s the same information that state already has available to it. So the interesting to see how this goes. I mean, unfortunately, you know, I think for everybody you know, these attitudes are leading Thio, you know, I mean a serious and terrible as these attitudes are, especially again, given that there’s very little actually say almost no systematic evidence of voter fraud. And I would say, You know, to the extent that there’s evidence of voter suppression, its’s more mixed on a little bit more complicated, I think, to unpack in a short, short time span here. But ultimately this isn’t even in some ways, the worst aspect of the results we found.

[0:10:23 Speaker 1] Yeah, no, it’s not. You know, I think probably the you know, the most disconcerting piece of this was, you know, when we asked people whether they trust would trust the effect of the presidential election, you know, and we’ll break it down. But you know, the headline is that when you ask people individually, will you respondent trust the results of the presidential election? 60% Couldn’t simply say yes, right.

[0:10:53 Speaker 0] And that’s one of those things like and maybe, you know, part of me is like thinking myself getting old like I mean, I feel like, you know, just for our listeners. If you can’t tell Jim is older than may. We sometimes make references to this in the podcast. But I think to myself, you know, is this just like a fact? Like a facet of getting older, that all of a sudden, like I used to think the doctors knew, like, real doctors, not doctors like us, like medical doctors, like they know everything. And then you go and you start getting some medical care, and you as well, they’re doing their best, you know, they’re guessing, right? And I kind of green you grow up thinking like, well, you know, we have this election system is not perfect, but it works pretty well. And we trusted, you know, better than a lot of other places. Um, I just crazy like, was I just thinking that because I was a kid or or is this like a drastic change, like from your perspective?

[0:11:34 Speaker 1] Yeah. No, I mean, you know, we’ve been talking about a reading faith in the system, and you look at the national numbers. You know, My recollection of that is that if you look at the long time Siri’s going back, you know, at least through the mid sixties early seventies, you see a gradual decline with, you know, a little bit of a bump. But I you know, I think it’s pretty clear that we are in new territory right now, And the question is you know, are we Are we passing through something that we’re going to come out of or re passing into something that we’re not? Aunt? To me, that is like, I mean, I think without a doubt you can’t look at the results we got on this question in which there is a bipartisan. I mean, you know, it’s interesting. You know, we we’ve been saying that the attitudes that say that social media pose an extremely serious problem for the election, where the only thing that that people have there’s bipartisan agreement on. But there’s also bipartisan agreement on the fact that people aren’t going to trust the presidential election. If you break down the number of people that said that they would trust the outcome of the presidential election regardless of who wins broken down by party, 45% of Democrats say they’ll support it. 39% of Republicans 33% of independence. And then, if you go over and look at the people that outrightly say, they’re not going to trust that 11% of Democrats 15% of independence, 15% of Republicans so actually part, you know there’s not a lot of partisan difference in the erosion of faith in the system. And you know, that’s that. You know, I think it’s a problem, and I think it’s a problem that has reached that. We that’s reached critical mass and I, you know, anecdotally. And, you know, we saw this, you know, in another item, indirectly, when we asked, You think other Americans will accept the results of the election and we saw similar results. In addition to that, anecdotally, I’m pretty struck by the number of conversations that I’m having with people in the system outside the system. Just this morning, people from the diplomatic community from outside of the United States who are asking about whether there’s going to be civil unrest in the country, uh, in the weeks after the election. And I think that there’s a creeping assumption that I think is related to this, that we’re going Thio and for people of mawr, liberal or progressive sensibilities. There’s worry about, you know, militias and and activities like that from the far right, you know, going into the cities and protein and taking armed action in response to this and and this is being cultivated, I think, by much of the coverage. But, you know, for conservatives, there’s a sense that if Trump wins, you know, liberals and progressives are not gonna accept the legitimacy election and that, you know, in that plugs into pre existing attitudes about about the protests and and the incidents of, you know, the incidents of violence that we saw, you know, during the summer in, uh, in the sort of anti racism protests. And I think the this is more widespread than I’ve seen it. I think it’s more widespread in the empirical data, and it’s certainly more widespread, just anecdotally, particularly among people that are close to the process on people that are engaged. Seem very worried about this.

