VOTER SUPPRESSION OF WOMEN AND MINORITIES REAL IN TEXAS

By Isabela LoCicero

Austin American Stateman
Opinion

Growing up in Paris, Texas, 20 miles from the Oklahoma border, I heard a lot of anti-woman rhetoric about politics at my middle school during the 2016 election. People said Hillary Clinton would launch nuclear weapons when she was on her period if she got elected. At our local church, people said she “reeked of sulfur,” like the devil.

What’s interesting about Texas, though, is that at our very core most of us believe representative democracy is a good thing. But what we’re seeing in terms of concerted voter suppression from our government is a direct affront to this belief. 

Recently, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a series of raids targeting Latino households in South Texas which have been described as interfering with the Latino vote, and over which no criminal charges have been filed, suggesting they were a waste of taxpayer money. Texas leads the country in closing down polling sites on racial lines and the state continues to close down polling places for young voters of color.

Meanwhile, Paxton is attempting to close down nonprofits – he recently failed to convince a court to close down an immigrants rights group in Houston – by claiming that they breach tax rules about being party-political. That has made nonprofits across the state nervous.

As a volunteer registering voters in Texas, I came across questions around my intentions and faced skepticism that registering young women to vote is nonpartisan. It seems wanting other young women to vote because it is our civic duty and because it’s critical to a strong democracy appears threatening for many in Texas.

There is nothing about women in politics that’s inherently partisan. Even in a state where several jurisdictions recently outlawed travel on highways to seek an abortion, a woman has a right to vote for whomever she wants, even if she supports laws that will be used to criminalize women. Voter drives might be one thing in the abstract, but the concrete reality here in Texas, to paraphrase George Orwell’s famous book, "Animal Farm," is that some voters seem to me to be more equal than others.

I strongly believe that federal intervention is the only way to mitigate these issues in Texas and beyond. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2023 was proposed as legislation designed to restore and strengthen aspects of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, including in Texas, which has closed more than 400 polling sites since 2012. 

Until such legislation is passed, representative democracy will continue to be a great idea only in the abstract here in Texas, which is a grim and terrifying reality for women like me who grew up and aspire to build our lives and careers here.