i know its real fun to talk shit about texas and to laugh it up about how stupid texans are but can we PLEASE acknowledge that this election made texas purple, and that there have been HUGE efforts to bring out people of color and poor people who have previously been disenfranchised, and that even though beto didnt win this is STILL A REALLY IMPORTANT STEP. especially the latino voting population grew enormously this election cycle. fuck the 71% of white men and 59% of white women who voted for cruz, and i dont wanna come off like im making some kind of “not all texans” argument, but the people of color here r fighting tooth and nail and it sucks that ppl r just unilaterally saying “texans stupid nyeh”
Texas is also gerrymandered all to hell by its majority GOP congress, which means it needs literally MORE than a popular vote majority to go more blue than it already is. If you actually look at our election maps by county, you’ll see that Texas is split up into a handful of HUGE blue counties and then literally HUNDREDS of tiny red counties, some with less that 500 voters, even some with less than 100 voters. Some of those tiny counties that usually go red did go blue this election, but it still stacks the cards against blue votes in Texas in ways sanctimonious born and raised in blue state progressives have literally never experienced and have no idea how demoralizing it is.
It is a massive deal how much people actually mobilized and voted and TRIED when I know when I was growing up there the perception was that it was utterly pointless. Yes, definitely, there are many conservative voters in Texas to be angry with, but blaming blue voters for “not trying hard enough” is the opposite of helpful right now.
Not to mention it makes it look entirely performative how much some people care about voter suppression….until they actually see it affect election results directly and still blame it on individuals.
Some of those machines were LITERALLY rigged. Texas did really well, and I hope people don’t get discouraged by this. Same with Florida. It may not be as fast as we hoped, but change is happening
QueerGalaxies 