How To Restore Democracy In Texas
Republicans spent 20 years breaking it. Here is how we fix it.
Today, the FBI raided the office of Virginia State Senator L. Louise Lucas. They did it because Virginia redrew their maps in retaliation for Texas’ mid-century gerrymandering.
Even with all of the gerrymandering that’s happened throughout the country, the GOP is still expected to lose the US House. The Senate will be a much tougher battle.
Republicans have launched a full-blown attack on democracy. The truth is, the attack started many years ago, and now we’re here. Most of us recognize how serious this moment in history is. Most of us. Unfortunately, as gas prices in North Texas (for the first time in HISTORY) climb over $4, some people still have their heads up their butts.
When Democrats take Congress (and, fingers crossed, the Senate), there are a lot of measures that need to be taken at the federal level to hopefully begin to walk back some of the damage the Republicans have done. But what about Texas? After all, Texas was the testing grounds for EVERYTHING.
We have to flip Texas.
We often talk about what it will take, the work that needs to be done, and how everyone needs to do their share. We saw what we were capable of in SD09 with Taylor Rehmet. We also saw that we were still capable of dropping the ball in SD04. The people who can do what it takes know what it takes.
As we get past the runoffs at the end of this month, we’ll start taking a closer look at county and district data, so we have a bigger picture, too.
That leaves us with the question:
Once Democrats regain control of the Texas Legislature, what laws can they pass to restore democracy in Texas immediately?
Well, first and foremost, they can repeal SB1, the shit-voter suppression bill passed in 2021, which led to Democrats breaking quorum. This bill limited access to voter assistance for people with disabilities and limited English proficiency. It put limits on elected officials’ ability to provide election information. It allowed poll watcher intimidation. It created this “mai-ballot ID match” loophole that has led to thousands of ballots being rejected. It was just a bad bill overall.
We need to expand ballot access. Currently, Texas allows only people aged 65+ or those with disabilities to vote by mail. However, many other states have no-excuse vote-by-mail. We should extend it to everyone. And in 2020, when Harris County offered overnight and drive-thru voting, turnout increased significantly. Because there is a correlation, increasing access = increasing turnout, Republicans blocked cities from doing that again; those bills need to be repealed.
We need a massive increase in the number of Statewide drop boxes. In 2020, Abbott restricted it to one box per county, which is obviously problematic in bigger counties. The Legislature should end that restriction.
Texas is also behind the ball with automatic and same-day voter registration. Every eligible Texan should be registered automatically through DPS, Medicaid, public universities, social service agencies, and other state systems, with an opt-out option. And then, we should allow voters to register and vote on Election Day or during early voting, as 22 other states already do.
Texas also needs to bring back straight-ticket voting. Republicans killed it to slow down the lines in urban precincts. Harris County voters were stuck waiting for hours because every race had to be selected individually. Then there’s polling place access. Texans in majority-Black and majority-Latino neighborhoods consistently face longer lines, fewer machines, and polling places that close or move without adequate notice. The Legislature needs to mandate uniform polling place access by population, so that a voter in a Houston barrio doesn’t wait three hours while a voter in a Collin County suburb walks right in.
We also need to end the state’s voter roll purge machine. Texas has been caught repeatedly purging legitimate voters, including naturalized citizens, long-time Texans, people whose names or birthdates got garbled in a database, with little or no notice and no easy path to fix it before Election Day. There needs to be strict due process protections before anyone is removed from the rolls, mandatory notice requirements, and a meaningful cure process.
And we need Election Day to be a state holiday, or at a minimum, a requirement that employers provide paid time off to vote. “Just vote before work” isn’t real advice when your polling place opens at 7, your shift starts at 7, and the bus takes 45 minutes.
Texas needs its own Voting Rights Act.
The Supreme Court gutted the federal VRA last week. Justice Kagan said in her dissent that Section 2 is now “all but a dead letter.” What that means for Texas is that maps designed to pack and crack Latino voters in the Rio Grande Valley, Black voters in Houston, and communities of color across the state now face essentially no federal legal challenge unless you can prove intentional discrimination. And good luck with that, because Republicans have lawyers and they know how to write a memo that says “this was about partisan advantage, not race,” even when there’s no difference between the two in Texas.
A Texas Voting Rights Act would restore what the federal government just took away. It would ban voting laws and maps that have discriminatory effects on communities of color, not just intentional discrimination, which is nearly impossible to prove. It would let voters and advocacy groups sue in state court. And it could include a preclearance requirement for jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination, meaning they’d have to get state approval before changing voting rules, polling locations, or district lines. Texas invented mid-decade gerrymandering. A Texas VRA would make that significantly harder to pull off.
Finally, independent redistricting. As long as the party in power draws its own maps, democracy in Texas is a suggestion. We need a citizens’ redistricting commission to draw the lines. If California and Michigan can do it, Texas can do it. The argument that it’s “too complicated” is made by people who benefit from the current system.
Republicans built where we are brick by brick, SB1, the 2021 gerrymander, the 2023 mid-decade remap, the assault on Harris County, the voter roll purges, the poll watcher intimidation, all of it. And today, while we’re watching an 82-year-old Black Democratic state senator have her office raided by a Trump FBI two weeks after she helped draw maps that would flip four congressional seats, we’re supposed to believe that’s a coincidence.
The answer to all of it isn’t just showing up to vote, although yes, OBVIOUSLY, show up to vote. The answer is to make sure that, once we win, we build a system that’s harder to break. That’s what this list is. Write it down. Put it in your pocket. Because the day Democrats take back Austin, we’d better be ready to move.
So, to recap:
Repeal SB1.
Expand ballot access.
Automatic and same-day voter registration.
Straight-ticket voting.
Uniform polling place access by population.
End voter-roll purges.
Election Day is a state holiday.
A Voting Rights Act for Texas.
Independent redistricting.
That’s it. Nine things. None of them is radical. All of them already exist somewhere in America. The only reason Texas doesn’t have them is that one party has spent years making sure the wrong people can’t vote and then drawing the maps to keep it that way.
When the 90th Legislature is sworn in this January, this is the list we beat into our legislators until they push every single item this session. Not next session. Not “when the time is right.” This one. Because the time was already right, and we’ve been waiting long enough.
The gerrymandering wars are already here. They just raided an 82-year-old woman’s office to prove it. The question is whether we’re going to fight like we know that.
We better be.
May 15, 2026: Last day to apply to vote by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)
May 18, 2026: First day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)
May 22, 2026: Last day of early voting (Democratic primary runoff elections)
May 26, 2026: Last day to receive ballot by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)
May 26, 2026: Election day! (Democratic primary runoff elections)
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and second, Add a judicial nominating commission please. The Texas Judicary is full of far right federalist society partisan hacks. I dont think Justices should get elected due to money and spending and having a judicial nominating commission to block out partisan far right judges would be very effective for an independent judiciary.
I am honestly very torn in regards to the independent redistricting. As much as i want that. I wont feel comfortable knowing that Republicans have gerrymandered a lot of southern states. I dont want really to go the route of "when they go low, we go high" Until the house and senate is able to introduce a bill on partisan gerrymandering or pass Proportional representation for congressional districts, i was hoping to lock down Texas. I am a big supporter of independent redistricting commissions and better yet Proportional representation as if you used proportional representation to draw house districts. Its almost impossible to pack and gerrymander the minority party and population out of power. You will be forced to have representation for the minority party under proportional representation.