Texas Democrats are taking a page from the Republican playbook, hoping to boost early voting numbers ahead of the November election by targeting voters that benefit from mail-in ballots. The party and political experts also sees absentee voting as a way-around Texas’ Voter voter ID Lawslaws.
Pushing absentee -ballots ahead of the general election has long been a winning tactic for Texas Republicans, but Democrats are hoping they too can benefit from this same strategy during the 2014 general elections. But iIn the past, however, a large majority of those mail-in ballots came from seniors that typically voted Republican, so what has changed?
Will Hailer is the executive director for the Texas Democratic Party. and He believes said this population of Texas voters is was ready for a change.
“I think seniors are starting to get upset at some of the reckless spending, some of the reckless [spending] by Republicans in Austin, so that gave us a good entry in doing a vote-by-mail program,” said Hailer said.
Hailer sayse added that a vote-by-mail system also gives gave the 600,000-thousand Texans he says said are without access to a Voter voter ID card, an the ability to cast a ballot, . a A large percentage of this particular population are comes from minority and lower-income voters.
Prof. Mark Jones, the head of Rice University’s Political Science Department, says this could actually work to the Democrats’ advantage.
“The nice thing about mail-in ballots is that you can target individual people who you believe have a high propensity to vote Democratic. and And therefore, the party can target resources on those individuals strictly — on those they might believe might not turn out if they didn’t have an absentee ballot, or didn’t have proper ID and wouldn’t be able to cast a ballot”,” he said.
Jones added that he expects expected to see an increase in mail-in ballots leading up to election Election dayDay, but says believed it was’s still too early to tell if that uptick will would continue and lead to any wins for Texas Democrats.
