LO 5.1 — Turnout & Obstacles to Voting

• Voter turnout can be calculated 3 ways: % of voting-age population (VAP — everyone 18+, even non-eligible), % of registered voters, or % of voting-eligible population (VEP — the most accurate; excludes non-citizens and unrestored felons). In the 2020 Texas general election these gave three different numbers: 51.3% (VAP), 60.2% (VEP), 66.7% (registered voters) — same election, three defensible answers, depending on the denominator.
• Texas ranked 45th in the nation in 2020 turnout; national average was 66% VEP vs. Texas's 60.2%.
• 12.6% of Texas's voting-age population was ineligible in 2020 due to citizenship status; another 2% due to unrestored felon status. (Felony voting rights are restored automatically in Texas once a sentence, including probation/parole, is fully completed.)
• Education is the single strongest socioeconomic predictor of turnout — stronger than income, gender, or age.
• Age matters via a life-cycle effect, not fixed identity — young adults (Gen Z, Millennials) vote least, but turnout climbs as people age/settle into communities.
• Political efficacy — belief that elected officials respond to your input. High efficacy → more likely to vote. Strong partisans (strong D or strong R) also vote more than weak partisans/independents.
• Turnout gap (Bernard Fraga's research) — Black, Latino, and Asian American Texans vote at lower rates than Whites even controlling for education/income/age; the gap shrinks when a group's numbers are large enough to actually swing an election.
• Mobilization — registration drives, phone calls, door-knocking, social media outreach by parties/candidates/nonpartisan groups (League of Women Voters, MOVE Texas, Voto Latino). People who are personally contacted are more likely to vote.
• Universal suffrage — voting open to virtually all citizens 18+ — did not become a practical reality in Texas until the mid-1960s, a full century after the 14th/15th Amendments.
• Poll tax — required 1902–1966 ($1.75 by the end); disproportionately blocked poor, Black, and Mexican American voters. Ended by the 24th Amendment (1964, national elections) and a 1966 Texas constitutional amendment (state elections), reinforced by Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966).
• White primary — Texas's 1923 law made the Democratic primary a "private" party function to legally exclude Black voters (since the Democratic primary = the real election in one-party Texas). Struck down in Smith v. Allwright (1944).
• Literacy tests — used in other Southern states (NOT Texas) starting in the 1870s to disenfranchise Black voters under cover of "civic knowledge" testing. Banned nationally by the VRA of 1965.
• Grandfather clause — also NOT used in Texas; exempted anyone (or their descendants) who could vote before 1867 from literacy/property/tax tests — obviously excluded Black citizens. Struck down in Guinn v. United States (1915).
• Gerrymandering — drawing district lines to include/exclude groups of voters. Diluting tactics: cracking/splintering (spread a minority population thin across many districts so it's never a majority anywhere) and packing (cram a minority into few districts to limit their overall influence). Affirmative racial gerrymandering is legal — drawing "majority-minority"/minority-opportunity districts to help elect minority candidates — as long as race isn't the sole basis for the lines.
• At-large districts dilute minority voting strength because representatives are elected citywide rather than by neighborhood; San Antonio replaced its at-large council with single-member districts in 1977 after DOJ found it violated the VRA.
• ⚠️ Shaw v. Reno (1993) — on the test review, but not covered in either textbook edition or the PowerPoint. Standard definition: a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case (North Carolina) holding that redistricting plans that are so bizarrely shaped they can only be explained by race are subject to "strict scrutiny" under the Equal Protection Clause — i.e., race cannot be the *predominant* factor in drawing district lines, even when the intent is to help minority representation. It's the case that put real limits on affirmative racial gerrymandering.
• Voting Rights Act of 1965 — banned literacy tests; capped residency requirements at 30 days for presidential elections; required some/all early or absentee voting; required bilingual ballots where a large share of residents speak another primary language (Spanish statewide in TX; also Vietnamese & Chinese in Harris County/Houston). Renewed 4 times by Congress, most recently through 2031.
• Shelby County v. Holder (2013) — struck down the VRA's Section 4(b) coverage formula that determined which jurisdictions (Texas included) needed federal "preclearance" before changing election laws. Effectively ended preclearance. Section 2 of the VRA (banning discriminatory voting practices generally) is still in force — but now requires a lawsuit after the fact rather than pre-approval.
• Motor-voter law (National Voter Registration Act, 1993) — requires certain government offices (DMV, public assistance/disability offices, military recruiters) to offer voter registration. A 2020 federal court order forced Texas to extend this to online driver's license renewals.
• Constitutional amendments expanding the vote: 15th (race, 1870), 19th (sex, 1920), 24th (banned poll tax, 1964), 26th (age 18, 1971).

