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Some thought it might happen as early as 2014 and then 2016, and, of course, in 2018.

When all those elections proved disappointing, Texas Democrats said 2020 would be the year, given record voter turnout, a once-in-a-century pandemic that grew out of control under Republican leadership and a highly controversial president.

But 2020 proved another disappointment for the states minority party as Republicans remained dominant in Texas, appearing poised to maintain victories in all statewide offices and both chambers of the Legislature. In what has become a familiar refrain, Texas Democrats pointed to 2020s narrow losses as symbolic victories signs that the state will one day change in their favor.

Though the margins in the presidential race were narrower than they have been in years, Democrats underperformed the high expectations they had set for themselves, particularly in a hotly contested battle for dominance in the Texas House. And a number of potential pickups for Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives seemed increasingly unlikely as the night wore on.

With his reelection still uncertain, Donald Trump carried Texas on Tuesday. The last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state was Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Republican John Cornyn handily won reelection to his seat in the U.S. Senate, soaring past combat veteran MJ Hegar to notch a victory despite a late Democratic spending blitz on her behalf. Republicans held big leads in other statewide races for Railroad Commission, Texas Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals.

And the contest some in-state operatives had focused on as Democrats best hope the battle for a majority in the Texas House appeared to end with a narrow victory for Republicans, leaving intact the partys advantage in the chamber.

As has become habit, Texas Democrats described their losses on Tuesday not as disappointments but as hopeful omens for next time.

With every election, we're getting one step closer to that change, said Ed Espinoza, executive director of Progress Texas.

Although we came up short, Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said of the U.S. Senate race, I am hopeful because we are marching towards victory.

The work we did will move our state forward for years to come, Hegar said.

Republicans, meanwhile, were not shy about celebrating their wins.

Gov. Greg Abbott, who was not on the ballot himself but had been deeply involved in Texas House races, even knocking on doors over the last few weeks, celebrated on Twitter: Texas DID stay Red.

Earlier this week, he had made a prescient, if provocative statement: Democrats dreams will be crushed again.

Abbotts top political strategist, Dave Carney, was blunter in an interview late Tuesday night. He said Democrats were massively underperforming expectations because they buy their own bullshit.

Heres the best standard operating procedure for any campaign: Stop bragging, do your work and then you can gloat afterward, Carney said, contrasting that approach with bragging about whats gonna happen in the future and being embarrassed.

Why anybody would believe what these liars would say to them again is beyond belief, Carney added. How many cycles in a row do they claim Texas will turn blue? Its crazy.

Cornyn, speaking to media after declaring victory Tuesday night, dismissed Democratic spending in Texas, saying Democrats "had more money than they knew what to do with, so they ended up investing in a long shot in places like Texas."

Days before the election, polls showed a close race between Biden and Trump here though neither candidate campaigned as if Texas were a battleground. Kamala Harris, Bidens running mate, made a last-minute swing through the state late last week, but neither presidential candidate had been in Texas in months.

The results Tuesday night showed a close presidential contest in Texas. Trumps lead in Texas was in the mid-single-digits early Wednesday morning, according to Decision Desk HQ smaller than his 9-point 2016 margin, and about a third of Mitt Romneys 16-point victory here in 2012.

Even as Biden performed well in large suburban counties that used to be reliably Republican, he failed to notch wide margins of victory in some critical Democratic strongholds, massively underperforming Hillary Clinton in the mostly Hispanic Rio Grande Valley. For example, Trump was leading in unofficial results in Zapata County where Clinton won with 66% of the vote in 2016.

Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, an assistant dean and politics expert at the University of Texas' Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, pointed to two major reasons for Bidens relative underperformance in the Valley: lower name ID compared with Clinton and limited door-to-door campaigning due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Valley is old school, and you need that grassroots mobilization, she said. And there wasnt grassroots work, at least on the Democratic side, because of the pandemic. And arguably the GOP did have at least a bit more grassroots work because they had a different vision of public health.

That to me explains the Biden underperformance: He really wasnt known, and then he didnt have the time to make it up, she added.

Trump, meanwhile, launched a Latino outreach initiative for his 2020 bid, she noted.

Republicans had hoped their willingness to knock on doors during the pandemic would give them an edge over Democrats, some of whom leaned on remote campaigning methods.

