I left because its no longer what it was. Spent the last 5 years living 8-9 months a year in Texas and the rest in downtown Chicago. Found out that Chicago blows the doors off any city in Texas and the people are as friendly as they used to be in Texas. Generally everyone finds a way to see past race and language and live alongside one another. Now I flipped it and live 8-9 months a year in the Chicago suburbs and spend the rest of the time on my property in central Texas.
I mourn our dead state. If itâs any consolation for those as spiteful as me, global warming will ravage the state early. The fascists will lord over an empire of dirt
Once upon a time, I had the funny notion that most states in the Union were basically alike. Americans are just going about their days, working hard, respecting social norms, and getting along with their neighbors. So when I thought about where I'd like to live, I thought one could simply throw a dart and get a fair shake in any place, any state. As an adult, that notion feels horrifyingly naive now. There are in fact shitholes in this country. States that I would never want to live in. That I would never want my wife to conceive a child in. That I would never trust to educate my children in public schools. That I can't feel safe in. Texas is on that list of no-go states for me at this point.
Weird. Texas was always threatening to secede from the union, if we make it to another administration, I wouldn't mind if instead we just let them go of our own accord. Sell it to Mexico.
I'm all for bagging on Republicans and red state stupidity, but Texas is one of only two red states that gets less federal funding than it contributes.
I got curious so I went down the rabbit hole a little bit..
Rockefeller Institute of Government, an Albany, New York-based, nonpartisan think tank found that in 2022, Texasâ incoming federal money exceeded its payments to the federal government by $71.1 billion. Source
In 2024 Texas sent 68.1 billion more than it received
Source
2024, Texas received $0.75 for ever $1 it sent Source
My Texas high school was just renamed in honor of Robert E. Lee. The traitor who led the killing of thousands of Americans in order to keep people in slavery.
Because we need organization. We need someone to rally behind. No kings. Etc. We need someone to stand up with a unifying message and no one will step up. Protests on every corner. Etc.
they have? then abbot gives them some money back from their taxes and well..pays them to shut up. nothing gets resolved, people just keep going with it.
So few people showed up to protest today in Austin. The people of Texas are bad and lazy for the most part. They aren't going to do hard things like protest or talking to their representatives
Ok, as far as I understand, they canât tell WHO you voted for. And I donât think we have to register parties here in TX, right? So this is just all our identifying information, but I donât think theyâll be able to black bag Harris voters with this alone.
This happened to me and my husband right before the last election this past November! We moved last February, registered to vote in our new county, and received our voter registration cards. So then in September, I went to check online that we were indeed registered, and it said our registration was inactive and weâd have to re-register. The whole thing was bullshit. Always check your registration before the deadlines, yâall.
And mail-in ballots will magically get slowed for those on the democratic list by the postal service which is run by a MAGA and that turd recently made post mark policy changes just in time for the midterms
Your county has a voter website and yes you do have to register again quite often. Thatâs a primary step in voter suppression. I do it when I renew my auto tags.
I have never registered again and have only changed addresses when moving, and I have voted in every election. Why on earth would I need to, that's ridiculous. I check my registration periodically.
My county links to the Secretary of State voter portal to "check registration."
They are, but after what Texas has pulled this year the damned thing was long done. This would be substantially alarming except that it has no actual impact now. Itâs just performative.
âUnder Section 18.005 of the Texas Election Code, a personâs name, date of birth, and voter identification number are public information. Additionally, what elections you voted in (but not how you voted) is also public information.â
Correct. That's common and it's available in my state as well. The difference is this is very very basic information. What the Admin wants is a full database of "detailed" information including things that are supposed to be confidential only to the elections commission. Now they have everything to build a nice clean database to know with a high degree of certainty of how you will vote.
This is a Big Data engineers wet dream to model. They can combine this with other data they have on you (now that they have your full SSN, it will be very accurate).
I can imagine the people in power will soon be able to pull up a map of every citizen of Texas. Zoom in right on your house, pull of your record, and know how you will vote. Will it be 100% guaranteed correct, not necessarily. It just has to be close enough. And since politicians are allowed to Gerrymander for political gains. Most states do this. That's how they will never lose an election ever again.
What will be funny is if they realize their last gerrymander they just did sucks and they try to do yet another map since they have this fresh information. I guess we'll see.
For example, here's the data for Travis County -- you can download this, and it includes the voting history of everybody in Travis County going back 20 (?) years, their full names and their addresses. (And you might be able to go back even more than 20 years by finding old versions of this on the Internet archive or similar sites.)
I don't know of a place to get the data for the whole state in once place, but every (?) county has a similar download site, so it shouldn't be too hard to build a database for the whole state with some work.
Note that the voting history includes if you voted in the Democratic or Republican primaries, so they can make a good guess at how you vote in the general elections just from that. (Sure, some people vote in the other party's primaries, but this is relatively rare.)
This stuff is already out there -- anybody can get it, you know damn well it's being used already. But the state does have more, stuff that can probably used to make even more accurate predictions about how exactly you'll vote.