LO 5.2 — Vote Choice, Campaigns & Campaign Finance

• Vote choice drivers: candidate character/favorability, issue positions, and — the single best predictor, especially down-ballot — party identification. With less information (judicial/county races), voters lean on party ID even more heavily.
• Texas is a "media state" for campaigns — its sheer size (20 media markets — more than any state but California) makes personal, county-by-county campaigning impractical, forcing reliance on expensive TV/radio/digital advertising.
• Sound bite — a short, quotable statement designed to convey a campaign theme, usually 10 seconds to a minute on TV.
• Negative campaigning — research finds ads focused on irrelevant, uncivil attacks discourage voters, while civil ads on relevant issues can actually boost participation.
• Political action committee (PAC) — an organization created to collect and distribute campaign contributions.
• Texas Ethics Commission — established 1993; enforces campaign finance/lobbying disclosure law; constitutionally mandated to have 4 Republican + 4 Democratic members; can levy fines but has limited authority to cap contributions.
• Texas places almost no limits on campaign contributions — the major exception is judicial candidates, whose limits are tiered by the population of the court's jurisdiction: $5,000 (Supreme Court/Court of Criminal Appeals, or district/county courts with 1M+ population), $2,500 (250K–1M population), $1,000 (under 250K population).
  ⚠️ The Texas law creating these judicial limits is the Judicial Campaign Fairness Act — this is on your sample quiz but the Act isn't named in either textbook edition (only the dollar-limit mechanism is). Standard definition: a 1995 Texas law that set contribution limits and disclosure/reporting rules specifically for judicial campaigns, in response to concerns about the appearance of "buying" judicial decisions.
• Campaign Reform Act (2002, "McCain-Feingold") — federal law restricting soft money (unregulated money for party-building/issue ads, not directly to a candidate) and regulating hard money (capped, direct-to-candidate contributions). Upheld in McConnell v. FEC (2003).
• Citizens United v. FEC (2010) — struck down limits on independent political spending by corporations/unions, opening the door to Super PACs — committees that can raise/spend unlimited money as long as they don't coordinate directly with a candidate's campaign.
• McCutcheon v. FEC (2014) — struck down the *aggregate* cap on how much an individual could donate across all federal candidates/parties/PACs combined in one cycle (per-candidate limits still apply).
• Dark money — political spending by nonprofits that don't have to disclose their donors, because they're technically organized as "social welfare" groups rather than PACs.
• 2018 Cruz vs. O'Rourke U.S. Senate race: $138.5 million total — 2nd-most-expensive Senate race in the nation that cycle.

LO 5.3 — Racial & Ethnic Politics

• Latinos, Black Americans, and Asian Americans together = 57% of Texas's population but do not yet make up a majority of actual voters — the turnout gap in action.
• Latinos — lean strongly Democratic overall (Biden won ~67% of the Latino vote in 2020) but are internally diverse: the Rio Grande Valley shifted toward Trump in 2020 even as Latinos in big metro counties favored Biden 2-to-1. A large Latino population does not guarantee a Democratic win (see: Tony Gonzales winning a heavily Latino 23rd district as a Republican in 2020).
• 2002: Tony Sanchez became the first Latino nominated for governor by a major party. 2018: Sylvia Garcia & Veronica Escobar became the first Mexican American Latinas elected to the U.S. House from Texas.
• Black Americans — the most consistently Democratic-voting group (86%+ in recent statewide races). 1990: Morris Overstreet became the first Black Texan elected to statewide office. Identification with the Democratic Party dates to the 1930s, strengthened after 1960s civil rights legislation under LBJ.
• Asian Americans — fast-growing, diverse, increasingly Democratic-leaning as a whole, but varies sharply by national-origin group: Indian Americans lean Democratic, Vietnamese Americans lean Republican (anti-communism is a major factor), Filipino Americans are closely divided.
• Key takeaway across all three groups: demographic change does not automatically produce political change — mobilization, turnout, and internal diversity all matter as much as raw population growth.

LO 5.4 — Women & LGBTQ+ in Texas Politics

• Before 1990, only 4 women had won statewide office in Texas — including Miriam "Ma" Ferguson (1925–27, 1933–35), who ran essentially as a proxy for her impeached husband, Jim Ferguson.
• 1990: Texas female voters outnumbered male voters for the first time; Ann Richards elected governor.
• Women continue to run for office less than men, largely because of (a) disproportionate family/home responsibilities and (b) harsher media/opponent scrutiny of working mothers — e.g., Wendy Davis was attacked in 2014 for "abandoning her children" to attend Harvard Law.
• 2021: 48 women in the Texas Legislature (10 Senate, 38 House) — up but still well short of parity (31 Senate seats, 150 House seats total).
• LGBTQ+: Annise Parker (Houston, 2010) — first openly gay mayor of a major U.S. city. The 2018 election was dubbed the "rainbow wave" — a record 35 LGBTQ+ candidates ran for office, 14 won. Lupe Valdez (2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee) — first Latina and openly gay candidate to win a major party's gubernatorial nomination in Texas.

