Author: Sherry Sylvester

What an ugly irony that the Houston Chronicle—which may be the most out-of-touch and Texas-hating newspaper of the metropolitan big five—has just won a Pulitzer Prize for a series they called “The Big Lie.”

Predictably, the left-wing Pulitzer crowd is lauding a series written by four editorial writers that they say “reveals voter suppression tactics…” in the Texas election reforms that were adopted in the 2021 legislative session. Like the New York Times’ repeatedly debunked 1619 Project, the Chronicle’s “Big Lie” insists that election politics in Texas has been rooted in racism since reconstruction. It demonizes Republicans and insists efforts to increase transparency and public trust in elections is all a ruse. The editorials claim:

“[Election] Integrity is no more the goal for them than it was for the white primary associations of the 1900s. Only today’s voter fraud warriors have laser pointers.”

The series mostly forgets that it was Democrats who established those “white primary associations” at the turn of the century, while the Republican Party was the party of reform, primarily comprised of African-American Texans.

The Houston Chronicle editorial writers rail against requiring a photo ID in order to vote, a Texas law that passed in 2011, as well as what they describe as the refusal of the state lawmakers to allow voting “innovations” like 24-hour and drive-in voting.

The Pulitzer committee apparently didn’t bother to fact check the series, or they would have learned that it wasn’t just Republicans who support requiring a photo voter ID in order to vote—nearly 85% of all Texans support it, including Democrats.

As for the charge of “voter suppression,” a Texas Association of Business poll (TAB) conducted in 2021 during the election reform debate found that fully 95% of Texans surveyed—again, that is people from both parties—say it is “easy” to vote in Texas elections.

And there’s no voter suppression. Since photo voter ID has passed in Texas, there have been record breaking voter turnouts in both presidential and gubernatorial year elections.

Voter turnout in Texas increased 40% in the 2020 presidential election and 76% in the 2018 gubernatorial election. In 2012, 58% of registered Texans voted and in 2020, almost 67% voted.

The news hook for the “Big Lie” editorial series were blaring headlines in Texas and nationwide that 12% of Texas mail-in ballots had been rejected in the March primary election. Always looking for ways to demonize Texas, almost none of the news stories on mail-in ballots in the primary reported that those ballots, which required verified identification of either a driver’s license or a social security number, included only about 1% of the total ballots cast in the election. Since it’s not clear how many of those voters went on to vote in-person anyway, like Willie Nelson, the percentage could be even smaller.

But actual numbers didn’t distract the Houston Chronicle’s writers from pushing their ugly theory that racism motivated Texas Republican leaders, who they charge with manipulating Republican voters into believing that protections against voter fraud were needed. It apparently didn’t matter to them that it isn’t just Republicans who want election security—Democrats support it too. The TAB poll also found 85% of Texans in both political parties believe mail-in ballots should require the same identification as in-person voting. Voter fraud in mail-in balloting has never been a secret in Texas, even among Democrats.

In 2007, when photo voter ID was first being debated, Texas State Rep. Rafael Anchia, a leading Democrat leader from Dallas, spoke against expanding photo voter ID, by using the argument that where real reform was needed was in ballot by mail:  He said: “…vote by mail that we know is the greatest source of voter fraud in this state…” requires no identification.

Still, the story of the 12% mail-in ballot rejection moved forward in both the state and national press unchallenged by any reporter.  However, a new poll from RMG Research suggests that even people outside Texas didn’t really buy it. In early May, when asked about the 12% of mail-in ballots that were rejected in Texas, RMG found, predictably, that a third believed what they’d heard in the media, but a larger number—almost 40 percent—believed the rejected ballots indicated that there had been more voter fraud in the past and the new rules were finally able to catch it.

A Pulitzer fact check would have revealed another “big lie” in the Houston Chronicle’s “Big Lie.” Before election reforms were passed in 2021 the Chronicle wrote that the “state stands to lose more than $31 billion in economic activity and 223,000 jobs by 2025…” because of backlash over the legislation. In fact, Texas, which was among the first states to recover from the pandemic, lost no money and zero jobs because of the election reforms.

This piece is riddled with many snide little lies, too, and ignores how Texans feel about the Texas House Democrats who shut down the Texas House and flew to Washington, D.C. to protest the election reforms bill. A Texas Public Policy Foundation poll showed that Texans opposed the walkout by a 2-to-1 margin.

