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Dan Crenshaw sends mail-in ballot applications to voters after Texas banned the practice for local election officials
January 27, 2022
U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston, is taking heat this week for sending out campaign mailers containing unsolicited mail-in ballot applications to voters who are 65 and older.
Last year, Texas Republicans in the Legislature passed an elections law that banned local election officials from that very same practice under the banner of protecting election integrity. However, the law made an exception for candidates and political parties to continue the practice, which has long been a popular get-out-the-vote tactic typically employed by both parties, but especially by Republicans.
Democrats this week said Crenshaw’s mailer highlights hypocrisy in the new voting law and shows that Republicans who railed against vote-by-mail expansion efforts last year were only concerned about the ways it could benefit Democrats. Crenshaw’s mailer includes a prefilled mail-in application and instructions that tell the recipient to “simply sign, stamp, and mail” it and to “be sure to vote for Dan Crenshaw” when the ballot comes.
“The hypocrisy here is absurd,” said Chris Hollins, the former Harris County Clerk, who inspired the provision in the Texas legislation because of a hotly contested plan to send mail-in ballot applications to all of the county’s registered voters during the pandemic. “Voting by mail is a safe way that is utilized for people to exercise their right to vote. … We should be promoting the right to vote by mail for all those who are eligible, not making it illegal to inform voters of their right.”
The Texas voting law — which Republicans passed after Democrats walked out on bill negotiations twice — contains several measures that restrict the expansion of voting by mail, in addition to banning 24-hour early voting and drive-thru voting. The law, which went into effect last month, creates a state jail felony penalty for local election officials — but not politicians or other third parties in the voting process — who send applications for mail-in ballots to voters who don’t request them.
Justin Discigil, Crenshaw’s campaign spokesperson, said sending unsolicited applications is normal practice, and the campaign did it in 2020. Asked how Crenshaw’s support of mail-in voting for candidates squares with the new Texas law, Discigil distanced Crenshaw from the Texas Legislature.
“That was a state Legislature decision. …” Discigil said. “Dan did not write the bill.”
But Crenshaw has been a strong supporter of the voting law, defending it on Twitter and criticizing Democrats who have characterized it and similar rules in other states as voter suppression.
In a 2020 interview with The Texas Tribune, Crenshaw likened expansion of voting by mail to “playing with fire” and said that it could increase voter fraud, raising concerns about states such as Nevada that have more expanded mail-in ballot options than Texas.
Discigil said Crenshaw’s criticism of mail-in ballots applies to states other than Texas that provide insufficient safeguards for voter integrity. Crenshaw said during the interview that the mail-in ballot process in Texas — which requires identification and an application for the absentee option — was fine.
Crenshaw’s 2020 comments came at a time when Texas Republican leadership resisted expanding vote-by-mail eligibility during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people sought to vote through absentee and nontraditional methods more than normal.
State Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, a co-sponsor of the GOP elections bill, defended the use of politicians sending applications for mail-in ballots despite making it illegal for local officials to do the same.
“It is my understanding that rural counties did not and do not have the resources to send out unsolicited applications,” Cain said. “That section helps bring equity and uniformity to our election laws.”
Cain did not respond to a follow-up question about whether the provision addressed voter fraud, which Republicans said the law would prevent during the debate over its passing. There has been no evidence nationwide or in Texas of widespread voter fraud.
The law’s restriction on sending unsolicited applications takes aim at an initiative spearheaded in 2020 by Hollins, whose plan to send mail-in ballot applications to all of the 2.4 million registered voters in his jurisdiction during the pandemic was stopped by the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court.
Hollins said he believes the law targets election officials — especially those in large cities — since they’ve increasingly invested in efforts to increase voter turnout, which favors Democrats in urban areas.
“They’ve done the math, and they’ve determined that in those larger cities and counties, the votes are less likely to go their way,” Hollins said. “Every single thing that they’re doing is not about American democracy.”
As Texas heads into primary election season, local election officials have rejected hundreds of mail-in ballot applications because the new law requires a state identification number, like a driver’s license or a partial Social Security number, on the form. These numbers must match information in the state voter registry, or the application can be rejected.
State Rep. Jessica González, a Democrat from Dallas and vice chair of the House Committee on Elections, also said Crenshaw’s use of the mailers was hypocritical, especially since he has supported former President Donald Trump, who falsely claimed that mail-in ballots were less secure than voting in person.
“This shows that they don’t want Democrats to vote,” González said, noting that allowing local elections officials to send mail-in ballot applications to registered voters doesn’t target one party over another. “They’re not basing that off of what political party you belong to. When you allow elected officials or candidates to do that, they only want to be able to target people from their party.”
