Texas

What’s a vote roster, you say? It’s a detailed list of everyone who voted in a particular election. You can find some recent ones, mostly pertaining to the 2020 elections so far, here. I’ve used the rosters from past elections to do some deeper analysis of our city election voters.

And now I’ve turned that attention to the 2020 primary and primary runoff voters. I started out with an interest in the people who have voted by mail in the runoff, as there are many more of them than there were in March. How had they voted in March? More to the point, how many of them had not voted at all in March? In other words, what was the effect of the County Clerk sending mail ballot applications to every registered voter 65 and older in the county?

Well, I’ll tell you. The following data is for early voting and vote by mail through Wednesday, July 8:

For the Democrats, there have been 41,531 total mail ballots cast in the runoff. Of those,
– 15,895 people voted by mail in the primary
– 7,052 people voted early in person in the primary
– 4,361 people voted on Election Day in the primary
– 14,223 people did not vote in the primary

Also for the Dems, there have been 40,387 early votes in person so far in the runoff. Of those,
– 135 people voted by mail in the primary
– 21,375 people voted early in person in the primary
– 10,210 people voted on Election Day in the primary
– 8,667 people did not vote in the primary

In summary, 27.9% of all Dem runoff voters did not vote in March. And 34.2% of all runoff votes cast by mail came from people who had not voted in March.

How about the Republicans? There have been 23,585 total Republican votes by mail in the runoff. Of those,
– 12,121 people voted by mail in the primary
– 1,500 people voted early in person in the primary
– 816 people voted on Election Day in the primary
– 9,148 did not vote in the primary

Also for the GOP, there have been 11,833 early votes in person so far in the runoff. Of those,
– 130 people voted by mail in the primary
– 7,671 people voted early in person in the primary
– 1,520 people voted on Election Day in the primary
– 2,512 people did not vote in the primary

So, 32.9% of all GOP runoff voters did not vote in March, and 38.8% of all runoff votes cast by mail came from people who had not voted in March. How about that?

I’m working on some more data and will present that over the weekend. In the meantime, here are the updated early vote totals:

Election     Mail    Early    Total   Mail %
============================================
D primary  21,658   82,365  104,023    20.8%
R primary  21,340   65,783   87,123    24.5%

D runoff   43,000   47,389   90,389    47.6%
R runoff   24,724   13,679   38,403    64.3%

The Thursday runoff EV file is here, and the final EV turnout report from March is here. It looks like there had been an error in an earlier days’s reporting, which had shown nearly zero mail ballots received – I think it was the Tuesday report. That has been corrected, which is why there’s such a large increase in today’s mail ballot total. Dems topped 7K in person voters, their highest single day yet, while Republicans have still not seen as many as 2K in person voters. Today should be the busiest day, and voting hours are extended till 10 PM. I’ll have the final wrapup on Sunday.

I’m not going to keep track of what day number we’re at now, as it doesn’t really make sense anymore. But what we can do right now is have a look at how each party is doing with mail votes. Here’s a quick comparison to March, with primary data for the entire early voting period, and runoff data through Sunday:

Election     Mail      Early      Total   Mail %
================================================
D primary 114,886    886,336  1,001,222    11.5%
R primary  91,415    987,744  1,079,159     8.5%

D runoff  153,239    155,101    308,340    49.7%
R runoff   81,421    131,142    212,563    38.3%

These are just early voting totals – there were still a bunch of votes cast on Election Day, all of which were of course in person. Dems did quite well with absentee ballots in the primary, which I would attribute largely to efforts in the big counties. About 28K of those Dem mail votes came from Harris, for example.

That was all done without a big push to get people who are eligible to vote by mail to do so. In the runoff, everyone has heard a lot about voting by mail, and everyone has concerns about their own safety voting in person. It’s not a big surprise then that the number of mail ballots has surged, in relative terms for both parties and in absolute terms for Dems; I expect Republicans will surpass their mail total from March as well this week. Other counties are carrying a bigger share of the load for Dems – while Harris made up almost 25% of the total mail ballots for Dems in March, they’re at about 21% so far in the runoff. I don’t have numbers from other counties but my understanding is that over 90% of the Harris mail ballots are coming from the 65 and over crowd, so it’s mostly people taking advantage of something that was already available to them. And good for them, because that’s exactly what they should be doing. I hope that continues right on through the end of the week.

As for where we are now in Harris:

Election     Mail    Early   Total   Mail %
===========================================
D primary  16,651   44,339  60,990    27.3%
R primary  18,949   39,207  58,156    32.6%

D runoff   34,782   29,978  64,760    53.7%
R runoff   21,409    8,691  30,100    71.1%

The Monday runoff EV file is here, and the final EV turnout report from March is here. If you’re thinking “Hey, this looks like higher turnout for a party primary runoff than what we’re used to seeing”, you are correct. I will discuss that in more detail next time.

