Straight-ticket, or one-punch, voting enables people to check “Democrat” or “Republican” in a single spot on a ballot, usually the first page, thereby registering a vote for every candidate of that party in every race.
In the 2018 general election, about two-thirds of Texans who voted – more than 5.6 million people – cast single-ticket ballots, a prevalence attributable in part, researchers say, to the extraordinary lengthiness of ballots in Texas. In some counties, a general election ballot can include as many as 95 races.
Minority voters, more often than not Democratic voters, historically have been far more likely to vote a straight ticket than white voters, a distinction at the heart of a continuing partisan battle over the practice.
In 2017, Republicans in the Texas Legislature, over the objections of their Democratic colleagues, pushed through a bill eliminating the straight-ticket option, effective this year. Votes in both the House and Senate split sharply along party lines, and when that happens in Austin, the Democrats lose. Gov. Greg Abbott signed the measure into law June 1, 2017.
Democrats have sued to have the law overturned. Their suit, pending before U.S. District Judge Marina Garcia Marmolejo in Laredo, argues that eliminating the one-punch ballot disproportionately affects African American and Hispanic voters, and, therefore, Democratic candidates who rely on overwhelming support among minority voters.
Eliminating straight-ticket voting, the lawsuit says, will almost surely result in longer lines and onerous delays at Texas polling places; a one-punch vote is quick. This, the suit argues, would create disproportionate burdens on minority Texans, who are statistically more likely than white voters to have inflexible work schedules and to lack access to transportation and child care.
Supporters of the 2017 law said it will encourage voters to make informed decisions about each individual race. A voter paging through a ballot one race at a time, they noted, can always skip a race if the voter simply knows nothing about either candidate and has no idea whom to choose. Voters can also skip a race if they don’t like either candidate . But with straight-ticket voting, one candidate or the other picks up a vote, no matter what.
They added that eliminating the one-punch option doesn’t stop Texan from voting a “straight ticket.” Anyone who wants to do so is free to go through the ballot top to bottom and vote for everyone from his or her party.
Democratic lawmakers were unmoved by such arguments back in 2017. They said getting rid of straight-ticket voting was one in a line of cynical Republican efforts to suppress voting among Texans who remain at the core of the Democratic Party’s strength.
“Frankly, I don’t see any purpose for this legislation other than trying to dilute the vote of Democrats and, more specifically, minorities,” said state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas.
In scrapping the straight-party vote, Texas joined a national trend. Straight-ticket voting was prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s, before electronic voting. Paper ballots were often long and cumbersome, and filling them in by hand could be time-consuming.
Since 1994, at least 14 states have abolished or significantly curtailed the use of straight-ticket voting. Only six still allow it: Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.
In a sense, straight-party voting is electoral socialism (or, perhaps, electoral welfare). A voter checks the Republican box, and every Thanh, Dick and Mary with REP next to their name automatically picks up a vote, even if the person voting never heard of Thanh, doesn’t know anything about the office Thanh’s running for, and is really only interested in the race for governor or U.S. senator or president headlining the ballot – the “yuge” ones, as President Donald Trump might say.
In particular, the one-punch ballot became a golden goose for Democrats in down-ballot races, including district court races, in the state’s most populous blue counties, Harris and Dallas.
The flip side, of course, is that one-punch voting was bad news for down-ballot Republicans.
In 2016, the year Shuchart lost to Palmer, there were 23 state district court races on the Harris County ballot. Democrats won all 23. In 2018, there were 24. Democrats won those, too.
Chief Justice Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court wrote in 2017 that party affiliation ought never be the principal, much less the overriding, determinant of whether someone is elected judge.
In his State of the Judiciary message that year, he decried that among the Republican district court candidates rejected by Harris County voters in 2016 were 11 sitting judges.
“Such partisan sweeps are demoralizing to judges and disruptive to the legal system,” he wrote. Hecht, a Republican, not only recommended that judicial races be exempted from straight-ticket voting; he also called for an eventual end to the partisan election of judges.
“For the loser now,” Bob Dylan wrote, “will be later to win.” Eventually, the winds of politics shift. Democrats have the upper hand now, but there was a time not long ago when Republican electoral strength made it all but impossible for a Democrat, no matter how qualified, to win a seat on the Harris or Dallas County bench.
“When people vote by party, there’s a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” Shuchart said.
“Some very good Republican judges lost in 2016 and 2018 – just like some good Democratic judges lost in 2010.”
Publisher’s Note: This coverage of the 2020 judicial elections by The Texas Lawbook is being made available outside our paywall courtesy of Thompson Coburn and Carter Arnett.