Politics Thread

Pretty insane.

Let's hope it's a good thing.

Do they process the ballots as they get them or are they just holding them until election day?

From what I've read so far, a lot of this can be attributed to Harris County, which is where Houston is.  Like most big cities in Texas, it's got a significant number of Democrats in key positions.  In the case of Harris County, Democrats increased the budget for voting from around $4 million in 2016 to $31 million in 2020.  This vast increase allowed for not only more locations, but also those locations are open beyond 5pm, so people can vote early after they get off from work.  They've even got drive-thru voting.  The Republicans threw a fit and tried to put a stop to it, but the court allowed it to continue.

I still think Trump is going to win Texas, but it may be by a far more narrow margin than anyone expected.  If other Democrat controlled counties emulate Harris County in the future (which seems likely), Republicans are going to have a harder time of things pretty soon.  This sort of situation is exactly what Republicans have been fighting against in Texas for decades.

Have you considered moving?

Every day. But we can't take the Red State down by taking the blue out of it.

I've got an Aunt and Uncle who live in Idaho, despite them both being from Texas.  They got stationed there because he was in the military, and they decided to stay after he retired because they liked it so much.  My family visited them once.  That was enough.  We never set foot in Idaho again.  They come down to Texas for visits fairly regularly.  Their kids left Idaho as soon as they were old enough.  

Idaho has only four votes in the Electoral College.  You can afford to let Idaho stay red.  Come to Texas.  We've already sent you some of our own to make up the loss. 

We have tacos!  Good ones made by actual Mexicans!

Texas is too hot. I like it here closer to the cold shoulder of Canada.

I actually looked this up the majority will not count them until the polls close after election day. So it'll be a while.


www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2020/10/early-voting-has-begun-in-texas-heres-when-and-how-your-vote-will-be-counted/

Austin seems to be the phat place to be right now. That’s what the kids are saying, right?

This is going to vary widely by state.  There's a pretty good chart about it on 538: projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-results-timing/

For TX they say "The bulk of the results will be known on election night. Early votes, Election Day votes and (thanks to a generous ballot-processing window) absentee ballots received by 7 p.m. local time on Nov. 3 will all be counted that night, which should give us a pretty clear picture of the state of the races there. However, domestic absentee ballots are allowed to arrive as late as 5 p.m. local time on Wednesday, which could add a fair number of ballots to the hopper."

Apparently the results are going to be slow as molasses out of New York, so good thing that's not a swing state.

Depends what you're looking for. Austin is a college town and that has made it a socially liberal enclave going way back and is the center of Texas' bohemian types and has that "keep Austin weird" slogan and have South by Southwest.  Richard Linklater is also from there and once filmed this explanation for Texas regions: 

It depends on what you're trying to imply by LA/Chicago/NY.  Those are all huge metropolitan areas, which in Texas most resembles Dallas/Fort Worth.  Those are also all cultural epicenters, which in Texas most resembles Austin.

Biden event in Texas cancelled as 'armed' Trump supporters threaten campaign bus

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/us-election-biden-bus-trump-supporters-texas-event-cancelled-b1477876.html