[0:15:04 Speaker 0] Yeah, you know, listen to talk about I mean, it does you know, two things. I mean, one. I think, you know, the more I think about this result and even just sit here talking about it, it is in some ways, you know, one of the most jarring and maybe one of the most you know, surprised and results we’ve gotten in this. And it’s not just in a couple different ways. I mean, first listening to, you know, sort of kind of go back over that I do think about, you know, on the one hand, this idea. You know, let’s say on the right that Democrats will never accept. You know, Trump, you know Trump’s victory, and I mean, it’s hard. Remember having four weeks ago, let alone over the last four years in some ways, but like it does go back to a common sort of. I don’t want to call it a trope, but I will for now, which is that, you know, basically, that’s what the impeachment hearings were all about. It was all about Democrats and liberals not accepting the president’s legitimate win. I think that that that, you know, that argument is coming up again around the Supreme Court that essentially this is another example of Democrats not accepting. You know, the fact that voters elected Donald Trump and elected a Republican Senate and is there, you know, there will toe appoint a Supreme Court justice, and so this is sort of a common, you know. So I understand. I go back to the other side, and I think you know, we’ve talked about this, but, you know, Donald Trump was was questioning the you know, the integrity of election process while winning. I mean, he won. He won the election and said after he had won basically that, you know, not only was the process rigged before, but after he won, you know, the process was still somehow fraudulent, You know, he would have won by so much more was basically the argument. And, you know, it’s one of the things I think you know, having been here in Texas for a while and having listening to these these arguments about, you know, the election system and voter fraud. It’s always been much more active on the right. Uh, it’s been much more active among Republicans, calling to question the integrity of election system and really highlighting the need for electoral reforms that will, you know, tighten the electoral process in a way that, you know is being said will increase, You know, the integrity of the process. And so what’s so surprising about this? And we we’ve written about this now, but I mean, it’s really standing out to me. I mean, what’s so surprising about this is not just the 60% of Texas voters who won’t accept the results of the election. But now the fact that you know faith in the system long sort of actively being eroded among Republicans by Republicans is now impacting Democrats. Now we can’t say exactly why that’s the case. Is that Donald Trump is that years of new laws and we talked about before? Is this because after 2013, when the Supreme Court invalidated the part of the Voting Rights Act that allowed states to basically engage in new voter laws and restrictions with less oversight, you know, do Democrats Now see, this is being sort of, you know, sort of Republicans efforts as you know, tainting the election system. I don’t know, but I wouldn’t. But I think you know, if I had not thought about it real hard and really you know, maybe I didn’t You know, the share of Democrats who now look like Republicans on this question is is pretty striking.

[0:17:47 Speaker 1] Yeah, and then but But we you know. But then we get in this position where I mean, you know, we haven’t done, you know, and I haven’t seen statistical analysis on this, but I mean, it’s a It’s a pretty plausible argument that as Republican, you know elected officials find fewer impediments because of the invalidation of Section five of the Voting Rights Act and shall be beholder as Republicans, because of that, find themselves frankly less impeded because they are literally now without federal oversight when they change election laws. That there have been a fairly sustained pattern of efforts, as you say in the name of election integrity, to prevent the expansion of the opening up of the voting process to both obstruct any efforts to make it easier to vote and to implement stricter enforcement of laws that exist and to test the boundaries of new laws that, you know, whatever the rash, the public rationale, their effect is to make it harder to vote. I mean, if you’re reducing the number of places where you can go boat, if you are making it harder to stake the keep red to stay registered. If you’re making it harder for people to get registered and down the line, I mean that has an identifiable effect on pardon the phrase, the calculus of voting and I mean that is what it is, you know. And the and if the output is that you know, we see ah, lot more. You know, Mawr interest in election and Onley gradual increases in voter turnout. I mean, the argument is a pretty plausible one. Now the devil’s in the details, and but I’ve not, you know, I’ve not seen a particularly compelling alternative explanation.

