No one has ever seen anything like this.
Reports, pictures, and videos have been flooding social media this morning of long lines in every corner of Texas. Some people are reporting long lines in places that have never seen long lines before. Does a record turn out on the first day of early voting indicate a blue wave? Absolutely. Check out this story from Forbes reporting that more than 60% of Democrats plan on voting early, opposed to less than 30% of Republicans.
The only way we make our voices heard is to vote. Early vote if you can. The lines are long in Texas today. They were long in Georgia yesterday. These are good signs.
This is only the first day of early voting.
That means we still have 17 days left to VOTE early, as the last day to early vote is October 30. If you didn’t vote early today, go tomorrow. If your schedule is hectic, go this weekend. Make sure you vote.
Pick up the phone, call your friends, family members, and co-workers. Remind them early voting is happening right now. Do they need a ride to the polls? Help them out. Trump is going to try and cheat, Texas Republicans may also try and cheat. The only way we stop them is by winning in a landslide. We need to slaughter them.
We are looking at record voter turn out, combined with voter suppression.
Don’t forget that Texas has spent the last few years closing and eliminating voting locations. They did this intentionally to make the lines long and discourage people from voting. Even though Abbott’s ballot box rule was blocked, still many counties all have one ballot box.
The way Republicans stay in power is making sure that less people vote. Line or not. Your life depends on it. Get out there and VOTE!
Who’s voting early?
According to Charlie Scudder from the Dallas morning news, he was out at the polls this morning and couldn’t find one Trump voter in line. And if you notice in these pictures and videos, the large majority of people are wearing masks. Trumpers rarely wear masks.
Texas has 16.9 million registered voters this year, which is 1.8 million more than we had in 2016.
What will the numbers look like?
I don’t have a crystal ball or a magic 8 ball, but I have a lot of optimism and seeing the countless reports of record voter turn out all over the country leads me to believe that Texas will see the same.
Let’s just look at what the numbers were in previous years.
According to Texas’ Secretary of State website, in 2016: 311,000 people voted by mail, 4.1 million people early voted, and 8.9 million people in total voted.
We should get a look at the first early voting figures tomorrow and several counties are not reporting their mail-in ballots yet, but many counties are. So far, over 250,000 mail-in ballots have been counted.
We’ll far surpass the mail-in voting numbers by the time their all counted and undoubtedly surpass the early voting numbers, too.
According to CNBC, as of this morning, 10.6 million people have already voted in the 2020 election, (doesn’t include Texas). By this date in 2016, only 1.4 million people voted. That’s 10x the numbers (math).
We’ll win, we’ll turn Texas blue, but it all depends on you. You have to go vote. You have 17 days left to early vote! Go VOTE!