Far from being an award-winner, the Houston Chronicle’s “Big Lie” series is just one more in what has become a staple of the Texas press. Texans are portrayed as gullible rubes at best—if not evil, calculating racists. The media doesn’t seem able to accept that conservatives don’t win elections in Texas because of rigged election rules; over the past two decades, conservatives have won with whatever rules were on the books.

Texans elect conservatives because they share their principles and they like their ideas. They also win because Texas liberals haven’t had a good idea in at least two decades. That’s the Big Truth!

Sherry Sylvester, a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, is a political communications and public policy expert who has directed multi-million dollar statewide campaigns in New York, New Jersey and Texas. Campaigns and Elections Magazine has called her a “respected veteran” of hard-fought elections and in 2005, her alma mater, the Graduate School of Political Management, now at George Washington University in Washington D.C., named her “alumni of the year,” for her accomplishments in the field of professional politics. Early in her career Sherry worked as the Communications Director for U.S. Senate candidate Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman ever nominated for Vice President on a major party ticket. She also worked for David Dinkins, the first African-American to be elected Mayor of New York City. In Texas, she served for over a decade as the spokesperson and a strategic advisor to Texans for Lawsuit Reform, the most successful tort reform organization in the nation. She was a member of the original campaign and transition teams of Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and she managed his 2018 re-election campaign. She served for seven years as Senior Advisor to the Lt. Governor.

See Sherry’s latest op-eds;

“Every Parent Should Read ‘Gender Queer’”

“Opinion: Texas fails victims of sex trafficking. Overhaul child welfare services now.”

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Calls from the left and the media to repeal the updated rules for mail-in ballots are predictable. They opposed requiring photo voter identification to vote too. The attack on the reforms to mail-in ballot rules defy the data—and common sense.

First, the numbers. Opponents of the new law highlight that over 12% of mail-in ballots were rejected in the last primary election. That sounds high until you consider that more than 3 million people voted, making those rejected mail-in ballots less than 1% of all ballots cast.

But even that would overstate the problem, because the Texas law requires officials to work with voters to try to reconcile rejected ballots. Famously, Willie Nelson’s initial ballot was rejected, which he then reportedly fixed and resubmitted. There are surely others who did the same.

Additionally, once a voter received word their ballot was rejected, they could have decided to vote in person instead. We don’t know how many did, but while opponents of the law are attempting to claim that “confusing new rules” were responsible for large numbers of supposedly disenfranchised voters, the truth is that even if there was some initial confusion, it only affected a tiny fraction of votes cast. There is no reason to repeal the new law.

And now for some common sense. Elections have rules because without them we cannot trust the results. The two most basic rules for ensuring election integrity are that voters must demonstrate they are who they say they are and that they are eligible to vote in the election. Most voters do this by voting in person and showing an election worker a photo identification card that has both the voter’s picture and address on it, verifying identity and eligibility.

Mail-in ballots are inherently less secure. There is no way to guarantee that the ballot was received or filled out by the voter who applied for it. The identity protections for mail-in ballots that existed before the new law, such as matching signatures, proved meaningless.

A system in which some votes are verified and others are not is unacceptable. That’s why the Legislature was compelled to act last year. Texas has strong protections and relatively easy procedures for voting in person. Now the same is true for mail-in ballots.

Not only is this common sense, but the new measures are supported by the vast majority of Texans. In polls taken during the debate over the new rules last year, 89% of Texans said they support photo voter ID and 81% said voting in person and by mail should have the same voter identification requirements.

Every rejected ballot is one that couldn’t prove voter identity and/or eligibility. The increased number of rejected mail-in ballots is evidence that the law is working to prevent the inclusion of unverified and potentially fraudulent votes, which protects the legitimacy of election results, just as Texans want.

Do voters make honest mistakes? Of course. But there’s a process for reconciling mistakes for mail-in voters who neglect to put their address or even their own name on a mail-in ballot.

Texas voters don’t buy that the updated rules are too “confusing.” Fully 80% agree mail-in ballots should include either the identification number of a valid government ID or a partial Social Security number.

In the March primary, over 99% of voters were able to understand the rules and vote successfully without issue. For the tiny fraction of those who didn’t, there’s a process for making it right. Texas’ election reforms strengthen protections for every ballot and improve  confidence in election results. It’s a better system that clearly works.

