(The New Republic)—“The Texas Republican Party approved its new platform at its annual convention last week. It reflects the hard-right stances of its members, with reiterations of Texas’s “right to secede,” demands for bans on quarantines during future pandemics, calls to investigate “unidentified aerial phenomena,” and more. Tucked in between these more outlandish provisions is an ominous one that would effectively end representative democracy in Texas—and keep the state firmly in GOP hands even as it becomes increasingly diverse and urban.
The platform calls for the establishmentof what can best be described as an electoral college of sorts for Texas statewide races. “The State Legislature shall cause to be enacted a State Constitutional Amendment to add the additional criteria for election to a statewide office to include the majority vote of the counties with each individual county being assigned one vote allocated to the popular majority vote winner of each individual county,” the new plank declared.
It is hard to imagine that such a system as the Texas GOP has proposed would comply with the one-person, one-vote principle, to put it lightly. Texas has 254 counties, some of which are extremely sparsely populated.”
(CEO)— It’s starting to feel like every other day or so Texas grabs my attention, for all the wrong reasons, of course. In this latest bid by State Republicans to strip away the rights of its citizens. They’ve concocted a devious plan to deny the will of the voters. In favor of a new proposal that would give the GOP control over statewide government permanently. Making it nearly impossible for Democrats to win elections in the state of Texas.
Instead of the one-person one-vote standard that is currently the law, across the US, in state-run elections. You would now need just a majority of counties, not actual votes, to successfully be elected. So tiny rural counties with 10,000 or fewer voters. Get an unequal say over larger ones filled with millions of people. Making voters in smaller communities more powerful than voters in the big cities. Diluting the impact of minorities in urban areas. Disenfranchising those who choose to live in major cities. Which means Democrats will be disproportionately affected negatively. These are the same tactics used back in the “Jim Crow“ era to ensure white communities were overrepresented compared with their black counterparts.
If this is how Texas plans to operate its state elections going forward. You can blow a kiss and wave goodbye to democracy as we know it. As it will no longer have a home in the Lone Star State. There’s a term used for this type of unjust government and it’s called “The Tyranny of the Minority”. Because the party representing a minority of voters still controls all the political power over the majority of its residents. It’s what makes the US Senate and the Electoral College both undemocratic institutions. For example, those living in Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico have no representation in the Senate. Although together their population is much higher than the total of the Two Dakotas which have a combined 4 Senators.
Of course, Governor Greg Abbott and his Republican cronies love all the possibilities achievable with this modification. They would be given free rein to execute all of their corrupt ideological agendas and policies. With no regard for or oversight from the majority of its citizens. Abbott would finally hold the unlimited powers he’s convinced are owed to him. Texas, the nation’s first official state-run dictatorship situated smack dab in the middle of America’s heartland. Why the mainstream media chooses to ignore such intentional erosions of our democracy I’ll never understand. But what I do know is that pretending this isn’t currently taking place in our country. Isn’t, a legitimate way, of preventing it from happening, right before our own eyes.
Click the link below for The New Republic article quoted in this column
https://newrepublic.com/article/182204/texas-republicans-platform-one-party-rule
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