COMMENTARY: Texas voting laws need to change

The Texas mid-terms recently ended Nov. 8 with Greg Abbot winning his third term as governor of Texas. This election season has been marred by various controversial topics in Texas such as abortion and the recent Uvalde shooting, while both parties have been dealing with these topics in their own ways there is still something that always occurs every election season. The difficulties Texas citizens have with voting. 

Now Texas is not the only state where voting is an issue. Even our presidential elections have had their fair share of difficulties and controversies in the past; to a degree, it is understandable with over 333,318,862 people in America issues are bound to pop up with so many people voting. 

Yet here in Texas it seems like there are barriers every year that make voting complicated for the average citizen. Just last year Texas passed a bill that increased election security and included measures to prevent voter fraud which has been a hot topic in recent years. 

With the pandemic shutting down most of the country and leaving many quarantined in their own homes the rise in mail-in ballots became a favored method for citizens to cast their vote. At the start of 2020 mail-in ballots started to see a rise in use with 37 states offering early mail-in ballots for all voters 

Texas on the other hand offers a different approach to this, Texas does offer a mail-in ballot option for residents but with stricter criteria. Residents must be 65 years or older, be sick or disabled and must be in some way unable to attend voting centers. 

Anyone younger than the age limit in the criteria and who may also be disabled is unfortunately out of luck, this type of strict restrictions for having a mail-in ballot ostracize these types of residents and has the unfortunate side effect of targeting those who come from lower-income households who may not have a vehicle on hand that can reliably take them to a voting center. 

A question arises from this: why is it difficult to vote in Texas? One must look back to the history of Texas to understand the problems we still face today. Texas was founded as a state in 1845 and has since had a history of controversial voting rights that correlated with minorities and women. 

The issue with women’s voting rights was the suffrage movement at the time was a continuous fight that many women in Texas struggled to see any significant form of change made. The movement faced setbacks with the Constitution of 1869, while it did mention all males who were twenty-one years of age and lived in the state for one year and sixty days in the county, they intend to vote had their right to vote protected. 

Women were conveniently left out of this or not mentioned at all. The language of the article failed to mention women at all, denying their right to vote. The women’s suffrage movement in Texas would wax and wane over the years due to internal disagreements but would finally see women gaining the right to vote in 1918 for Texas primary elections and then two years later women across the United States would gain the right to vote when the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920. 

Minorities had struggled to have their voting rights protected since the end of the Civil War. In 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified, protecting the voting rights of all citizens, and ensuring citizens could not be denied due to factors such as color.  

While states could not write in their laws that a person could not vote for things like race, this did not stop lawmakers from finding loopholes to ensure minorities would still become disenfranchised when it came to voting. 

Poll taxes were a common way to disenfranchise minority voters with other states in the south adopting similar practices. In 1902 Texas passed a poll tax law that charged between $1.50 to $1.75 to register to vote which was a barrier to many low-income minorities and even poor whites who could not afford the charge. 

Another way of keeping minority citizens from voting was the white primary. A favored tool used by lawmakers at the time started out as party rules set by the Democratic party and would later be passed into state law.  

The white primary banned minorities from joining the democratic party and participating in primary elections, with the Democrats dominating the political landscape of southern states this ensured that no matter where you lived if you were not white in a southern state the chances of you voting were slim to none. 

Thankfully, these laws were overturned by the Supreme Court which found these laws were unconstitutional and while the United States has improved with regards to voting the history Texas has with voting rights is a point of contention. 

Texas and other red states have followed the same pattern of having difficulties with voting. One could argue that republicans are purposely limiting easier ways for citizens to vote which can be interrupted as them only wanting certain members of society or those that agree with them to be able to vote. 

If democracy is to be protected in the United States citizens must hold lawmakers and political parties responsible and call them out when signs of violations are seen. Voting rights is one of the founding ideas in this country that must be accessible to all citizens, not just a select few.