Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Texas won’t see a revival of straight-ticket voting this year

Texas voters

A line to vote in the primary in Houston in March. The wait for some Texans was four hours.

Mark Felix/Getty Images

Straight-ticket voting won't be returning to Texas now that a federal judge has rejected an effort by Democrats to maintain the practice.

Allowing Texans to cast one quick vote, in favor of one party's entire slate of candidates, has been allowed for a century and was the way two-thirds of 2018 ballots were cast in the second most populous state. But the Republican-majority Legislature eliminated that option starting this fall, joining a wave of other states in recent years.

The state Democratic Party sued in March to keep the system as is, but Judge Marina Garcia Marmolejo dismissed the claim on Wednesday by rejecting its central argument: Switching will cause so much confusion and delay in November that throngs of would-be voters will give up and walk away, effectively being disenfranchised in violation of the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.


The suit argued that ending the straight-party option discriminates against Latino and Black voters the most, because they generally live in urban neighborhoods where lines at polling places are already longest — and will become alarmingly longer if voters have to make individual selections. Texas ballots are customarily among the most extensive in the nation.

Garcia Marmolejo, nominated by President Barack Obama for the bench in Laredo, said the state party lacked standing to sue and was relying on "numerous suppositions that are uncertain to occur."

"The injuries here are hypothetical and are not couched as the direct result" of the elimination of straight-ticket voting, she wrote. "Rather, plaintiffs' injuries hinge on multiple uncertain intermediate predictions."

Garcia Marmolejo also noted how the coronavirus pandemic has made in-person voting a much more time-consuming experience nationwide — while also pushing millions of voters to request absentee ballots instead. (A challenge to Texas's refusal to relax its excuse requirements to assure more mail-in voting is headed toward the Supreme Court.)

"Many Texans will endure longer lines at polling places indefinitely," she wrote. "And other Texans will experience shorter lines given that voters have been encouraged to steer clear from in-person voting where possible."

Straight-ticket voting was once a big feature of American elections but has steadily lost support in recent years.

Texas is one of eight states that have ended the practice in the past decade, most recently Utah in March. That leaves Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Oklahoma and South Carolina as the only places that will permit one-and-done balloting this fall.

The argument mainly espoused by Republicans, which is that participatory democracy is improved by requiring separate choices in each contest, has triumphed over the argument mainly advanced by Democrats, in Texas and elsewhere, that speed and convenience at the polls will assure the strongest possible turnout.

Democrats believe that, with enough votes cast in the cities and suburbs, Joe Biden can carry Texas after 10 straight wins by the GOP nominee. President Trump won its 38 electoral votes by a comfortable 9 points last time.

Read More

An oversized ballot box surrounded by people.

Young people worldwide form new parties to reshape politics—yet America’s two-party system blocks them.

Getty Images, J Studios

No Country for Young Politicians—and How To Fix That

In democracies around the world, young people have started new political parties whenever the establishment has sidelined their views or excluded them from policymaking. These parties have sometimes reinvigorated political competition, compelled established parties to take previously neglected issues seriously, or encouraged incumbent leaders to find better ways to include and reach out to young voters.

In Europe, a trio in their twenties started Volt in 2017 as a pan-European response to Brexit, and the party has managed to win seats in the European Parliament and in some national legislatures. In Germany, young people concerned about climate change created Klimaliste, a party committed to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as per the Paris Agreement. Although the party hasn’t won seats at the federal level, they have managed to win some municipal elections. In Chile, leaders of the 2011 student protests, who then won seats as independent candidates, created political parties like Revolución Democrática and Convergencia Social to institutionalize their movements. In 2022, one of these former student leaders, Gabriel Boric, became the president of Chile at 36 years old.

Keep ReadingShow less
How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

Demonstrators gather outside of The United States Supreme Court during an oral arguments in Gill v. Whitford to call for an end to partisan gerrymandering on October 3, 2017 in Washington, DC

Getty Images, Olivier Douliery

How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground. ~ Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Col. Edward Carrington, Paris, 27 May 1788

The Problem We Face

The U.S. House of Representatives was designed as the chamber of Congress most directly tethered to the people. Article I of the Constitution mandates that seats be apportioned among the states according to population and that members face election every two years—design features meant to keep representatives responsive to shifting public sentiment. Unlike the Senate, which prioritizes state sovereignty and representation, the House translates raw population counts into political voice: each House district is to contain roughly the same number of residents, ensuring that every citizen’s vote carries comparable weight. In principle, then, the House serves as the nation’s demographic mirror, channeling the diverse preferences of the electorate into lawmaking and acting as a safeguard against unresponsive or oligarchic governance.

Nationally, the mismatch between the overall popular vote and the partisan split in House seats is small, with less than a 1% tilt. But state-level results tell a different story. Take Connecticut: Democrats hold all five seats despite Republicans winning over 40% of the statewide vote. In Oklahoma, the inverse occurs—Republicans control every seat even though Democrats consistently earn around 40% of the vote.

Keep ReadingShow less
Once Again, Politicians Are Choosing Their Voters. It’s Time for Voters To Choose Back.
A pile of political buttons sitting on top of a table

Once Again, Politicians Are Choosing Their Voters. It’s Time for Voters To Choose Back.

Once again, politicians are trying to choose their voters to guarantee their own victories before the first ballot is cast.

In the latest round of redistricting wars, Texas Republicans are attempting a rare mid-decade redistricting to boost their advantage ahead of the 2026 midterms, and Democratic governors in California and New York are signaling they’re ready to “fight fire with fire” with their own partisan gerrymanders.

Keep ReadingShow less
Stolen Land, Stolen Votes: Native Americans Defending the VRA Protects Us All – and We Should Support Them

Wilson Deschine sits at the "be my voice" voter registration stand at the Navajo Nation annual rodeo, in Window Rock.

Getty Images, David Howells

Stolen Land, Stolen Votes: Native Americans Defending the VRA Protects Us All – and We Should Support Them

On July 24, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked a Circuit Court order in a far-reaching case that could affect the voting rights of all Americans. Native American tribes and individuals filed the case as part of their centuries-old fight for rights in their own land.

The underlying subject of the case confronts racial gerrymandering against America’s first inhabitants, where North Dakota’s 2021 redistricting reduced Native Americans’ chances of electing up to three state representatives to just one. The specific issue that the Supreme Court may consider, if it accepts hearing the case, is whether individuals and associations can seek justice under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). That is because the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, contradicting other courts, said that individuals do not have standing to bring Section 2 cases.

Keep ReadingShow less