As expected, lesser-known and less controversial Republicans did better than Trump on the statewide ballot in Texas. Republicans running for seats on the states two high courts, and the board that regulates oil and gas, each looked poised to win by a healthy margin. For the first time in years, Democrats had run contested primaries for most statewide races, including a crowded 12-candidate primary for the U.S. Senate race and competition for the nomination for nearly every judicial seat.

Democrats were also falling far short of expectations in U.S. House races. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had targeted 10 GOP-held seats this fall in Texas, though by midnight, they had no pickups to tout.

In one race to replace retiring Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes Democratic party leaders had started the cycle brimming with confidence that the seat would flip to them, especially after Republicans had to go through a seemingly endless nomination process. But before the night was over, the campaign of the Republican nominee, Tony Gonzales, was declaring victory.

Not only did they underestimate me, I think they underestimated the district, Gonzales said in an interview late Tuesday night. District 23 is just different it is. You have to work your tail off to win the trust of the constituents and you have to work your tail off to keep that trust. TV ads, blanketing the airwaves, isnt enough.

But perhaps the most striking rebuke to Democrats hopes on Tuesday night was their failure to regain a majority or even move the needle much in the 150-member Texas House, where they needed to pick up nine seats.

Even before the chambers majority party had been determined, optimistic Democrats had declared their candidacy to lead it as speaker.

"Before the day is done, Democrats will take the Texas House, one candidate, El Paso Democrat Joe Moody, said Tuesday morning. By early Wednesday morning, it seemed clear they would not.

Democrats will get another chance to test their hopes in 2022, when statewide offices like governor and attorney general will appear on the ballot. It remains to be seen whether they can increase their power in the state.

Is Texas on the route to becoming blue, or is Texas on the road to becoming a perennial battleground? Thats a question I dont know the answer to, DeFrancesco Soto said. But I do feel confident saying we are moving in the purple direction, and we may just stay stuck at purple.

Patrick Svitek contributed reporting.

Continued here:
Texas Republicans again sweep the ballot, crushing Democratic hopes - The Texas Tribune

In the hours and days since polls officially closed, President Donald Trump has made multiple calls for vote counting to stop, alleging that Democrats would use mail-in ballots to steal the election.

The Trump campaign has also taken legal action in an attempt to halt vote counts in several battleground states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, so that campaign observers can watch the ballots being opened and counted. Trump supporters have gathered in both states, calling to "stop the count."

Trump has said, baselessly, that he would win the election if only the "legal" votes were counted and the "illegal" were not, and he has suggested that the lead he held in key states on election night was subverted by "magical" dumps of ballots, which he tried to cast as late-arriving and, most importantly, suspect.

In 21 states, the law permits mail-in votes received after Election Day to be counted toward the final tally, according to data from the National Council of State Legislatures. They include three battlegrounds where ABC News has yet to project a winner: Nevada, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. In most of the states that allow late counting, absentee ballots must be postmarked by Election Day.

The president's comments have sparked "Count the Vote" protest marches across the country, and political leaders, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have called his rhetoric "undemocratic."

Children and adults take part in a display of the "Count Every Vote" slogan during a Count Every Vote demonstration at the Pennsylvania State Capitol on Nov. 5, 2020 in Harrisburg, Penn.

But this isn't the first time that Trump has demanded an end to voting counts.

2018 Florida midterms

Two years ago, during midterm elections, the gubernatorial and Senate races in Florida both fell within a 0.5% margin -- automatically triggering a recount.

Results showed Republicans slightly ahead in both races. In the Senate race, former Florida Gov. Rick Scott led incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson by a 0.15% margin, while in the race for governor, GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis led Democrat Andrew Gillum by a 0.41% margin. Gillum even walked back a concession, replacing it with "an unapologetic and uncompromised call to count every vote."

With the tallying underway, the president claimed, without citing evidence, that Democrats were engaged in voter fraud, rhetoric that mirrors almost exactly Trump's claims in the 2020 general election.

"All of a sudden, they're finding votes out of nowhere," the president said. "I say this: [Gov. Scott] easily won, but every hour, it seems to be going down. I think that people have to look at it very, very cautiously."

He took to Twitter to falsely claim that ballots in Florida's Senate and governor's race were "massively infected" and demanded an end to recounts and that both Republican candidates be declared the winners of their respective races.

Then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi also called for an investigation into any possible election misconduct. The Florida Department of State requested a federal investigation into altered voter forms, which voters who use mail ballots use to correct problems with signatures accompanying their ballots.

Ultimately, the votes were recounted, and the Republican candidates went on to win. An 18-month investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement found no evidence of fraud with altered voting forms, Politico reported.

