Troubled Texas Electoral System: We Oppose all Voter-Suppression Bills

The Texas Coalition of Black Democrats is opposed to all bills, in the Texas Legislature, that interfere with, restrict or suppress the rights of Texans to vote. What The Coalition supports is safer and expanded access to early voting as well as increased access to vote by mail and online voter registration.

In Texas, we need to make voting safer and easier for all Texans, especially for our senior citizens, the disabled and Texans with other health challenges.

Texas has the biggest Black population in our nation and investments by Democratic donors in Texas Black voter registration, outreach, education, and turnout need to be significantly increased starting right now.

If you want to help beat Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Governor Greg Abbott, then please donate to the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats’ Texas Black Democrats PAC right now.

Instead of dismantling and prohibiting the innovative election ideas that were implemented to respond to the pandemic, the Legislature should be institutionalizing and building on them to make sure our state is fully prepared for the next pandemic or other emergency situations. This should not only be done with our election system, it should also be done for the digital education infrastructure we have built to respond to the pandemic and for the modernization of our electric grid.

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We and our elected officials must take the hard lessons we have learned, over the past months and build on them. Denying the need for improvement is not going to fix things or stop the next crisis from happening. We must build on the lessons we have learned together to strengthen our democracy, our communities and the state.

Republicans were once the party of advancement; the Party of Lincoln, Emancipation and a reconstructed America. Today however, Republicans are not even the party of a square deal as advocated and advanced by Teddy Roosevelt.

Republicans once supported The Voting Rights Act but are now advocates and champions of extreme partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression laws as well as the purveyors of fake news about voter fraud in pursuit of partisan political gains.

Republicans once fought to expand access to citizenship and the right to vote. Today, they are now opposed to those same two goals and are even advocates for eliminating birth right citizenship.

Democrats must continue working to move Texas and America forward to prevent our nation from being dragged backwards into a past where racial disenfranchisement and voter suppression were the law of the land.

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The Texas Coalition of Black Democrats will not be moved and we will not be dragged backwards.

Progress is not an ideology; it is a commitment to a destination-an effort, a path, in pursuit of a more perfect America to address racial, social and economic injustice and inequality. This is the path The Texas Coalition of Black Democrats is committed to pursuing. We are moving forward and upward and will oppose all efforts to nullify our voices and our votes.

Voter suppression is simultaneously an expression of both privilege and hate. Republicans don’t have to like us but Black voters and Black Texans must be respected and our right to live, vote, succeed and prosper must be protected.

For too long Black America and Black Texans have lived in the shadow of and have had to endure, the legacy of Dred Scott v. Sandford and Plessy v. Ferguson.

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All Americans and Texans have a God given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and in a representative democracy that also includes an unencumbered right to vote. Since God gave it to us, Republicans in the Texas legislature can’t take it away. Freedom and Liberty, in Texas, are not the property of Republicans to give or take away.

No one is a patriot whose goals and desires are suppressing the votes of Black, Hispanic, Asian, senior citizens, disabled and low-income Texans and Americans in order to distort our democracy for partisan political gains so that they can win elections by excluding voters.

Democracy does not work best by shrinking the voter pool. Democracy works best by expanding access, listening to others and building consensus on common ground that is inclusive of those who have historically been ignored, excluded and left behind.

What Texas Republicans are planning to do this legislative session, in Austin, should and must be opposed by all reasonable and rational Texans.

If Republicans don’t stop their foolish push to disenfranchise Texans, not only must we raise our voices against what they are doing in Austin, we must also oppose their gerrymandering (to come) in court and depose them at the ballot box. If you don’t remember, reread our nation’s Declaration of Independence. This is a Declaration of Independence from Republican oppression, in Texas. It’s time for change and a new direction in our state. God Bless you and God Bless Texas.

You can help make a difference in Texas right now. Donate today to The Texas Black Democrats PAC. Donate here >>>

Thank you and God Bless Houston. For constructive dialogue, you may contact me directly >>>

Hon. Robinson is the former Chairman, City of Houston Transportation, Technology and Infrastructure Committee; Former Vice Chairman, Houston-Galveston Area Council Transportation Policy Council (H-GAC TPC) and Associate Professor of Public Administration, Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs, Texas Southern University.