We are at the end of the first official early voting week for the 2020 primary runoffs. At this point, there have been five actual early voting days, as Friday and Saturday the polls were closed for the Independence Day holiday. At this same point for the March primary, we had had six days of actual voting, with the Monday having been closed for Presidents Day. As such, we are no longer in a position where we can directly compare totals, as the number of days for this point in the calendar is different for each election.
On the other hand, who cares? The slate of elections is very different on each side, with no Presidential race and no statewide Republican races. Indeed, the only countywide Republican races are two judicial contests and Sheriff, none of which are particularly compelling to the average voter. So it’s not at all a surprise that Democrats in Harris, who have a US Senate race on their ballot as well as Railroad Commissioner and three judicial races, are drawing more participants. The comparisons to March are for academic interest, and just as one should be wary about drawing conclusions about November from primary turnout, one should basically banish the thought of such inferences for primary runoffs.
With one exception, I’d say, and that’s due to this:
Most Texans will now have to wear a mask to the grocery store, hair salon and bus stop — but not to the voting booth during ongoing primary runoff elections.
Gov. Greg Abbott’s mask order exempts “any person who is voting, assisting a voter, serving as a poll watcher, or actively administering an election,” but he adds that “wearing a face covering is strongly encouraged.”
The order appears to make Texas the only state in the country that exempts voting from a mask mandate. Twenty-one states require masks statewide, according to Masks4All, a volunteer organization that advocates for more mask-wearing.
[…]
“Issuing the mandatory mask order and encouraging everyone to stay home is the right thing to do right now, considering the mess we’re in,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the nonprofit Common Cause Texas. “But the right thing to do months ago to avoid this very easily foreseeable mess was to allow all Texans to vote by mail so that no one would now find themselves having to choose between voting and endangering their health.”
Guiterrez added that it’s not too late for the governor to take actions to expand mail-in voting in November.
[…]
One possible explanation for the exemption could be a constitutional concern, said Scott Keller, former Texas Solicitor General and attorney at international law firm Baker Botts. In the same way that masks aren’t required while giving a speech for a broadcast or to an audience or while taking part in a religious service because the constitution protects the right to free speech and religion, a legal argument could be made that forcing voters to wear a mask would be a burden on the right to vote, he said.
“I think the governor’s order is trying to balance the exigencies of the COVID emergency with constitutional rights and also taking very seriously the COVID spike in Texas,” Keller said. “The idea that the order excepting out polling places would be something like voter suppression, I think, is completely off base.”
On the other hand, the executive order says that people are not exempt if they are attending a protest or demonstration involving more than 10 people and not practicing safe social distancing of six feet from others who are not in the same household.
“Trying to think and balance every single possible situation out in the world, that’s just not something that is going to be expected of any official, and the courts don’t expect that of any official,” Keller said, adding that during an emergency, “potentially, government officials are going to have a little more leeway than they otherwise would.”
I feel like maybe we could have gotten a more neutral observer than Scott Keller to comment on this, but whatever. I can see the argument that forcing people to wear a mask would be a burden on the right to vote. It’s just that such an argument would be pretty effing rich from the state that has the most restrictive voter ID law in the country, and is currently fighting tooth and nail to prevent an expansion of voting by mail, which is currently only available to people over 65 and anyone with a “disability” that Ken Paxton is willing to recognize and not attempt to prosecute them for. The state of Texas officially believes that fear of contracting and maybe dying of a highly contagious disease that is currently rampaging basically unchecked throughout our state is insufficient grounds for being sent a mail ballot. I’m not saying that a representative from the state Solicitor General’s office would be necessarily be smited by a lightning bolt from the heavens if he attempted to make an argument that wearing a mask constituted an unlawful burden on voters in court, but it would not strike me as an unjust act if it did happen.
Anyway. Here’s where we stand after the first week of some early voting days, with five more days to go:
Election Mail Early Total Mail %
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D primary 15,101 36,712 51,813 29.1%
R primary 16,528 32,630 49,158 33.6%
D runoff 32,309 24,783 57,092 56.6%
R runoff 19,405 7,199 26,604 72.9%
The Sunday runoff EV file is here, and the final EV turnout report from March is here. There are no absentee votes counted during the weekend, so the percentage of absentee votes necessarily falls. It will continue to do so this week as we see more and more in person voters show up. And yet, Republicans remain more dependent on them, in either case.