González, one of the Democrats who fled to Washington, D.C., during this year’s Legislative sessions to block passage of the bill, said this provision of the new law particularly impacts Texans who have disabilities or may not otherwise know about their voting options.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/26/dan-crenshaw-texas-mail-in-ballot-voting-law/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
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EL PASO — In a sworn declaration submitted as part of an ongoing federal court challenge, a senior Republican state senator with redistricting experience said he believes his party violated federal voting laws when it drew new boundaries for state Senate District 10 in the Fort Worth area.
“Having participated in the 2011 and 2013 Senate Select Redistricting Committee proceedings, and having read the prior federal court decision regarding SD10, it was obvious to me that the renewed effort to dismantle SD 10 violated the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution,” state Sen. Kel Seliger said in a declaration signed in November.
The statement from the Amarillo Republican emerged this week as part of a dayslong hearing before a three-judge panel considering a lawsuit that claims the district was intentionally reconfigured to discriminate against voters of color in Tarrant County.
Under the map passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, some Black and Hispanic populations previously in District 10 were split into two other districts with majority-white electorates. The Black and Hispanic voters who remain in the newly drawn District 10, in urban areas of south Fort Worth, were lumped in with several rural, mostly white counties to the south and west that drive up the district’s population of white eligible voters while diminishing the number of voters of color.
RELATED: Watch Ted Cruz get repeatedly schooled by voting rights experts
A group of plaintiffs — including state Sen. Beverly Powell, D-Burleson, who represents the current SD-10 — is asking the federal judges to throw out the new district ahead of the March primaries.
Seliger chaired the Senate’s redistricting committee last decade, redrawing the state’s maps following the 2010 census when a similar attempt to reshape the district was found to be discriminatory. A federal court in Washington, D.C., ruled in 2012 that lawmakers had discriminated against voters of color in dismantling the district and cracking apart their communities. As a result, the Legislature went back to restore the district’s configuration.
Seliger affirmed his declaration in a video deposition taken earlier this month — portions of which were played in open court in El Paso this week — during which he also said that “pretextual reasons” were given for how political boundaries were decided during the 2021 redistricting process.
Seliger pointed to the redrawing of his own district in the Texas Panhandle as an example. The district was reconfigured so that it lost several counties from the region while picking up about a dozen on the southern end of the district, closer to Midland, from where Seliger had picked up a primary challenger. He ultimately decided against seeking reelection.
RELATED: Lifelong Texas Republican predicts voter suppression bills will blow up in her party's face
The chamber’s chief map-drawer, Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, said throughout the process that the maps were drawn “race-blind” while following various guidelines, such as preserving political subdivisions, communities of interest and geographic compactness.
Beyond the challenge to SD-10, the state is defending the Legislature’s redistricting work against a collection of legal challenges to its new maps for the state House and Senate and for Congress.
The Legislature passed maps last year that solidified the GOP’s dominance while weakening the influence of voters of color. None of the maps offer Hispanic Texans new opportunities to turn their growing numbers into political power, even though they were behind half of the state’s growth in the last decade.
The federal lawsuits are built on allegations that lawmakers discriminated — in some cases intentionally — against voters of color by diminishing the power of their votes. The challenge to SD-10 is running ahead of the various challenges to the House and Congressional maps, which are not set to go to trial until the fall.
On Wednesday, Seliger told The Texas Tribune that his statement about the illegality of SD-10 was “more of a concern than it was an assertion” of whether there was a violation.
“When you draw a map that essentially takes out minorities or, in what was more the point, take out the chance that there would ever be a Democrat elected there, was there a violation?” Seliger said. “It’s not an assertion on my part because I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but that was my concern about Sen. Powell’s district — to take that district and completely change it and it still marginalized minorities in that district.”
He added that there was a “context” surrounding the drawing of SD-10 — even as Huffman asserted she had not paid any attention to racial data in drawing its boundaries — that requires lawmakers to consider race.
“The Voting Rights Act says if you can create a district in which a historically marginalized minority can elect a candidate of their choice, you must draw that district,” Seliger said. “You start with that principle in every single district.”
As part of his deposition, Seliger indicated that he had not authored the declaration in question, which he signed under penalty of perjury. Instead, it had been provided to him by Powell. Still, he said he stood by the statements that were included.
