{"id":11452,"date":"2020-03-20T18:12:13","date_gmt":"2020-03-20T18:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=11452"},"modified":"2020-03-20T18:12:14","modified_gmt":"2020-03-20T18:12:14","slug":"long-voting-lines-predicted-for-texans-in-november","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=11452","title":{"rendered":"Long voting lines predicted for Texans in November"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/gr-69459-1-1.gif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-11453\" width=\"305\" height=\"304\"\/><figcaption><strong><em>A 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed states to shutter polling places without federal approval resulted in the closure of almost 1,700 polling locations from 2012 to 2018, according to a report by The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. <\/em><\/strong>Photo: beatexasvoter.org<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>By Roz Brown<\/strong><br>Texas News Service<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Long lines at Texas polling places on Tuesday are being blamed on too few voting machines and a higher turnout than expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But some voting advocates say it\u2019s because Texas makes it hard to vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Voters encountered hours-long waits at polling places in heavily Democratic Party cities including Austin, Dallas and San Antonio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, maintains it\u2019s part of a systemic problem in the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He argues that too many Texas political leaders introduce legislation to discourage, rather than encourage voting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAnything that would possibly stifle participation, particularly among minority groups \u2014 those seem to be the measures that are always coming very close to being passed or passed,\u201d Gutierrez states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A report by civil rights group&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/civilrights.org\/democracy-diverted\">The Leadership Conference Education Fund<\/a>&nbsp;found that Texas closed more polling places than any other state last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The study also noted that 44% of polling places around Waco in McLennan County \u2014 where newcomers are primarily black or Latinx \u2014 closed between 2012 and 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gutierrez says unless the state increases funding to upgrade voting machines and boosts the number of election workers, issues that plagued Texas voters on Super Tuesday will be repeated eight months from now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll continue seeing those issues in November,\u201d he states. \u201cA lot of voting machines that are not up and running when they\u2019re supposed to be, a lot of poll sites that failed to open because there\u2019s not enough manpower or enough machines.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Election officials in Harris County, home to Houston, blamed long waiting times on a higher than expected turnout, which was up 40% compared to 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Roz BrownTexas News Service AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Long lines at Texas polling places on Tuesday are being blamed on too few voting machines and a higher turnout than expected. But some voting advocates say it\u2019s because Texas makes it hard to vote. Voters encountered hours-long waits at polling places in heavily Democratic Party cities [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":11453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11455,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11452\/revisions\/11455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}