Exposing the Real Purpose Behind the GOP Effort to Eliminate Straight Party Voting
By: Matt Angle, Lone Star Project Founder/Director
Legislation supported by Republican leaders to eliminate the straight party voting option in Texas elections passed through the Texas State House yesterday. During the floor debate, the sponsors and supporters of the bill failed to provide any substantive reasons for eliminating a straight ticket ballot option that Texas voters regularly choose. In fact, the straight party option has been chosen by a majority of voters in our state’s largest counties since at least the 2008 general election. The Republican justification for the legislation boiled down to the cynical notion that somehow those casting straight party ballots are not being thoughtful in their candidate choices or are less informed than voters not casting straight party ballots.
Claims that Straight Party Voters are Uninformed are Both Unjustified and Patronizing
No credible information has been provided to demonstrate that eliminating the straight party option will lead to more informed voters. The uninformed voter argument is an arrogant and patronizing view that supposes voters do not fully understand their own best interests when casting ballots. It fails to acknowledge that all voters can currently cast a straight party ballot and then deselect to vote for alternative candidates in individual races.
Republican legislative leaders gave no consideration to rational and personal reasons why voters choose the straight ticket option. For example, some elderly and other voters with diminished eyesight and/or other limiting disabilities can choose the straight party option rather than working through a long and tedious ballot that in our most populous counties can include over 60 individual races featuring over 150 individual candidates.
Taking away a voting option that many voters — Republican and Democrat — consciously and deliberately use is a dishonest effort to limit voter choice and further erode public trust in the democratic process.
Straight party balloting has been used in Texas for decades and, until the current legislative session, has not been made a priority by Republican leaders. The current effort to eliminate the option is more likely an acknowledgment by Republican leaders that straight ticket voting is being used effectively by minority voters to elect their candidates of choice, especially in large urban county elections.
Recently, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins wrote to key African American and Hispanic leaders in the Legislature raising concerns about the unnecessary cost, voter disruption and potential harm to minority voters that will result from eliminating the straight party option. Judge Jenkins’ letter is linked here.
The Straight Party Ballot Option Facilitates the Ability of Minority Voters to Elect Their Candidates of Choice
Since just 2011, Texas Republican leaders have adopted redistricting plans and a voter ID law that federal courts have ruled intentionally discriminate against African American and Hispanic Texans. Given the recent history of the Texas Republican leadership’s actions on voting rights matters, there is concern that Texas Republican leaders want to eliminate straight party voting because it is being used effectively by Hispanic and African American voters to elect their candidates of choice in county-wide elections.
For years, straight party voting in Texas primarily benefited Republican candidates. However, the demographics in Texas have changed significantly in more recent years. The African American and Hispanic populations, especially in large urban counties like Dallas and Harris, have grown at a rate exceeding Anglo population growth. By 2010, both Dallas and Harris counties were strong majority minority counties with the African American and Hispanic voting age populations combining to total more than 60 percent of the entire county population.
The large increase in African American and Hispanic populations in the big urban counties has coincided with the number of Democratic straight party ballots cast exceeding Republican straight party ballots, thus minority voters began to elect their candidates of choice in county-wide elections.
Notably, in 2006, the minority candidate of choice won every contested race in Dallas County on the strength of straight party ballots. In each Dallas County general election since then, Democratic straight party ballots have exceeded Republican straight party ballots, and the minority candidate of choice has been elected in every race except one.
A similar trend is emerging in Harris County, our state’s largest county. In 2008, Democratic straight party ballots exceeded Republican straight party ballots for the first time in nearly two decades. As a result, the minority candidate of choice won most county wide elections for the first time in years. In 2012, Democratic straight party votes exceeded Republican straight party ballots again leading to the election of many minority candidates of choice. And in 2016, the Democratic straight party ballots in Harris County far exceeded Republican straight party ballots and the minority candidates of choice won every contested election.
Minority population growth along with an increase in Democratic straight party ballots has led to the election of minority candidates of choice and it’s not unrelated or coincidental. An analysis of voting at the precinct and State House district levels in Harris and Dallas counties shows that precincts and/or House districts with larger minority populations cast a higher percentage of their total vote as straight party ballots, and their candidates of choice received a higher percentage of their vote from straight party ballots.