[0:19:44 Speaker 0] Yeah, I mean, just since we’re speculating now, I mean, I was looking at some numbers today, you know, and thinking about this upcoming election and, you know, and part of, you know, it relates to this conversation and that, you know, it’s hard not to look at sort of what’s going on in Texas and then, you know, over the last number of years with respect to voting laws in this set of attitudes and kind of wonder what the end game is because ultimately, you know, if if you have I mean, ultimately, let’s say we’re going to keep a democracy. So we’re still gonna let people voting. Let’s say we’re still going to try to let most people vote okay, because obviously, historically haven’t always done that, but we’re kind of at a point now. We’re in general, all those people you probably have, you know, the opportunity to vote. Um you know, in part of what you think. You know what? You know, if you think about all these laws of Texas has passed, you know, really, since 2011 to date, you know, they’ve been found by trial courts at multiple times to either be overstepping their bounds and either discriminating, basically inadvertently or on purpose. Both. Both have been found at various points in time, so a lot could be invalid because it happens to

[0:20:47 Speaker 1] discriminatory and either intent or effect and therefore invalid,

[0:20:51 Speaker 0] right? And so ultimately, you know that what, What, what Democrats and sort of you know, the people most concerned about voting voter suppression, you know, would say is this is basically an attempt to turn away democratic voters who in most cases are non white, younger voters for who? The process is gonna be more challenging for a number of reasons, and it depends on the law. But generally speaking, that that would be that would be true. And you go and you look at sort of, you know, the Democrats, you know the preferences of voters in the state and, you know, part of the problem I think that they’re facing not to say that these laws are 100% politically motivated. But given the politics motivates, any law, you know, is that if you look at the under 40 population, you’re looking at a largely democratic population. If you look at the over 40 population, you’re looking at a largely Republican population on this is going over the last couple election cycles. Similarly, if you’re talking about the under 40 population Texas you’re talking about, you know, a majority nonwhite population in a state that’s becoming majority nonwhite or it’s already majority nonwhite. But the electorate is getting increasingly majority nonwhite, and again they look like mirror images of each other. If you look at the preferences in our most recent poll of white versus non white voters for Donald Trump versus Joe Biden with one hand and again for non white voters Joe Biden presented, they’re mirror images of each other. Since nonwhite voters are showing much more support for Joe Biden, white voters showing much your support for Donald Trump and this also relates to age, it relates to access, relates to all these things, and ultimately, you know, just just as a matter of politics, I don’t really see how this helps Republicans beyond a few election cycles. Assuming we still have a democracy.

[0:22:22 Speaker 1] Yeah, well, you know, So I think they’re you know, they’re and there’s two things I think you know the kind of footnotes to that in a way. One is that I think they’re one of the advantages of the litigation. All the litigation around this, particularly around redistricting and around voter ID, is that we have a pretty extensive public record of the rationale of map makers and legislators who were Bill Law, who are, you know, authored this legislation in which you know, because they are great, they’re going to great lengths to not appear to be racially discriminatory because of the lower bar on that. And and the, you know, the trip wires on that, that is it’s illegal are very quick to admit No, we weren’t doing this for racial or we weren’t doing this for racial reasons. We weren’t discriminating. We were just doing it because it’s, you know, it’s partisan advantage, and that’s fine. And that’s what we should be doing. So I think that’s why when I say you know at a certain level, you know the speculate. You know, you’re only speculating so much when you have ah, pretty extensive documentary record in which people have been backed into saying We’ve done this for partisan advantage and as I remind my you know, my Democratic friends all the time. This didn’t start in 2003. If you go back to 1990 you know, I would. And I think we talked about this on this podcast. But it’s worth. Remember, go back to 1990 look at the maps that the Democrats drew to preserve the period of Democratic A Germany in the state when it was already eroding. You know, Democrats were seeing the writing on the wall, and they wrote maps that became textbook illustrations of gerrymandering. I mean, there’s just absolutely no doubt about the fact that some of the district’s, for example, in in the Dallas Fort Worth area, um, you know, showed up as examples nationally of in and well, you know, one whoever. The that there’s a think tank award for the most creative read extreme gerrymandering that the maps that year one I was just kind of reviewing some of that history for something else. So you know, this is not just picking on Republicans. It’s talking about the fact that we have always had a system in which, you know is you and I are like, broken records on this election in voting rules are you know, they’re there their you know, their political fair game essentially, but within bounds. So the way that I’m thinking about it is have we gone? Have we somehow passed into a different territory in which the regular rules of the game now have had a corrosive effect over time? And is there anything we can do to reverse that? Because, you know, when I look at, you know, and is this another instance You know, which we’re asking, say Donald Trump loses and leaves office,