Arizona midterms

That wasn't the only election that year to elicit accusations of voter fraud and calls to stop vote counts. In Arizona, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema was in a close race against Republican Martha McSally for an open Senate seat left by outgoing Republican Sen. Jeff Flake.

Votes were still being counted in the days after the election, which is not uncommon, when Trump claimed without evidence that they were "all of a sudden" finding votes "out of the wilderness." Sinema had a slight lead at that point.

As tallying was underway in the competitive race, Arizona Republican leaders also sued, seeking an injunction to limit counts in urban counties that allowed voters more time to cure (or correct) mail-in ballots, the Associated Press reported. The counties in question were considered strongholds of support for Sinema.

Democratic leaders challenged the lawsuit, claiming it was an attempt to "silence thousands of Arizonans who already cast their ballots," while the GOP parties argued that they wanted consistency in counting votes.

The American Civil Liberties Union intervened in the case on behalf of the defendants, filing a brief that argued that "the court should not remedy the failure of some Arizona counties to provide voters with due process by prohibiting all Arizona counties from doing so," the organization noted in a report on voting rights.

The lawsuit was settled, with rural counties given more time to verify ballots.

Six days after the election, McSally conceded, and Sinema won the race -- the first time in 30 years that a Democrat won a Senate seat in the state.

History repeating

Fast-forward to the 2020 presidential election, and Trump is repeating allegations of voter fraud and calls to stop vote counts.

"STOP THE COUNT!" he tweeted Thursday morning.

"ANY VOTE THAT CAME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED," he added shortly after, prompting Twitter to flag the message as potentially misleading.

The Trump campaign later amended the message to be that all "legal" votes should be counted while those that are "illegal" should not (as opposed to merely stopping the count because he was ahead on election night and ballots counted later started to change that).

"We believe the American people deserve to have full transparency into all vote counting and election certification, and that this is no longer about any single election," the campaign said in a statement Friday. "This is about the integrity of our entire election process."

Trump supporter Michael Breitenbach screams outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center as ballot counting continues inside for the presidential election, on Nov. 6, 2020, in Philadelphia.

In return, former Vice President Joe Biden has urged Americans to "stay calm."

"Each ballot must be counted, and that's what we're going to see going through now, and that's how it should be," the Democratic presidential candidate said Thursday.

Several of the Trump campaign's legal attempts have been rejected, with judges in Michigan and Pennsylvania denying injunctions to halt vote counting.

See the original post here:
Trump and Republicans have asked states to stop counting votes before - ABC News

Prominent Republicans and conservative commentators have joined the condemnation of President Donald Trump's baseless claim that he had won reelection.

Trump in the early hours of Wednesday morning gave a short speech at the White House in which he said "frankly, we did win this election."

No winner was clear when he made the remarks, however, and millions of votes were yet to be counted.

Trump described the fact that not all votes had been counted on election night a normal aspect of US elections as a "major fraud on our nation" and repeated without evidence his claim that mail-in voting had led to voter fraud.

The claim was not unexpected; a report last week by Axios indicated that Trump was planning to declare victory on election night if it appeared that he was "ahead" in early results.

Numerous prominent Republican figures lined up to condemn Trump early Wednesday morning.

"I was very distressed by what I heard the president say," former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania said.

"The president is prone as we know to bluster and fits of pique and being upset about how he's being treated," he told CNN. "I don't have any problem ... I think Joe Biden said similar things, 'I think I won,' and that's fine. You think you won, that's great.

"But the idea of using the word fraud, and fraud is being committed by people counting votes, is wrong."

He added: "I understand the president's frustration because some of the states weren't called as early as he'd like, but at the same time he complained about one of those states being called, Arizona. I understand that the president feels like it's a grievance against him and somehow or another this is another example of the media not treating him fairly, and I'll just say that I could not disagree more in this case."

He was echoed by Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, who told ABC News that speaking "not as a former governor but a former US attorney" there was "just no basis to make that argument tonight."

He said: "All these votes have to be counted that are in now. In Pennsylvania, the counting won't even start until tomorrow or Thursday or Friday because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended for three days when you can accept ballots. I understand that there could be an argument on that based on Pennsylvania law, but that argument is for later. Tonight was not the time to make this argument."

Asked whether Trump's premature claim of victory was a political move, Christie said: "It is, but it's got to be bigger than that."

He added: "I think that by prematurely doing this, if there is a flaw in it later, he has undercut his own credibility calling attention to that flaw.

"I think it's a bad strategic decision, it's a bad political decision, and it's not the kind of decision you'd expect someone to make tonight who holds the position he holds."

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida became the first sitting Republican senator to appear to publicly criticize Trump's statement later Wednesday, tweeting: "The result of the presidential race will be known after every legally cast vote has been counted."

John Bolton, the former national security advisor to Trump, said the president's comments "were some of the most irresponsible comments that a president of the United States has ever made."

He told Sky News: "He has cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process purely for his own political advantage. It's a disgrace."

The Republican election lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg told CNN that "for a president to say we're going to disenfranchise legally cast ballots is really extraordinary," adding, "It's a distressing moment for me as a longtime Republican."

The Fox News host Chris Wallace said Trump's separate reference of plans to go to the Supreme Court, the basis of which is unclear, was "extremely inflammatory, and frankly I don't think it's something that the courts would allow."

He said: "This is an extremely flammable situation, and the president just threw a match into it.

"He hasn't won these states. Nobody is saying he has won these states. The states haven't said that he's won.

"This goes right back to what Joe Biden said which is the president doesn't get to say that he's won states the American people get to say it, the state officials get to declare it."

The right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro tweeted that Trump's victory claim was "deeply irresponsible."

The contest was too close to call at the time of writing, with Joe Biden projected to win 227 Electoral College votes and Trump projected to win 213. The outcome was expected to hinge on results in the key battleground states Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Joe Biden's campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon, on Wednesday morning described the president's statement as "outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect" and a "naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens."

Read more from the original source:
Republicans have condemned Trump's false claim to have already won the election - Business Insider - Business Insider

In a Thursday night appearance on Laura Ingrahams Fox News show, Gov. Ron DeSantis joined the chorus of Republicans questioning the outcome of a presidential election that increasingly looks bad for their candidate.

But DeSantis went further than other Republicans have been willing to venture. He urged Ingrahams viewers to call on their state lawmakers to take matters into their own hands, into a direction that could lead the United States toward a constitutional crisis.

Under Article II of the Constitution, presidential electors are done by legislatures and the schemes they create in the framework, DeSantis said. If theres departure from that and theyre not following the law, if theyre ignoring law, then they can provide remedies as well, so I would exhaust every option to make sure we have a fair count.

As the light dims on Trumps reelection hopes, his family and closest allies have demanded unquestioned loyalty from Republicans in what may be the last battle for this administration. They have wielded Trumps unwavering popularity with the GOP base like a cudgel, threatening the political futures of those who dont join their conspiratorial conquest to dismiss democratically cast ballots in multiple states they deem illegal.

DeSantis didnt need to be prodded. In the days since the election, DeSantis questioned Fox News for calling the race in Arizona for former Vice President Joe Biden, suggesting the network had a motive, though he didnt elaborate on what it might be. He has ripped Wisconsin and Pennsylvania for counting votes after Election Day, without mentioning that it was Republican legislatures in those states that barred the early counting of mail-in ballots. His state, Florida, allows early counting.

DeSantis' fealty has not gone unnoticed by the presidents inner circle. Ingraham, a commentator friendly to Trump, started her segment by praising DeSantis for challenging the results while many other Republican leaders have remained pretty silent.

When the presidents son, Donald Trump Jr., called out the total lack of action from virtually all of the 2024 GOP hopefuls' " and accused Republicans of retreating from the fight, he added an exception: DeSantis.

He has been active and vocal, Trump Jr. tweeted.

Those 2024 GOP hopefuls includes two from Florida: U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. Steadfastly aligned with Trump for much of the past four years, they have responded to the continued counting of ballots in a handful of states in more reserved terms than DeSantis.

Rubio, a one-time Trump rival who nevertheless became a defender of the administration especially on foreign policy, has echoed many Republicans in calling for transparency and counting of every legally cast vote. But he has stopped short of raising doubts about the validity of the results as Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania continue to process the backlog of ballots according to their state laws.

If a candidate believes a state is violating election laws they have a right to challenge it in court & produce evidence in support of their claims, Rubio tweeted Thursday.

Scott similarly said on Twitter, we need to make sure every legal ballot is counted fairly and transparently" and encouraged followers to report irregularities. He has also tweeted this week about Tropical Storm Eta, Fridays encouraging jobs report and police officers who have died due to coronavirus.

As his 2018 race for Senate headed toward a recount, Scott sounded more critical of the South Florida counties still tallying ballots days after the election. From the steps of the governors mansion, Scott accused election officials in Palm Beach and Broward counties of rampant fraud," without citing evidence. He sued those counties and ordered state law enforcement officials to investigate (the Florida Department of Law Enforcements 18-month probe ended without charges).

The events of this week could foreshadow how Floridas top Republicans navigate a post-Trump presidency as they weigh their own political futures. DeSantis, Rubio and Scott are all considered potential candidates for the GOP presidential nomination in four years.

DeSantis has insisted that is not on his mind, though shortly after his successful 2018 election his political team maneuvered to turn the 42-year-old Republican governor into a national name. Rubio told CNN last week that another run for the White House wasnt out of the question.

I ran for president once before, so clearly Im not going to tell someone Im not interested in running for president, he told the network.

Just before the election, Scott aired a campaign commercial in Florida widely seen as a lane marker toward his eventual run for the presidency. Hes not up for re-election for another four years. He also aired ads in Iowa ahead of the Democratic caucus and traveled with Trump to New Hampshire on the eve of the states primary, moves that produced buzz about his presidential aspirations.

One past presidential contender from Florida, former Gov. Jeb Bush, has remained largely mum as Trump attempts an unprecedented assault on Americas elections. Bush, who warned of a chaos Trump presidency during the 2016 primary and later accused him of tyranny," publicly weighed in only to promote Floridas election laws.

How is it Florida can count its vote so efficiently, but other states, including Georgia, cannot? conservative commentator Erick Erickson tweeted.

To which Bush responded: Because we learned our lesson after 2000 and changed our laws.

Other Republicans in Florida have joined DeSantis in the effort to undermine public confidence in the election results. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi, joining Trumps legal challenge of election results, declared Thursday from Philadelphia that Weve won Pennsylvania. Within 24 hours, Biden surpassed Trump in the states tally. As of Friday evening, Biden led Trump by nearly 15,000 votes as results continued to trickle in.

One of Trumps most vocal backers remains U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, who on Twitter has amplified conspiracies about voting irregularities, none of which appear to validate the presidents assertion of widespread, coordinated voter fraud across multiple states and jurisdictions. Like DeSantis, Gaetz has called on Fox News to retract Arizona from Bidens win column and criticized less committed Republicans to his large Twitter audience.

If Republicans dont dig in and fight this fraud now, Gaetz tweeted, we will never win another election again.

ELECTION RESULTS FLORIDA AND TAMPA BAY: See all races, statewide and in Hillsborough, Pinellas and other Tampa Bay counties.

Were working hard to bring you the latest news on the elections in Florida. This effort takes a lot of resources to gather and update. If you havent already subscribed, please consider buying a print or digital subscription. Or click here to make a donation to the Tampa Bay Times Journalism Fund.

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How Floridas top Republicans are navigating Trumps assault on election results - Tampa Bay Times

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A legal cloud hanging over nearly 127,000 votes already cast in Harris County was at least temporarily lifted Sunday when the Texas Supreme Court rejected a request by several conservative Republican activists and candidates to preemptively throw out early balloting from drive-thru polling sites in the state's most populous, and largely Democratic, county.

The all-Republican court denied the request without an order or opinion, as justices did last month in a similar lawsuit brought by some of the same plaintiffs.

The deadline to register to vote in the 2020 general election was Oct. 5. Check if youre registered to vote here. If not, youll need to fill out and submit an application, which you can request here or download here.

Early voting for the 2020 general election runs from Oct. 13 to Oct. 30. Voters can cast ballots at any polling location in the county where they are registered to vote during early voting. Election Day is Nov. 3.

In general, polling locations will have guidelines in place for social distancing and regular cleaning. Several counties will offer ballot marking devices so voters avoid contact with election equipment. Poll workers will likely be wearing face masks and other protective equipment, but masks will not be required for voters.

Texas is one of just a few states that hasnt opened up mail-in voting to any voter concerned about getting COVID-19 at a polling place. You can find eligibility requirements and review other questions about voting by mail here.

Not always. Youll want to check for open polling locations with your local elections office before you head out to vote. Additionally, you can confirm with your county elections office whether Election Day voting is restricted to locations in your designated precinct or if you can cast a ballot at any polling place.

Yes. If you have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or are exhibiting symptoms, consider requesting an emergency mail-in ballot or using curbside voting. Contact your county elections office for more details about both options.

