In spite of their public anguish over drive-thru voting, expanded early voting and efforts to allow more people to vote by mail, Texas Republicans were happy with the results of the state’s 2020 elections.
They held steady in the Texas House, with 83 of 150 seats both before and after the election. They lost a seat in the Texas Senate, one that they were lucky to have won in the first place, but still have the majority there, too. And they won all of the statewide races, continuing a streak that is now more than a quarter of a century long. Donald Trump won in Texas, too; the streak of Republican wins in that category extends all the way back to Ronald Reagan’s 1980 victory. And they did it all with the kind of high turnout they had feared would favor Democratic candidates.
Even so, the party’s legislators are working hard to make voting in Texas more difficult. Legislation approved by Senate Republicans over the unanimous objection of Senate Democrats in the wee, small hours of Thursday morning would prohibit drive-thru voting, make it illegal for election officials to send vote-by-mail applications unless people ask for them and block the kind of 24-hour early voting offered in Harris County last year. It would prohibit voting in tents and other temporary structures. It allows poll watchers — usually people brought in by the political parties — more freedom at polling and vote-counting locations.
