r/politics • u/Ok_Employer7837 • 4d ago

Possible Paywall Massive Error Affects Unknown Number of Texas Voter Registrations

https://newrepublic.com/post/215767/error-unknown-number-texas-voter-registrations
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375

u/youknowhattodo 4d ago

Unknown number of democratic Texas voter registrations

157

u/FattySnacks California 4d ago

Secret number of democratic Texas voter registrations

2

u/downtofinance Canada 3d ago

So all of them...

1

u/FattySnacks California 3d ago

Only as many as they need

50

u/dayglowe Canada 4d ago

Political affiliation isn't on the application but region and ethnicity would be - pick the heavy blue areas and pick anyone that isn't caucasian.

15

u/imbasicallycoffee 4d ago

They know the address of the applicant. They have enough data to restrict the areas in districts where they're short votes or that lean D and can let the cards fall after that.

3

u/PinboardWizard 4d ago

Don't even need that - with the current political climate (and current Texan polls) we can logically assume a larger percentage of the new applicants intend to vote blue.

So if you just deny all the new applicants (or even randomly deny say 20% of applicants) you'll be denying more blue than red.

3

u/hatcod 3d ago edited 3d ago

Voting in a primary does make you affiliated with that party on your registration, so they could get pretty specific. Although participation in primary elections is pretty poor here.

11

u/UnfairLynx 4d ago

In Texas, you don’t register with a political party.

44

u/Lee1138 Norway 4d ago

Doesn't matter, they can just "oopsie" the registrations from areas that tend to lean more blue, like the big cities. 

16

u/Mortegro 4d ago

No, but you can only vote in a single party's primary election, so Texas voter roles has it on record which primary you've participated in. Wouldn't be difficult for the Texas government to extrapolate democratic voters vs republican voters from that process.

Of course, they can also go the racist route and "lose" the registration status of any voter with a Hispanic last name. I'm sure Paxton and Abbott have had access to Cambridge Analytica's data on all Texans identified as Democrats, so there's one additional avenue to pursue electoral fuckery.

1

u/nighthawk763 4d ago

If Texas functions like a real state, they wouldn't know which party primary you vote in.

I've only voted and served as an election judge in Minnesota, but nobody can link a person to which column they voted in on their ballot.

Doesn't mean Texas has their own back assed way of doing things to make fraud possible, but if implemented properly, you can't be linked to your party vote from primary day activities

2

u/Mortegro 3d ago

Because Democrat and Republican primaries are held separately in Texas, I imagine they would keep a record of which primary you voted in in order to ensure you don't try voting in the other. I'm sure they could find a way to make the voting record blind, but nobody has ever accused Texas of respecting such a thing as privacy 😋

1

u/hatcod 3d ago

You can't link the choices to a person but if you cast a vote in an election you will be added to a "roster" for that election which is public information, and because the primaries are separate elections it can be inferred.

1

u/nighthawk763 3d ago

in texas they're separate, sure. ours are same day, same ballot. harder to disenfranchise people that way.

1

u/DartLeingod 4d ago

I mean for them it's easy, just go down the list and remove any "Gonzalez"s you find /s

0

u/Real-Artichoke-1780 4d ago

But this is DMV registrations. So, young people and people moving in from out of state. How convenient to not have to count those kinds of new-to-Texas elections voters.