Don’t know that there’s enough time for this to be heard, but it’s a good idea.
Mi Familia Vota, the Texas NAACP and two Texas voters this week filed a suit against the state over its election policies, alleging they discriminate against minority voters who are disproportionately hurt by the pandemic.
The suit, filed Thursday in San Antonio federal court, alleges that the state’s “insufficient” number of polling places and “limited and inaccessible” early voting locations will result in unsafe voting conditions and voter suppression.
“Texas proposes to rely on election policies that, during the pandemic, will create inordinate burdens on the right to vote,” the suit states. “The burden will be particularly high for Black and Latino voters. Without the relief this lawsuit requests, voters’ exercise of the franchise will be compromised.”
The wide-ranging suit seeks a court order to suspend the Texas law that limits mobile early voting sites, to force the state to extend the duration of early voting and allow the opening of additional polling places in counties where lines typically exceed 20 minutes.
There’s some additional detail in the Trib.
Abbott and Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs are named as defendants, but the suit targets some decisions that are ultimately up to local officials. The long list of changes the plaintiffs are seeking includes a month of early voting, an across-the-board mask mandate for anyone at a polling place and a suspension of rules that limit who can vote curbside without entering a polling place.
The plaintiffs also want to overturn a relatively new statewide election law that ended the long-established practice of setting up temporary or mobile early voting sites that could be moved around during the early voting period to reach as many voters as possible near where they live, work or go to school. They are asking the court to allow counties a temporary reprieve from that 2019 law, which is the target of a separate lawsuit filed last year.
To “ensure that polling sites are safe and of low risk to the health of all registered voters,” the suit also seeks that the state be ordered to open additional polling places and provide enough voting booths and workers to keep waits to less than 20 minutes.
(Polling places for general elections are ultimately designated by county commissioners courts.)
[…]
Without offering details, Abbott has previously indicated he will be ordering an expansion to the typical two-week early voting period for November. Extended early balloting has been one of the main ways in which state Republican leaders, who have vehemently opposed an expansion in voting by mail, have modified election processes during the pandemic.
I’m aware of two previous lawsuits filed over HB1888 from the last legislative session, which basically required that any early voting location had to be in operation for the entirity of early voting, so no more one-day popup locations on a college campus or at a senior center or whatever. That will have the effect of reducing voting locations, since the whole reason these had been temporary before was that there wasn’t enough money and/or poll workers for them to operate the whole time. Anyway, the TDP, DCCC, and DSCC filed one suit, and the Texas Young Democrats and Texas College Democrats filed the other, both last November. Both stories only referenced the TDP/DCCC/DSCC lawsuit, which maybe is an oversight and maybe means the second suit got tossed or joined with the first one. Far as I know, there’s been no court action on either of them, so I can’t say I expect a result from this one. But it can’t hurt to try.