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

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
Trojan Horse: How CA Democrats Might Use Voter ID To Turn Back the Clock

Voter IDs are a requirement in almost every democracy in the world. But legitimate concerns over voter suppression efforts in the American south led to a different ethic inside Democratic Party circles.

Image generated by IVN staff.

Trojan Horse: How CA Democrats Might Use Voter ID To Turn Back the Clock

Voter IDs are a requirement in almost every democracy in the world from Europe to Mexico.

But legitimate concerns over voter suppression efforts in the American south led to a different ethic inside Democratic Party circles. Over time, Voter ID plans have been presumptively conflated with claims of “voter suppression” without much analysis of the actual impact of proposals.

Keep ReadingShow less
Person voting

New York City’s election has gotten a lot of attention over the last few weeks, and ranked choice voting is a big part of the reason why.

Hill Street Studios/Getty Images

New York City’s Ranked Choice Voting: Democracy That’s Accountable to Voters

New York City’s election has gotten a lot of attention over the last few weeks, and ranked choice voting is a big part of the reason why.

Heads turned when 33-year-old state legislator Zohran Mamdani knocked off Andrew Cuomo, a former governor from one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent families. The earliest polls for the mayoral primary this winter found Mamdani struggling to reach even 1 percent.

Keep ReadingShow less