Before Super Tuesday, the essential Ari Berman pointed out on the electric Twitter machine that, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s having gutted the Voting Rights Act, Texas had gone out of its way to close 750 polling places. (The Guardian looked into the numbers and came to the unsurprising conclusion that these closures affected minority voters most harshly.) And that’s how Hervis Rodgers became famous on Tuesday night. Rodgers waited seven hours to vote at a polling station on the campus of Texas Southern University in Houston. From ABC13:



“I wanted to get my vote in, voice my opinion,” he said proudly. “I wasn’t going to let anything stop me, so I waited it out.” Lines were so bad at the TSU polling place that volunteers organized to bring pizza to voters who had to endure lengthy waits. Eventually, Harris County Clerk Diane Trautman sent more voting machines to the site, although for many voters it was too little, too late. “It’s taking a long time on the Democratic side and the Republican side has a bunch of empty machines that no one is using,” voter Britany Turner told ABC 13.



The voter-suppression tactics are going to get more grotesquely obvious this time around, and they’re already set up in too many places, and they differ not at all from the tactics of tinhorns the world over. In fact, according to the official United Nations instructions for its election monitors, one of their prime duties is to ensure that...



Political parties should not face unreasonable restrictions on participation or campaigning. There should be protection under the law for party names and symbols. Procedures for designation of party agents, for nomination time and place requirements, and for campaign financing should be clearly established by law. In addition, the electoral calendar should provide adequate time for campaigning and public information efforts.



They’re going to love Houston some day.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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