Harris County

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Good, but not over yet: Texas court says no.

The Texas Supreme Court on Sunday rejected, without comment, a bid by three Republican candidates and a GOP activist to toss out almost 127,000 votes cast from drive-thru lanes in the emerging Democratic stronghold of Harris County.

But.

A federal judge will hold an emergency hearing Monday morning — less than 21 hours before polls open on Election Day — to hear arguments on a similar challenge filed by the same group of Republicans, who say that state law prohibits drive-thru voting, so every vote cast from cars during the early voting period should be tossed out as illegal.

At the same hearing, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen will weigh a request by Democratic organizations and the party’s U.S. Senate candidate, MJ Hegar, to join the case in defense of drive-thru voting — and the 126,911 votes cast that way.

The Democrats urged Hanen to reject the GOP lawsuit, filed two weeks after early voting had begun and four months after Harris County announced plans for drive-thru voting, arguing that the challenge was filed too late and that stepping in now would create mass confusion and disenfranchise voters whose ballots were legally cast.

Aw no it’s totally fair to wait until just before the election to file the suit so that there’s a better chance the voters won’t re-do their votes.

Comments

6 responses to “Harris County”

  1. GuyRT Avatar
    GuyRT

    Isn’t drive-thru voting the most American kind of voting?

  2. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    And the most Texas?

  3. Rob Avatar
    Rob

    I saw this tweet yesterday…

    Texas Republicans have asked a federal judge to throw out 100,000 ballots in Harris County cast through curbside voting. They drew Judge Andrew Hanen, one of the most notoriously partisan Republican judges in the entire federal judiciary. This is alarming. https://t.co/VODOZrCoUF— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) October 31, 2020

  4. Acolyte of Sagan Avatar
    Acolyte of Sagan

    Trump wants vote counting to stop as soon as the polls close, and will send in his lawyers to try to make it happen. He doesn’t think it’s ‘fair’ that he has to wait for all votes to be counted.

    [Trump] confirmed he would try to shut down vote counting as soon as the polls close on Tuesday.

    “I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait for a long period of time after the election,” the president told journalists in North Carolina “As soon as the election is over – we’re going in with our lawyers.”

    He’s just going to declare victory on the night so he can claim the election was stolen when he loses. It isn’t going to be pretty.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/01/donald-trump-us-election-final-campaign-sprint

  5. What a Maroon Avatar
    What a Maroon

    Ophelia @2,

    If they included beer and gun sales in the deal, it would be peak Texas.

  6. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    WaM, I’m not sure. I think they might need to add a rodeo and a lottery to be peak Texas.

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