The 2020 Presidential Election caused millions of Americans to lose confidence in the election process. Election integrity advocates and activists have dedicated themselves to ensuring that the mistakes of the past are not repeated. However, there is a lot more work to do to stop fraud and human error and secure Texas elections. Voters must do their part to make sure their votes count and are kept secret by voting early and close to home.
Vote Early
First of all, voting early means casting a vote before an unforeseen circumstance can prevent it. Don’t let long lines, inclement weather, transportation issues, illnesses, or any other unforeseen obstacles can keep you from the polls. Take advantage of early voting to ensure your voice is heard.
Storms raged across North Texas on Tuesday, May 28th, Election Day for the 2024 primary runoff elections. As a result, at least 76 polling locations closed in Tarrant, Dallas, Kaufman, and Ellis counties due to power outages. This undoubtedly deterred hundreds of voters from casting their ballots, highlighting the critical importance of taking advantage of early voting opportunities.
In addition to weather-related disruptions, voters face other potential obstacles that can impede their ability to vote on Election Day. For example, in Harris County during the 2022 election, numerous polling places ran out of paper ballots. This shortage prevented hundreds of voters from casting their ballots.
This underscores the necessity for Texans to adopt proactive measures to safeguard their right to vote. Early voting provides a crucial buffer against such unforeseen obstacles, ensuring that last-minute shortages or disruptions at polling places do not prevent voters from exercising their rights.
Secondly, voting early means casting a vote before a harvester can steal it. The concept of “outvoting the steal” means both turning out in numbers that create margins of victory harvesters can’t beat and getting a vote cast before someone can illegally cast it in your name.
If a harvester is able to obtain your driver’s license number or the last 4 digits of your social security number, that harvester can apply for and vote a mail-in ballot in your name. If you vote early, you have a greater chance of canceling that fraudulent vote before the ballot is separated from the envelope. Once a mail-in ballot envelope is opened and the ballot is pulled out, that vote is cast and cannot be undone. Your in-person vote will not count, the fraudulent mail-in vote will count instead.
Harvesters also keep lists of voters on the rolls who don’t typically vote. If you are someone that only votes in Presidential Elections, beware. If there is no parity in a polling location, and the Judge and clerks are all of one party, shenanigans can happen. Without oversight a bad actor could take that list of voters and start voting for them, bypassing the voter ID check and forging the signatures. If you show up at 6:30pm on Election Day, you may be told you already voted.
Every eligible voter must have the opportunity to vote freely and without impediment. By voting early, Texans can mitigate the risks associated with Election Day uncertainties, such as ballot shortages, long lines, or severe weather.
Vote Close to Home
The Texas Secretary of State has issued advisories indicating that the secrecy of some voters’ ballots has been compromised. While there is still debate on how to improve secrecy on the ballots that have been cast in previous elections, there is a clear way to protect your ballot secrecy in this election. Vote at the location closest to your home, where your neighbors are most likely to vote.
Each ballot cast has a particular ballot style, a configuration of candidate choices unique to a particular address in a district. For instance, two people could live in Harris County, but also live in two different Texas House districts, so they would have two different ballot styles. The number of ballot styles increases as the size of the districts decreases down to cities or special purpose districts.
So, if there are 2,000 people in your county with your particular ballot style and they all vote in the same place, it would be very difficult to tell who voted which ballot. However, if you vote in another part of the county and you are the only person to vote at that location with your ballot style, it would be easy to pick your ballot out of the stack and know how you voted.
As a result, until we can officially go to precinct-based voting for both Election Day and early voting, we must do it unofficially and purposely vote in or near our precincts. Take that into account when you choose your polling location. Your goal is for your ballot to get lost in a crowd of ballots with the same ballot style.
Check your local early voting locations and schedules, and encourage your friends and family to do the same. You can do so by visiting your county’s election website or the Texas Secretary of State’s website, VoteTexas.gov.