We are at the end of the first official early voting week for the 2020 primary runoffs. At this point, there have been five actual early voting days, as Friday and Saturday the polls were closed for the Independence Day holiday. At this same point for the March primary, we had had six days of actual voting, with the Monday having been closed for Presidents Day. As such, we are no longer in a position where we can directly compare totals, as the number of days for this point in the calendar is different for each election.

On the other hand, who cares? The slate of elections is very different on each side, with no Presidential race and no statewide Republican races. Indeed, the only countywide Republican races are two judicial contests and Sheriff, none of which are particularly compelling to the average voter. So it’s not at all a surprise that Democrats in Harris, who have a US Senate race on their ballot as well as Railroad Commissioner and three judicial races, are drawing more participants. The comparisons to March are for academic interest, and just as one should be wary about drawing conclusions about November from primary turnout, one should basically banish the thought of such inferences for primary runoffs.

With one exception, I’d say, and that’s due to this:

Most Texans will now have to wear a mask to the grocery store, hair salon and bus stop — but not to the voting booth during ongoing primary runoff elections.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s mask order exempts “any person who is voting, assisting a voter, serving as a poll watcher, or actively administering an election,” but he adds that “wearing a face covering is strongly encouraged.”

The order appears to make Texas the only state in the country that exempts voting from a mask mandate. Twenty-one states require masks statewide, according to Masks4All, a volunteer organization that advocates for more mask-wearing.

[…]

“Issuing the mandatory mask order and encouraging everyone to stay home is the right thing to do right now, considering the mess we’re in,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the nonprofit Common Cause Texas. “But the right thing to do months ago to avoid this very easily foreseeable mess was to allow all Texans to vote by mail so that no one would now find themselves having to choose between voting and endangering their health.”

Guiterrez added that it’s not too late for the governor to take actions to expand mail-in voting in November.

[…]

One possible explanation for the exemption could be a constitutional concern, said Scott Keller, former Texas Solicitor General and attorney at international law firm Baker Botts. In the same way that masks aren’t required while giving a speech for a broadcast or to an audience or while taking part in a religious service because the constitution protects the right to free speech and religion, a legal argument could be made that forcing voters to wear a mask would be a burden on the right to vote, he said.

“I think the governor’s order is trying to balance the exigencies of the COVID emergency with constitutional rights and also taking very seriously the COVID spike in Texas,” Keller said. “The idea that the order excepting out polling places would be something like voter suppression, I think, is completely off base.”

On the other hand, the executive order says that people are not exempt if they are attending a protest or demonstration involving more than 10 people and not practicing safe social distancing of six feet from others who are not in the same household.

“Trying to think and balance every single possible situation out in the world, that’s just not something that is going to be expected of any official, and the courts don’t expect that of any official,” Keller said, adding that during an emergency, “potentially, government officials are going to have a little more leeway than they otherwise would.”

I feel like maybe we could have gotten a more neutral observer than Scott Keller to comment on this, but whatever. I can see the argument that forcing people to wear a mask would be a burden on the right to vote. It’s just that such an argument would be pretty effing rich from the state that has the most restrictive voter ID law in the country, and is currently fighting tooth and nail to prevent an expansion of voting by mail, which is currently only available to people over 65 and anyone with a “disability” that Ken Paxton is willing to recognize and not attempt to prosecute them for. The state of Texas officially believes that fear of contracting and maybe dying of a highly contagious disease that is currently rampaging basically unchecked throughout our state is insufficient grounds for being sent a mail ballot. I’m not saying that a representative from the state Solicitor General’s office would be necessarily be smited by a lightning bolt from the heavens if he attempted to make an argument that wearing a mask constituted an unlawful burden on voters in court, but it would not strike me as an unjust act if it did happen.

Anyway. Here’s where we stand after the first week of some early voting days, with five more days to go:

Election     Mail    Early   Total   Mail %
===========================================
D primary  15,101   36,712  51,813    29.1%
R primary  16,528   32,630  49,158    33.6%

D runoff   32,309   24,783  57,092    56.6%
R runoff   19,405    7,199  26,604    72.9%

The Sunday runoff EV file is here, and the final EV turnout report from March is here. There are no absentee votes counted during the weekend, so the percentage of absentee votes necessarily falls. It will continue to do so this week as we see more and more in person voters show up. And yet, Republicans remain more dependent on them, in either case.