Early Voting Wrangle

"Voting freshens your breath, whitens your teeth, and improves your sex life." -- Molly Ivins

It may even make you immune to Ebola, I've heard.  But only if you are not a Republican.  In which case... you're catching that shit for sure.  The Texas Progressive Alliance reminds you that EARLY VOTING HAS BEGUN as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff published an interview with John Cook, the Democratic nominee for Land Commissioner.

Libby Shaw, writing for Texas Kaos and Daily Kos is sickened by the "corporations are people" Supreme Court for allowing Greg Abbott to disenfranchise 600,000 Texans of their right to vote: TXGOP, Greg Abbott stand by discrimination and disenfranchisement.

Two special days in the blogosphere last week: Blog Action Day for inequality was a global initiative, and Texas blogs dropped a money bomb for Wendy Davis. PDiddie at Brains Eggs has details on both.

After this week's big announcement, Texas Leftist is left to wonder... Did the Dallas Morning News editorial board incorporate facts into its endorsement process for governor? If so, maybe this week's decision for Greg Abbott would have gone the other way. Clearly the DMN ed board should've taken a few minutes to read their own paper.

Republican racism revealed in TWIA emails about storm damage to Brownsville ISD property. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme encourages everyone in South Texas to go vote. You can stop the racism. VOTE!

From WCNews at Eye on Williamson had two campaign ads worth checking out: Must See TV - Great Ads from Mike Collier and Sam Houston.

Neil at All People Have Value wrote about things he is doing to make a difference in the 2014 elections in Texas. Neil says you can make a difference as well. APHV is one of many interesting things to see at NeilAquino.com.

Texpatriate mixes it up with their endorsements in statewide races: George P. Bush for land commissioner, Sam Houston for Attorney General, and Mike Collier for Comptroller.

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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

nonsequiteuse has her voting recommendations, which include a Green for agriculture commissioner.

Dan Solomon speaks from personal experience when he says that the Wendy Davis wheelchair ad shines a long-overdue light on the devastating effect tort "reform" has had on victims of medical malpractice.

The Inanity of Sanity has Part II of 'Abbott Disses the Disabled'.

The Lunch Tray keeps fighting the fight for healthier school lunches and snacks.

Grits for Breakfast calls on Texas jails to opt out of the Secure Communities program.

Texas Vox documents the big heat waves of 2013.

Socratic Gadfly was pleasantly surprised by the SCOTUS ruling that overturned the Fifth Circuit order allowing HB2 to go into effect pending appeals.

Helen Philpot would like for someone to explain to Greg Abbott where babies come from.

LGBTQ Insider compares Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott's positions on LGBTQ issues.

Andrea Grimes has the GIF-based explanation of the HB2 timeline that you've been waiting for.

Sunday Funnies

SCOTUS says use your ID, and other election developments

The last word for now (meaning this election).

The Supreme Court said Saturday that Texas can use its controversial new voter identification law for the November election.

A majority of the justices rejected an emergency request from the Justice Department and civil rights groups to prohibit the state from requiring voters to produce certain forms of photo identification in order to cast ballots. Three justices dissented.

The law was struck down by a federal judge last week, but a federal appeals court had put that ruling on hold. The judge found that roughly 600,000 voters, many of them black or Latino, could be turned away at the polls because they lack acceptable identification. Early voting in Texas begins Monday.

The Supreme Court's order was unsigned, as it typically is in these situations. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented, saying they would have left the district court decision in place.

The repercussions will be forthcoming.  Battleground Texas seems to have accomplished its task in adding a few hundred thousand Texans to the voter rolls.  The job now is to turn those folks out.

There will be some polling results to follow shortly, from YouGov directly and indirectly via the TexTrib/UT, perhaps as early as today or tomorrow but more likely Monday.  Unless they show some tightening of the races at the top of the ballot, I can't predict anything but a result that is woefully similar to 2002 and 2006 and 2010.  Harris County Democrats will be grinding out the GOTV efforts to hold onto their seats at the courthouse... and perhaps flip the DA and the County Clerk.

The EVBB for me begins Tuesday; at that time I'll go dark with respect to election commentary on the statewide and county ballot.  I hope to have everything I need to say said by then anyway. I will still be blogging here about politics -- probably have something on that pig castrator from Iowa, along with other US Senate developments -- but I'll take the edge off to remain in compliance with my oath as an election judge.  Same goes for Twitter and Facebook postings.  We'll mellow out with a little pumpkin spice whatever for a few weeks.

May blog about the World Series.  My buddy Gadfly's Cardinals got excused; I was hoping for a full orange and black Fall Classic myself.  That is, after the Angels and Dodgers got eliminated.

-- Greg Abbott's Twitter town hall yesterday blew up in his face, and it was, as Hair Balls accounts, laugh-out-loud hilarious.  Be sure and click on the #AskAbbott hashtag.

-- Wendy Davis lost the Dallas News endorsement but earned the Houston Chronicle's.  These simply don't mean as much as they used to, but let's be quick to point out that we still need newspapers badly in this underinformed and misled media environment.  Oh, and you can't paper-train a puppy with a blog.

Update: Some of my blog hermanos took exception to the DMN's endorsement of Abbott.  It takes a lot to drive Charles to scatological descriptions.  But I thought the Observer had the best takedown.

Elect Davis, and GOPers will be so mad they won’t cooperate on anything, just like what happened when Barack Obama took office. This is a really beautiful encapsulation of some of the most depressing features of American politics right now—a reminder that we do government primarily these days by hostage-taking, in contravention of the ostensible norms of representative government. It’s also an assertion that the hostage-takers should win, and a demonstration of why they will keep winning. It’s monumentally demoralizing. But applied to the Texas context, is it right?

What would a Gov. Davis look like? Well, she would probably have little influence over the Legislature. Assume Davis wins and so does Patrick—Davis would be able to get hardly any of her legislative priorities through. Patrick would be preparing to run against her in 2018, and his Senate would kill or mangle almost anything that bore her personal stamp. But Davis would have a veto which would prevent Patrick’s worst bills and initiatives from getting through.

But the Morning News endorsement anticipates something worse—that the conservative Legislature seizes the levers of state government and goes to war against Davis, refuses to budge on any issue, refuses to put together a budget, refuses to consider new and important legislation, until its demands are met and Davis effectively surrenders. In effect, if the people of the state elect Davis to lead them, conservatives in the Legislature—probably led by Patrick—will take Texas hostage.

So the Morning News’ instinct is to reward the hostage-taker, pay the ransom, and keep the state safely gripped by one-party rule. On the one hand, it feels like a pretty bleak misperception of how small-r republican government is supposed to work. It’s especially odd because the endorsement urges Abbott to be “a moderating influence” for his party—a bit like a liberal urging his radical-left friends to “work inside the system.”