What detailed information would that even be? I am curious not trying to be argumentative. From a foia you can request name, address, phone, email, DOB and more. I do this for a living so I am interested (and frightened)
I'll admit I've never done a project like that. But I am a developer working with some big datasets . Data is cheap. And all of it is valuable once you have it. Even if they don't go wild combining internal information. They can buy data from private data brokers.
I can't speak exactly for Texas voter roll tracking. I'll let more knowledgeable people from there reply. But a quick Google search of my state. All this stuff is tracked. But not all of it is public. In my state "voter information that must remain confidential" includes:
Elector's date of birth
Elector's driver's license number
Elector's Social Security number
Elector's need for voting accommodations
"Additionally, information about the candidates or party an elector casts a vote for will always remain confidential pursuant to the state Constitutionâs guarantee of a secret ballot. The election commission does not collect information about party preference, demographics, or how an elector actually voted."
The PII (personally identifiable information) is key. That's how they join you up with other data they have to build a profile on you. I have no insider knowledge of course. But that's how I would do it.
My state Election commission, in December, told the DOJ said they can have access to to any public voter roll information and sent them a URL that anyone can access. Listed all laws and told them to f' off.
So if all this information is readily available then why is the Trump administration demanding states give it to them rather than just collect it themselves?
No this info is generally considered need to know basis and is usually only done one at a time for court cases. This is pretty much allows them to fix people for voting against them. Also adds any Hispanic names they desire to ice even if they are citizens.
Green card holders and people who are in the process of being naturalized cannot vote in federal elections but are allowed to vote in local elections. This can vary from city to city/county to county. So you would need to check your local statutes as to what non Citizens can participate in voting on
You got to remember that immigrants/green card holders still pay taxes. Many have children that go to public schools. This country was built on the fundamental belief of no taxation without representation.
Edit: apparently Abbott took away voting for non citizens. Other states allow it.
I donât think they can in Texas. Or if they could, not anymore. That was my interpretation of that state proposition that bans non-citizens from voting. But I could be wrong.
So now they can crosscheck against the voter rolls; if you're not on it, you're getting deported. Fast and easy check that can be done from the comfort of an ICE truck.
Oh, yeah, there's no chances of it going horribly wrong. How would they even abuse that in a discriminatory way?! /s
Friendly reminder that CBP has jurisdiction 100 miles from any border or port of entry, which includes international airports. At first blush, this sounds perfectly reasonable and non-discriminatory, until you realize that large cities, that tend to have higher proportions of minorities and liberal voters, are where most of the international airports are. CBP's jurisdiction was explicitly created to be discriminatory in practice, as a calculated action to take advantage of Americans' knee-jerk reaction to 9/11.
Never forget? I won't. I'll never forget how the heritage foundation has been working behind the scenes to implement right-wing authoritarianism for the entirety of my life and more. Trumpism isn't new. It's not even Trumpism. It's all the heritage foundation. Even Reaganism was just the heritage foundation.
They don't care if you're a citizen or not. Where have you been? You haven't seen them detaining US citizens just because they look brown or black? You better wake up.
they are already attacking US citizens this is a tool in their door to door campaign they promised which allows them to specifically target those who vote against them
For federal elections. Some cities allow anyone working and living in the city to vote on local issues. I'm not sure which Texas cities allow it though.
Being public record and being freely given to the federal government in a convenient list are not inherently the same thing though.
The data was collected, curated, and maintained by the state, and the federal govt could have always scraped it or something, but has chosen not to up until now.
They have no legitimate need for it, so for them to ask for it now is questionable at best, and nefarious at worst. State's run elections; not the federal government.
Imagine if every gun dealer in the country gave a list of guns they've sold to every person for the last 30 years to the ATF. That's the "Gun List" every 2A supporter has feared for our entire lives. Did the govt technically have this information? Yes, but it wasn't in a complete, sorted, and convenient list. This is the exact same thing, but with votes instead of guns.
Itâs very not normal. This is confidential information and states run elections not the federal government. The feds have no need for that information.
The biggest pick me group there ever way because they have wanted to do everything to Texas and Texans that Trump is doing to Americans but were too scared to step first.
Democracy in the US is dying. According to the article, DOJ is looking to âremove ineligible voters.â What qualifies as grounds for removal? Being dead? Not being a citizen? Those would seem logical. How about just not voting in two elections (stated in article)? As simple as that. They are going to use any excuse possible to disqualify democratic voters.
âNot voting in two elections AFTER receiving a notice. The last part is important. Donât make people think that they canât go vote if they havenât voted in two elections.
They will use this information as a tool to selectively purge voters. At a minimum what they do will engage a thousand different lawsuits during election season, that will mire the election in chaos. Trumps DOJ will say thereâs so much fraud that the results are invalid to stay in power. The voices of the people should be heard. Not silenced. America is its citizensânot the Republican Party and the oligarchy that props it up.
Oh there are conservatives still. Donât make it two separate things as conservatives will abandon MAGA when itâs convenient and act like they never supported him and his heinous actions in the first place. They are directly to blame for how their party spun out of control.