[0:25:25 Speaker 0] not loses Texas but loses the election,

[0:25:28 Speaker 1] loses the election overall and leaves office.

[0:25:31 Speaker 0] What are the

[0:25:32 Speaker 1] general attitude is gonna be about this among elites and elected officials afterwards. Are we going to double down on this conflict and further the corrosion, or is there gonna be some level of macro level systemic awareness that maybe we need to repair some of this now? You know, you know, my expectations are not tend to not be very high for our elected officials. But I also, you know, would like to think that Justus we are we are at and, you know, we’re seeing new lows that are catalyzing a lot of people’s thinking about this, that there might be enough out there for people to, you know, for there to be enough people that will melt their self interest with some kind of systemic interest and address this this problem directly. Now it is not addressable, you know?

[0:26:25 Speaker 0] Well, I mean, I think you know, you said the word bounds or boundaries a couple of times there, and I mean, I think you know that that’s ultimately there’s a couple bounds and boundaries that I think are important here. I mean, one with respect to what you’re just saying. You know, ultimately, I think the attitude environment that we’re describing here, in which partisans of both sides think the election system is extremely problematic but think so for different reasons, which is now led again partisans of both sides and independence to be weary of the election outcome that we’re about to have, you know, ultimately that that is bound, you know, in particular. You know, the governor here in some really notable ways. And ultimately, the governor initially said, Okay, I’m not gonna expand mail in voting, but I’m gonna expand early voting. I’m gonna allow you to drop off your mail and about early, right? And basically, since then, he has taken incoming fire from his party up until, like, the minute we’re talking still and will continue Thio because ultimately, you know, given again this attitude landscape that’s been, you know, really fostered by elites. Right? Where again? Republicans think that voter fraud is a rampant problem throughout the electoral system. You can’t is Ah, is a Republican elected official, especially an executive elected official. Go and then make it easier to vote. Ultimately, that just flies in the face of what your voters believe. Now, how long do they hold on to these attitudes? How long does this continue? I mean, that means you said, does Donald Trump leave office, and all of a sudden, you know, this is over. I don’t think so. And I think that’s gonna make it really challenging. Uh, you know, again, especially for republicans to come to the table for any sort of election reform. And I think Democrats are gonna have a hard time trust, you know, I think trusting the other side and coming together for like, but the other bound I think about, you know, also because you mentioned, you know, the line crossing how far we’ve gone. And you said, You know, it’s true. It’s totally you know, the courts have ruled. It’s okay to, like, make electoral maps based on partisanship. Basically, a party like this is politics, and we don’t touch politics. The problem comes when the parties start to get so sorted by race and we’re not there. But ultimately, when you’re talking about, you know, drawing district, let’s say, drawing a district based on where all the Democratic voters are, you know, in inner city Dallas. Well, you know, you start to talk about race, ultimately, like, you know that those those those two conversations, they’re not separate. And so what I what I worry about, you know, in a couple ways is one you know what point does you know what time what point is the political line in the racial line Cross in which we just say, Hey, look, these aren’t different enough to say that politics, you know, the party is a reason to do this. But I also know that what we’re talking about then is we’re talking about a country which were kind of, you know, I mean, this is sort of the scariest part of this is the tip of where, you know, you basically have racially oriented parties, and that’s, you know, I don’t think that’s a good thing. You know, in a sense, you know, normative Lee speaking, I think big tent parties, lots of ideas, you know, maybe different. Different assumptions about how society works. That’s fine. But ultimately, you know, I think the idea of parties where race is a large, you know, is a big factor in describing who is a member and who is not. And then partisans making, you know, quote unquote partisan laws to affect the process. You know, we’re getting somewhere a little scary.

