That’s our current total of registered voters in Texas.
Still the only voter ID anyone should need
Texas has once again shattered vote registration records, adding more than 1.5 million voters since the last presidential election.
Texas now surpassed 16.6 million voters, according to the latest numbers announced Tuesday by Texas Secretary of State Ruth R. Hughs. And there are still almost two more weeks to add more.
“Ahead of the November election, I encourage all eligible Texans who have not already done so to register to vote by October 5th so that they can help shape the future of the Lone Star State,” Hughs said.
In the four previous presidential election cycles, Texas added about 700,000 new voters on average — less than half as many as have been added this cycle.
That fast growth in voters adds another wrinkle to Texas politics that have already been shifted by the pandemic. Campaigns don’t know how those voters are going to break or even if they are going to show up to vote at all, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor.
“It brings a lot of uncertainty,” Rottinghaus said.
That includes guessing whether they’ll show up by Election Day. It’s much harder to mobilize first-time voters and get them to the polls, Rottinghaus said.
As noted, we had 16.4 million as of the July runoff. According to the sidebar on the story, there were 13.6 million RVs in 2012, so we’re up three million from then. All things considered, that’s pretty darn good, and we sill have two more weeks to bump that number up even more. My stupid simple projection of the 2020 vote had us topping 9.7 million ballots cast if we match the 59.8% turnout rate of 2016. With the revised RV figure, we’re over 9.9 million. It would take a turnout rate of almost 60.2% to get to ten million, which I think is well within reach. The winner in Texas will need to get five million votes, at least. That’s a big step up from the four million Beto got in 2018, but it’s well within reach. Reform Austin has more.
Now that jackass is suing to get rid of extended early voting. Republicans want us all to die.
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