During all the heated debate about the Texas "election integrity" bill, I asked what seemed to me a simple question in a tweet. I asked if the Texas law had a no-food-or-water clause analogous to that in Georgia, passed into law earlier this year.
I hadn't located the actual bill text yet when I asked. It turns out I had to find it for myself -- nobody on twitter was at all helpful. Here is the link:
Bill Text: TX SB7 | 2021-2022 | 87th Legislature | Introduced | LegiScan
And the answer, at a quick scan, is "no." There is no analogous clause.
But, to get back to my story: I asked this question on twitter and received only one reply (no answer). The reply wondered why I hadn't said "New York" instead of "Georgia" for purpose of comparison. After all, New York has the "same" rules.
A little research indicates further: no, New York does not have the same rules. It has some similar rules, which seem to have been in place for years and which have gone unenforced. Some apologists for the Georgia rules seems to have researched and to have found a "liberal state" with food-and-drink-in-line restrictions. New York was "it."
For the record, Georgia's rules are more draconian, and were surely not modeled after New York's, although the apologists press even that claim when they think the market will bear it.
At least in Texas (where the heat is a "dry heat," as opposed to humid Georgia) you'll still be able to bring your friend a glass of water to remedy that aridity while he waits in line.
Bringing up New York is analogous to the way that Trump supporters defended Trump's kidnapping migrants' children and babies by falsely claiming that Obama had done the same. They are apparently unaware that, even if a precedent for an evil act exists (and one always does somewhere), such a precedent does not justify doing the evil act now.
ReplyDelete