VICE News: Texas Republicans Are Making It Nearly Impossible to Safely Vote on Tuesday

Texas is voting on Tuesday. And even as the state’s coronavirus caseload has gone through the roof, state Republicans have done everything in their power to make it harder, not easier, to vote.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton declared that fear of the coronavirus isn’t enough to get a mail ballot under state law and promised to zealously enforce a law that only allows senior citizens and those with disabilities to vote by mail. The state’s Republican-dominated supreme court sided with his interpretation of the law, and the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court refused to force the state to allow mail voting. …

That leaves voters in a confusing spot as they attempt to vote in Tuesday’s primary runoff elections, which will determine the Democratic nominee who’ll run against Republican Sen. John Cornyn, candidates of both parties in a number of key House contests, and a plethora of other Texas races.

Although the Texas Supreme Court sided with Paxton’s reading that fear of the coronavirus isn’t enough justification to vote by mail, the justices ruled that voters could decide for themselves whether they were disabled. That left a murky “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in place. Voters can check the disability box to get a ballot, but if it’s proven they did so because of a fear of catching the coronavirus, they could face prosecution from the state’s litigious attorney general.

The state experienced huge problems during its March primary, as some sites failed to open in time and voters were forced to wait in line for as long as six hours to cast ballots. The biggest disasters happened mostly in poorer and heavily minority areas. And that vote took place largely before the coronavirus was a widely acknowledged problem, which adds another dimension of possible chaos to voting on Tuesday. …

The impending chaos sets up some messy scenarios for Tuesday’s primary runoffs, as voters struggle to figure out how to vote safely — and whether or not they’re allowed to cast a mail ballot. And it foreshadows possible disaster in the fall’s presidential election, when voter turnout will be dramatically higher.

“If things don’t change drastically, we’re going to have huge problems in November,” Anthony Gutierrez, the executive director of the good-government group Common Cause Texas.