[0:29:25 Speaker 1] Yeah, and I think that, you know, we’ve not succeeded in really confronting that, you know, in the legal system, let alone in the legislative system. And we you know, we rely, you know, at the state level were, you know as well as at the national level, but focusing on state politics for a minute. I mean, we you rely on, you know, the purpose of legislative bodies. One purpose is to adjudicate those kinds of severe differences. And we’ve not been particularly good at that in these kinds of issues, certainly in recent years. And, you know, I wonder if, um or competitive system makes it harder, easier to do that. You know, I’m not sure, either. I mean, I think you know, it creates opportunities, but you have tow, have the right people there, frankly, with leadership skills and a certain perception of risk and understanding of risk and an attitude toward risk. I guess that is, makes them willing toe to risk those things. We have not seen that much recently in leadership in this state. I think before we we move on to much further with this. Let’s let’s talk a little bit about early voting before we run out of time. Early voting is the big story, um, mainly because there’s a lot of it, um, and and people are trying to sort out and and figure out what it means probably prematurely. But you know, that’s the game we’re in. And that’s the That’s the environment. Um, but the early voting numbers have been notable on what do you What are you making of them?

[0:31:03 Speaker 0] Well, I mean, I think you know, first and foremost, I’m just looking at, you know, the overall size. I mean, the number of people who voted so far, I think is, You know, I think there’s a lot of things that you could do toe over, interpret early voting numbers. So I just want to start something simple, which is, I think, after the 2018 election, in the turnout we saw, you know, there’s a big discussion That was a big discussion, but really insider discussion that was ongoing, That basically said, Hey, so we’re gonna have 10 million votes in 2020 and, you know, it was sort of kind of just out there. Not sure. Look, we’re gonna we’re gonna have 10 million votes. Just let me just say that right now. We’re already like, probably probably by today. We’re probably around three or something, and we still have two weeks left of early voting in the election. Um, you know, beyond that, I’m not really sure how much more there is to say about. I mean, what you could do is you could go and people do this and they were like, or you could look inside the numbers. You could see who’s voted. You can see what they’re voting. History looks like in the sense of, you know, have they voted in Republican primaries that they tended to vote in Democratic primaries. They mixed Are they voted in no primaries, that kind of stuff. And that kind of gives you a little bit of like the tea leaves to start to say like, Oh, what are the partisan is doing? But the problem with that, of course, is you know, Number one. I mean, the main problem with that really is that one. You don’t know anything about the unaffiliated people. We could assume that the people who voted for Democratic primaries are probably voting for Joe Biden. People voted for last Republican primaries, probably voting for Donald Trump. You know, the third who aren’t affiliated in some way, I don’t know what they’re doing. Number one. I mean, I, I guess, is based on polling, but that’s about it. Uh, and number two, you know, the partisans approach these things differently and different voting groups approach electing differently. So I think what we’ve seen so far is we’ve seen the hard core voters turnout in that first week. It’s a lot of people who voted in the last four Democratic primaries in the last four Republican primaries for the last three Ultimate. These were people who were gonna vote no matter what. Right. And so the question now is, you know,

[0:32:57 Speaker 1] and their and their enthusiastic and they’re showing up. I mean, a lot of these people showed up like the instant they could.