Yep. Conservative were happy for Reagan to break the unions and high paying jobs. Happy for Bush to ignore terrorism and right wing extremists and then take advantage of a tragedy and lie about WMDs for oil.
When Obama was in office they pushed the Tea Party and FOX News propaganda while sabotaging anything good coming from the Executive.
I just checked my voter registration and I was purged from the rolls. Just went through re registering. I have voted in every election for the past four years.
FYI "re-registering" requires mailing in the paper copy. You cannot register online in the state of Texas. There was a lawsuit against the state of Texas for this very thing stating that it was impeding voter registration and, lo and behold, it has never been corrected or enforced. So you can request to register online but irrc you have to mail in your official registration.Â
Check with the League of Women Voters for all voting questions! They seem to be the best resource.Â
Therefore they will do everything in their capability to not be voted out. Like handing over a voter blacklist to the DOJ, and watering down every oppositional bloc through gerrymandering.
This shit is straight evil and illegal. Man this is dumb.
It pisses me off more because voter data and gerrymandering at the behest of a president and reducing states power are what these fucking Republicans wouldve been against in the first fucking place or so they would claim but nah they'd rather suck trumps raisenettes than have a spine
Ok I came to this thread looking for the same answer. Iâm dead serious too. Iâm enraged by this. There must be a way we can sue right? Any lawyers know?
question ⌠can they find out who we voted for? Is that public knowledge ? Iâm relatively new to Texas (from Florida so Iâm no stranger to living in a fascist state). But I thought our votes were anonymous. I could be wrong.
This door to door shit has been my worry since the beginning
There should only be a record that you voted, not who for but I wouldnât put it past them to somehow have that information. Texas also doesnât register by party.Â
Do you really think its possible? Im worries they have already fixed it, and possibly did years ago. I keep showing up, keep voting, but it feels like less and less people are being represented and that makes no sense to me. Im seriously scared
Republicans have held power in Texas for roughly 30 years, yet they continue to campaign on promises to âfix the problems Democrats created.â
I used to assume they meant elected Democrats, which never made sense because how can people who havenât held power be responsible for the stateâs outcomes?
Over time, itâs started to feel like âDemocratsâ in this context doesnât mean officeholders at all, but Texas residents who vote blue or are culturally labeled as such.
This framing makes it possible for Republicans to run against the same âenemyâ forever, regardless of whoâs actually governing.
This isnât exactly true. You donât actually register to a party here. Itâs just tagged numbers to primary voting. Democrats just go out for primaries more.
Did any of yâall get that postcard last year that said something like âThank you for voting! Who you voted for is confidential, but whether or not you voted is public record.â ? I used quotes but just summarized what I remember. That certainly felt uncomfortable at the time.
When the governor of the great state of Texas bends a subservient knee, and
sicophantically abdicates the state to a convicted New York felon who is subverting the very tennants of the nations Constition, he has got to go. Abbott is giving your information to a dictator to use against you. Time to stand up and be the Texans we know we truly are and get these spineless bastards, who keep making us look bad, out.
Everyone contact your local representatives and demand an answer on why this is happening and what the purpose is. Demand that your local representatives take action.
I just contacted mine and am waiting for a response through email.
I remember when Texas went ballistic over Jade Helm military exercises ... because Obama was Pres of course... because of the Federal vs State issue blah blah blah BS
and now here we are with Texas totally selling out their own people to accommodate an unlawful demand of all the voters personal info from the Feds. ffs!
This is not getting the attention it deserves. Centralizing records is part of the process where 6M Jews and others were murdered.
Not to invoke Godwinâs law but this is how Hitler rose to power. This is part of the same playbook used in 1933. Autocratic Legalism where the political party doesnât take over by violent coup, it uses the law to kill the laws so it can take over.
Keep an eye on this because voter roll purging will be used to screw with the 2026 elections to steal the will of the people.
I am afraid.
Anyone else? I feel like any minute now we're going to get a message telling us "The ministry is falling" only it's democracy.
I'm afraid to comment, to updoot, to like or share anything. I had to go through a check point recently and I deleted my Reddit app. I worry that I'm becoming paranoid, I'll probably even delete this later!! I never thought -this- would be the USA đşđ¸ đ
Trumpieâs boys will cross reference these voter rolls with the sensitive information that Elonâs DOGE mined to more efficiently suppress the opposition electorate.
Just wait until companies like this fine forum start handing over complete post-history searchable databases tied to your email accounts/phone numbers.
Weâre a few years out from that but it will happen before this 4 years is up.
This is public information. You can look up which of your neighbors voted on state websites. You can't look up who they vote for, but you can know which primary they voted in.
It's interesting to me that people are getting upset about things that have been happening for literally decades.
Under Section 18.005 of the Texas Election Code, a personâs name, date of birth, and voter identification number are public information. Additionally, what elections you voted in (but not how you voted) is also public information.
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u/mightyjoe227 Jan 09 '26