Despite constant efforts by the Texas media and their collaborators in the progressive left, to divide us by race and ethnicity, a new statewide survey of Hispanic Texans conducted for the Texas Public Policy Foundation finds that 84% say they are proud of being Texans and almost 60% say they have the same access to the American dream as Anglo Texans.

Focus groups conducted last fall found that Hispanics, like most Texans, say they are proud to live in a state that does things right—where the cost of living is low, there are jobs and business opportunities, and the economy is strong.

Progressives and the media have also lost Texas Hispanics in the war against history. Fully 72% of Texas Hispanics view the story of Texas history as their story, including the Texas Revolution, the Alamo, along with the image of the Lone Star State as a beacon of liberty and freedom. While all recognize that Texas has very dark chapters in our history, Texas Hispanics don’t buy the narrative put out in a book last year by a Democrat operative and a couple of reporters that Texas history is a lie.

When South Texas trended largely toward Donald Trump in the 2020 election, flipping a half-dozen counties from blue to red, Texas political watchers finally recognized that Texas Hispanics cannot reliably be counted on as part of the left-leaning progressive base. As my colleague Rafa Bajar recently pointed out, the TPPF survey clearly shows that whether they live in the Rio Grande Valley or elsewhere in the Lone Star State, Hispanics in Texas say they are mostly conservative or moderate on most issues.

This trend has been showing up in Hispanic voting trends in Texas for at least a decade. In 2014, South Texas Hispanics soundly rejected then-Sen. Wendy Davis in the Democrat gubernatorial primary. Davis,’ only claim to fame is a pro-abortion filibuster against a bill that passed a few weeks later. She has just had a movie released about the failed filibuster, but South Texas Hispanics gave her a thumbs down from the beginning. Reynoldo Madrigal, an unknown who was running against Davis for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, beat Davis in 20 South Texas counties even though she had spent millions and he spent nothing.

According to a University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll, Davis’ favorability rating among Hispanics was only 19% back then and in June of 2014, Hispanics picked Gov. Greg Abbott over Davis as the better leader on taxes by 10 points.

Granted, 40% of Hispanics voted for Davis that year, but compare that with the almost 80% of African Americans who voted for her and you can see the huge Hispanic gap in the Texas liberal base. Abbott trounced Davis by 20 points in 2014.

Last month, the same poll found that only 21% of Texas Hispanics had a very favorable view of the current Democrat candidate, Beto O’Rourke, the same amount as view him unfavorably. Only 42% say they plan to vote for O’Rourke in November, but again, compare that to the 62% of African American Texans who say they will vote for him.

In 2017, two-thirds of Texas Hispanics told UT pollsters that they do not believe there is a right to an abortion in the U.S. Constitution—a statement that is heresy for liberals and progressives.

Another heretical statement for the left is the views of Hispanic Texans when it comes to school choice. TPPF’s survey did not phrase this hot-button question ambiguously. They asked: Do you support or oppose the concept of school choice if it gives parents the right to use the tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send their child to whatever school, public, charter or private school that best serves their needs? The results: 78% said yes and only 16% said no.

School choice is anathema among even moderate Democrats, but Hispanic Texans put the well-being, success, and happiness of their children above the woke and anti-parent agenda of the teacher’s unions.

Support for their children is also clear in the findings of a study released last fall, which found that 64% of Texas Hispanics support banning boys from girls’ sports, rejecting another Democrat platform plank.

Hispanic Texans have also rejected the woke agenda being pushed by the left including the anti-family effort that drives the push for Critical Race Theory in public school curriculums along with the so-called gender identity movement. These attacks on parents’ rights and traditional family values are both planks in the radical left-wing platform.

In the run-up to November 2022, liberal activists are scrambling to figure out why Texas Hispanics are not reliable Democrat voters in the same way that African Americans are. One answer maybe have emerged last week as part of Gallup’s annual World Happiness Poll. Gallup pollsters found that a key factor for those who report happiness is a strong family and multigenerational environment. According to them, that’s why most Latin American countries are among the top 50 happiest countries, despite poverty in the Central and South America regions.

Strong multigenerational families are also part of the Texas Hispanic culture. Liberal progressives will not be successful in reversing Hispanic voting trends in Texas as long as they push anti-family initiatives and anti-Texas rhetoric.

One final note to progressives and the Texas media—97% of Texas Hispanics reject the silly woke term, “Latinx”—so you might want to stop using it.