[0:33:02 Speaker 0] Yeah, they should have the instant they could. And so ultimately, you know, is this level we’re going to continue, you know, every week or or really, you know, are we seeing

[0:33:09 Speaker 1] history suggests not,

[0:33:11 Speaker 0] Probably not, right. I mean, probably what you could say is, Hey, whoever would have voted two weeks out on the first day of early voting voted three weeks out on the first day of early voting, we’ll probably see a little bit of tail up. The other thing that we know from our polling eyes that you know more Republicans were gonna vote are planning to vote on election day in person than vote early, where Democrats are overwhelmingly planning to vote early or by mail. And so this is going to create, you know, again. Ah, pretty big shift in our understanding once we start to get in, Actually, those election day number. So, to me, you know, I would say the main take away is that, you know, is kind of something that we already knew was gonna happen. But maybe I’ll reframe is a Despite the pandemic, I still expect us to see extremely high voter turnout for Texas. It’ll probably still be below the national average would be my guess. But ultimately, you know, right now, Texas is, uh, from what I’ve seen, Texas has contributed a huge amount of votes, just even nationally. If you just saying who’s voted so far, Texas is really, you know, up there. But it’s a big state. So you kind of expect.

[0:34:08 Speaker 1] Yeah. I mean, we would expect that given, given our share of the overall vote, but yeah, I mean, I I think that’s right. And I think that that we should also give a nod to, you know, the data. I mean, that most people are using. If they’re not, if they’re not crunching the data file their cell. Uh, Derek Ryan, Republican consultant from Texas. Uh, does, you know, Ah, huge public service that I’m you know, I’m sure is good for his marketing, but I think it can’t be worth the time that he puts into us in parsing this data every day. So had tipped Derek Ryan for his mailing list in the way that, you know, he stays up late and and get and pushes this data out to everybody for free. Um, which is nice. And, you know, I mean, I mean, I think that as we watch this and we see on one hand, you know, comparable shares of Republicans and Democrats, the composition of the early voting population. So faras, you know, as of yesterday, per derricks data, you know, about 30% of the people that turned out where Republicans about 30 were democrats, slightly mawr, Republicans and Democrats, but a much larger share of of the total that showed up last time have already showed up, suggesting, as you say, we’re going to see a lot more voters overall, If the pattern is even approximate to what we’ve seen in the past. So I think you have to expect there’s gonna be a lot more voters.

[0:35:30 Speaker 0] Yeah, and I’ll just add, you know, for people weren’t aware. I mean, because this data is available, the campaigns they know who hasn’t voted yet, right? So if someone like, you know, again, Derek Ryan is going to look and see who has voted on what their history is. Ultimately parties, the candidates, the various organizations trying to mobilize voters know who hasn’t shown up yet. And so they think that you’re reliable, Republican or Democratic voter. You’re gonna be hearing from somebody soon. If you

[0:35:55 Speaker 1] weigh. Should say that, you know, And again, we should we should, you know, particularly given the discussion that we’ve had today. This does not mean that anybody knows how you voted, but it is public knowledge if you voted in the past and if you voted yet this time. And so you know that this data then you know, feeds into mawr voter targeting and, you know, expect to get more texts If you haven’t, you know, those texts will not stop until you vote. So that’s maybe another reason If you’re one of the people that voted a lot in the past and you’re sick of getting text messages from all of the campaigns, go vote and at least some of those will stop. And if they don’t stop, you know you’ll know who’s not keeping track in terms of candidates and campaigns. So on that, we will call it a day. We will be back next week, yet another week closer to the election. So thanks for listening, thanks to our production crew in the liberal arts development studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin, thanks to Josh for being here, thanks again to Derek Ryan for his data, and we’ll be back next week for another second reading podcast. The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin