Opinion: Texas voters not disenfranchised

Render’s Rubrics:

• Every citizen eligible to vote, should be able to vote.

• Ballot should be filled out according to applicable law.

• All votes, cast by eligible voters, properly filled out, should be tallied, and recorded for canvassing by election authorities.

The mid-term election cycle is in full swing with primary elections just completed or just getting up on the front burner. In Texas where I live, our primary was held on March 1; New Mexicans will hold theirs in June. It’s always interesting to review how newspapers report the results of elections and this last one we had was no exception.

Last week, our local paper informed us that, “Thousands of Texans who attempted to vote by mail in the March primary were disenfranchised in the state’s first election conducted under a new Republican voting law.”

To begin, I had no idea that once a law had been enacted by a state legislature, it could be referred to anything other than a state law. But that’s a story for another day.

At any rate, when the dreaded “disenfranchisement” reared its ugly head, as it does every election cycle, I decided to look it up to get a dictionary meaning of the word.

dis-en-fran-chise-ment, noun, the state of being deprived of a right or privilege, especially the right to vote.

Every definition I reviewed, from a variety of sources, added the, “especially the right to vote” phrase. Over the years, the term disenfranchisement has come to mean something more than depriving of a right or privilege. The term is used to imply that the person who has been disenfranchised was being cheated out of his right or privilege. That indeed, the individual has done everything correctly, on time and through no fault of their own was summarily refused the right to vote.

A further review of the story noted above indicated that, “In most cases, ballots were rejected for failing to comply with tighter voting rules enacted by Republicans last year that require voters to provide their driver’s license number or a partial Social Security number to vote by mail.”

This indicates that while the voters may very well have been disenfranchised, it is the fault of the voter themselves.

For an example of true disenfranchisement, consider the thousands of citizens who lost jobs, their ability to travel and more based on executive orders and mandates that have since been struck down by courts at state and federal levels.

That’s disenfranchisement. More’s the shame.

Rube Render is a former Clovis city commissioner and former chair of the Curry County Republican Party. Contact him:

[email protected]