“Is everything exactly the way I would have written it? I can’t tell you that. I doubt it, but it was perfectly acceptable,” Seliger said.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/26/texas-redistricting-kel-seliger-redistricting/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
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'Trump has it completely wrong': Allies revolt after Trump endorses rival to MAGA darling
January 27, 2022
Top allies of former President Donald Trump pushed back after he endorsed a former administration aide over a conservative influencer who is highly popular on the far right.
On Tuesday, Trump endorsed Morgan Ortagus, a former State Department spokeswoman and Fox News contributor, in the upcoming Republican primary in Tennessee's 5th congressional district. Incumbent Rep. Jim Cooper, a Democrat, has announced that he will retire, saying that Republicans had "dismembered" his longtime Nashville district for partisan gain.
"Morgan was fantastic in her role working with Secretary Mike Pompeo at the U.S. State Department and understands the threats posed by China, Russia, Iran and others, and will be tough, not just roll over like the Democrats and RINOs," Trump said in a statement. "She won't bow to the Woke Mob or the Leftist LameStream Media. Morgan Ortagus will have my Complete and Total Endorsement if she decides to run!"
That statement brought immediate and highly unusual pushback from some of Trump's most ardent supporters.
"Nope. Trump has this completely wrong," tweeted conservative pundit Candace Owens, writing that the "correct pick" is Robby Starbuck, a former music video producer running as a pro-MAGA Republican in the district.
Former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka and former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis echoed that sentiment.
Starbuck is running on a platform to crack down on ballot access, so-called Critical Race Theory, LGBTQ rights and Big Tech companies. It's unclear why Trump snubbed Starbuck in favor of Ortagus, who called him "disgusting" during his 2016 campaign before joining his administration.
Numerous other Trump allies joined in backing Starbuck over Trump's preferred candidate.
"I endorsed [Starbuck] months ago and I stand by my endorsement," tweeted Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C.
"I endorsed Robby months ago & believe he's exactly what we need in these difficult times," wrote Trump-backed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. "He's a God-fearing man who loves his wonderful family — he's a true 'citizen politician.'"
The Republican scramble comes after the GOP-dominated state legislature carved up Cooper's Nashville-area district. Cooper, who has trounced every Republican challengers for decades and ran unopposed in 2020, said the Republican plan to split reliably blue Nashville into three Republican-leaning districts made it impossible for him to win.
"Despite my strength at the polls, I could not stop the General Assembly from dismembering Nashville," he said in a statement. "No one tried harder to keep our city whole. I explored every possible way, including lawsuits, to stop the gerrymandering and to win one of the three new congressional districts that now divide Nashville. There's no way, at least for me in this election cycle, but there may be a path for other worthy candidates."
The Tennessee House of Representatives on Monday approved a new congressional map that would split Nashville, combining areas of the state's largest city with more conservative parts of the state. Cooper, who represented a district President Joe Biden won by 24 points, was drawn into a new district that former Trump carried by nine points, according to Cook Political Report editor Dave Wasserman.
"Our Republican legislature has savaged Nashville in order to get one more vote in Congress," Cooper told Axios. "This is a cruel blow to all people of Nashville, certainly to minority groups, but to every resident of Nashville," he added.
Although Republicans have not been as aggressive at carving out new districts in other states, many of the Republican-drawn maps have been perceived as intended to dilute the power of voters of color. Several Republican-drawn maps have already been struck down and Democrats have vowed to continue to litigate partisan and racial gerrymanders.
"The maps passed by Tennessee Republicans are blatant partisan gerrymanders," former Attorney General Eric Holder, the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement. "The congressional map splits Nashville into three separate districts, weakening the voting power of the region's economic powerhouse and the city's black community. This map is an obvious attempt to deliver illegitimate political power to the Republican Party for the next decade."
Republicans already hold a 7-2 edge in the state's congressional delegation but the Nashville redistricting could give the GOP eight of the state's nine House seats. Cooper suggested that the aggressive gerrymander was unnecessary, since Republicans are likely to win back control of the House in November anyway. Cooper is the 29th Democratic incumbent to announce he won't seek re-election ahead of a likely power shift.
While Cooper said the redistricting plan would prevent him from winning re-election, it's unclear whether progressive primary challenger Odessa Kelly plans to continue her campaign after comparing the effect of the redistricting to Jim Crow-era laws that prevented Black people from voting.
"I joined the congressman in fighting back against the Tennessee General Assembly's racist gerrymandering that will erase the voices of Black and brown voters in Nashville," Kelly told Tennessee Lookout. "But I know one thing is true: People-powered movements in this state have been building power for years and no map is going to slow it down."
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