Over the past few decades, the Texas Republican Party has periodically revised and approved its official platform, and by any fair measure it is always an extraordinary document. Like us discussed beforeyear after year, the GOP platform in the Lone Star State is consistently one of the most surprising – It is hysterical – documents that we will find in 21st century American politics.
The last installment is no exception. The Texas Tribune reported over the holiday weekend that state Republican Party delegates voted on a platform with all sorts of notable ideas, ranging from requiring Bible classes in public schools to seeking information about UFOs and asking military bases of the United States are named in honor of the Confederate leaders who took up arms against the United States.
But the Texas Tribune also highlighted one of the state Republican Party’s new priorities.
It has been a few decades since a Democratic candidate won statewide office in Texas, and with that in mind, it’s tempting to think that Republican officials would be satisfied with the state’s electoral system as it currently exists.
Evidently, this is not the case. For the Texas Republican Party, the party’s decades-long winning streak could one day come to an end, and now is apparently the time to make it effectively impossible for a Democrat to win an election at the state level.
Under the status quo, candidates compete in elections and those who win a majority take office. Under the model envisioned by the Texas Republican Party, that would no longer be enough: Candidates could receive the support they need from Texas voters, but they will not prevail unless they also win a majority of the state’s counties.
What would be the point of that? Republican officials in the state appear to realize that Democratic candidates generate a lot of support in Texas’ large urban areas. As these cities grow, it is at least possible that a Democratic candidate could someday reach 51%.
And that’s where this newly proposed county-based requirement would come into play, shifting power away from voters to ensure Republican dominance. As historian Kevin Kruse explained:
Kruse added: “It’s surprisingly unequal and silences an ‘urban’ vote that, of course, is now not only coded as more liberal but also racially diverse. And that, of course, is the point.”
This is, in other words, the latest example of Republicans viewing democracy as something that needs to be manipulated, rather than a system that needs to be preserved.
This article was originally published in MSNBC.com
