El Paso GOP Attempts Voter Suppression in Canutillo

In a fairly transparent effort of voter suppression the El Paso Republican Party made a pitch to commissioners court yesterday to remove an early voting location from Canutillo.

The only real question is whether it is because Canutillo votes heavily Democratic or because Canutillo is heavily Latino.

Originally the argument was about a specific voting location, which is the Canutillo ISD Administration building. Essentially the GOP won that argument and another location was chosen. I'll get to why commissioners court screwed Canutillo on that one in a minute.

This started last week and within the last few days Javier Chacon (Elections Department Head) came up with a proposal to move the early voting location to the nutrition center in Canutillo. The Republicans tipped their hand to their true intentions when despite the suggestion of the alternate location, the GOP continued with their efforts to remove a voting location from Canutillo.

Former Judge Bill Hicks addressed the legal portion of their argument. He was followed by all the officers of the GOP. I got a kick out of how all of them started their speeches with "I rise today...:

Obviously the GOP doesn't want a big push of voters coming from Canutillo. The reason we know this is because they haven't raised this issue before. They haven't raised the issue because they were pretty confident that Canutillo wouldn't tip the scales in a given race. Now the Republicans have to defend their last two remaining seats and they are feeling the heat.

Frankly I think they are all wrong about it. Republicans apparently don't get it. You don't need to suppress the Latino vote. We don't that all by ourselves. Its not necessary to suppress a vote that doesn't exist. 

Now here's how commissioner's court screwed the CISD. CISD has a board election in November and there are five seats up for grabs and only one of them has an incumbent. The Cimarron subdivision has over a hundred families living and paying taxes in it. The new site will mean a longer trip for voters to head to the polls to vote. 

Oh and by the way, in case y'all forgot, the school districts had a lot of people involved in the public corruption scandal. We should be bending over backward to increase voter participation not making it more difficult. 

Apparently no one has learned their lesson.