Have you run into hurdles or problems while trying to vote in Texas? We want your help in reporting on those challenges. Tell The Texas Tribune your voting story.

The Republican plaintiffs, however, are pursuing a similar lawsuit in federal court, hoping to get the votes thrown out by arguing that drive-thru voting violates the U.S. constitution. A hearing in that case is set for Monday morning in a Houston-based federal district court, one day before Election Day. A rejection of the votes would constitute a monumental disenfranchisement of voters drive-thru ballots account for about 10% of all in-person ballots cast during early voting in Harris County.

After testing the approach during the July primary runoff with little controversy, Harris County, home to Houston, set up 10 drive-thru centers for the fall election to make early voting easier for people concerned about entering polling places during the pandemic. Voters pull up in their cars and, after their registrations and identifications have been confirmed by poll workers, are handed an electronic tablet through their car windows to cast ballots.

In a last-minute filing to the Supreme Court, litigious conservative Steven Hotze and Harris County Republicans state Rep. Steve Toth, congressional candidate Wendell Champion and judicial candidate Sharon Hemphill sought to have the votes declared illegal. They argued that the drive-thru program was an expansion of curbside voting and under state election law should only be available for voters with disabilities. The same argument had been made in an unsuccessful previous legal challenge from Hotze and Hemphill along with the Harris County Republican Party filed at the state Supreme Court hours before early voting began.

Curbside voting, long available under Texas election law, requires workers at every polling place to deliver onsite curbside ballots to voters who are physically unable to enter the polling place without personal assistance or likelihood of injuring the voter's health. Posted signs at polling sites notify voters to ring a bell, call a number or honk to request curbside assistance.

The Harris County Clerks Office argued that its drive-thru locations are separate polling places, distinct from attached curbside spots, and therefore can be available to all voters. The clerks filing with the Supreme Court in the earlier lawsuit also said the Texas secretary of states office had approved of drive-thru voting. Keith Ingram, the states chief election official, said in a court hearing last month in another lawsuit that drive-thru voting is a creative approach that is probably okay legally, according to court transcripts.

Plus, the county argued in a Friday filing that Texas' election code, along with court rulings, have determined that even if the drive-thru locations are violations, votes cast there are still valid.

"More than a century of Texas case law requires that votes be counted even if election official[s] violate directory election laws," the filing said.

The challenge was the latest in a flurry of lawsuits on Texas voting procedures filed in recent months, with Democrats and voting rights groups pushing for expanded voting access in the pandemic and Republicans seeking to limit voting options. In this case, the lawsuit filed Tuesday asked the state Supreme Court to close Harris Countys 10 new drive-thru polling places and not count votes that had been cast at them during early voting.

The court has recently ruled against other last-minute challenges on voting access by noting that the cases were filed too late and that changes to voting procedure during an election would sow voter confusion.

Since the first Republican challenge to drive-thru voting was filed on Oct. 12, the Texas secretary of state and Gov. Greg Abbott had both ignored requests from reporters and Harris County officials to clarify their positions on whether the process was legal. Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a letter to all local election officials claiming that most voters cant legally vote at drive-thru locations, fueling speculation that the all-Republican Supreme Court would use the case to invalidate ballots already cast. The court rejected the case the next week, with a lone dissent from Justice John Devine.

The new challenge by Republicans again asked the court to reject drive-thru voting as an illegal expansion of curbside voting, and went further by also asking the court to issue an order rejecting votes already cast.

Unless stopped, illegal votes will be cast and counted in direct violation of the Texas Election Code and the United States Constitution and result in the integrity of elections in Harris County being compromised, the petition to the court said.

The county clerk's office countered that the first challenge to drive-thru voting had already been denied, and the second filing came much too late.

"Hotze filed a petition contesting drive thru locations on the third day of early voting which this Court already denied," the clerk's Friday filing said. "He filed this second petition two and a half weeks into early voting, six days before Election Day, and after fifty percent of registered voters have already voted."

The tens of thousands of votes are still in flux, however, as the federal courts now weigh the issue. Hotze and the others asked the district court this week to toss the votes, arguing the county's implementation of drive-thru voting violates the U.S. Constitution. The campaign of Texas' Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, MJ Hegar, along with national Democratic campaign groups have asked to intervene in the lawsuit following a national trend in Republican-led fights against voting expansions during the tumultuous election.

Disclosure: The Texas secretary of state has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Texas Supreme Court rejects Republican effort to toss nearly 127K votes - The Texas Tribune