LO 5.5 — Election Administration

• Secretary of state = Texas's chief elections officer, but day-to-day administration is decentralized to the 254 counties.
• All Texas election law is compiled in the Texas Election Code.
• Voter qualifications: U.S. citizen; 18+ on Election Day; resident of the state/county 30+ days; resident of the area covered by the election; registered 30+ days before the election; not a convicted felon still serving sentence/probation/parole; not declared mentally incompetent by a court.
• You do NOT need your physical registration certificate to vote — a valid photo ID + signed affidavit at the polls works if your certificate is missing, as long as the name is exact or "substantially similar."
• Early voting begins 17 days before a November general election (12 days before a March primary, 10 days before other runoffs) and ends 4 days before Election Day. 57% of Texans voted early in the 2020 general election.
• Texas has more than 8,500 voting precincts, boundaries drawn by the 254 county commissioners courts. Some counties (80+, including El Paso and Galveston) use countywide voting centers instead — vote at any location in the county.
• Election officials: county clerk/elections administrator prepares general/special election ballots; each precinct gets one election judge + one alternate (different parties) appointed by the commissioners court, plus clerks; a county election commission (county judge, clerk/administrator, sheriff, both major-party chairs) selects polling places and handles logistics.
• Direct primary — party members choose their own nominees directly at the polls, avoiding domination by party bosses.
• Closed primary — must declare party affiliation to vote in that party's primary. Open primary — no party declaration required; pick either party's ballot at the polls. Jungle/top-two primary (CA, WA, LA) — all candidates from all parties on one ballot; top two advance to a runoff regardless of party.
• ⚠️ Blanket primary — on the test review, but not defined in either textbook edition or the PowerPoint. Standard definition: a primary format (once used in California, Washington, and Alaska) where voters could pick a *different* party's candidate for *each different office* on the same ballot — e.g., voting in the Democratic primary for governor and the Republican primary for senator on the same ballot. Ruled unconstitutional for federal/state partisan primaries in California Democratic Party v. Jones (2000) because it forces parties to let non-members help pick their nominee. It's distinct from jungle/top-two primaries, where candidates of all parties appear together for the SAME office.
• Texas uses a combination of open and closed — you don't register by party, but you DO declare which party's primary you're voting in at the moment you show up (and can't then vote/convention with the other party that same cycle). This is called crossover voting when done strategically.
• Winning a primary outright requires an absolute majority (50%+1); if no one clears that, a runoff primary is held the 4th Tuesday in May between the top two finishers.
• Primaries are financed ~30% by candidate filing fees ($5,000 U.S. Senate; $3,750 governor/statewide; $1,250 state Senate; $750 state House) with the state covering the rest — or a candidate can submit a signature petition instead of paying (5,000 signatures statewide; 500 or 2% of the last governor's race vote, whichever is less, for district/county/precinct office).
• General elections — first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of even-numbered years. Winner = plurality (most votes) — Texas does NOT require a majority or hold runoffs for state/district/county general elections, even with strong third-party/independent vote-splitting.
• Off-year/midterm election — governor and other statewide officers are elected in the even-numbered year BETWEEN presidential elections, to reduce presidential coattail effects on state races.
• Special elections — called by the governor to fill legislative/congressional vacancies or to vote on constitutional amendments. UNLIKE general elections, special elections DO require a majority to win outright — if no one gets 50%+1, the top two go to a runoff.
• Voting systems (chosen by county commissioners court): paper ballot, optical scan, and direct recording electronic (DRE/touch screen). Straight-ticket voting was eliminated starting with the 2020 election.

LO 6.1 — Where Texans Get Their Information

• Three media types: print (newspapers/magazines), electronic (radio/TV — broadcast vs. cable), digital (Internet/social media).
• Television remains Texans' single largest overall news source, but the Internet/social media are gaining fast, especially among younger Texans. Two-thirds of Texans now get news on smartphones — the same share as desktop/laptop.
• Print media punches above its weight for 4 reasons: more space/depth than broadcast; it's the elite's preferred source; it's still the biggest original "gatherer" of news (TV/radio/internet mostly repackage what newspapers break); and it has the strongest tradition of vetting/fact-checking.
• Texas has 41 daily newspapers (2020) — about a third of the number that existed in 1975. Only the Dallas Morning News remains Texas-owned among major dailies; most others are owned by out-of-state chains.
• Radio: ~2,400 stations in Texas; limited political value beyond talk radio, which is dominated by conservatives — helped along by the FCC's 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine (which had required stations to air both sides of controversial issues).
• Blog — a regularly updated website/page where a writer (or writers) posts opinion, information, and links; Texas has prominent blogs on both the left (Off the Kuff, Grits for Breakfast) and right (Big Jolly Politics, Texas Insider).

LO 6.2 — The Media's 4 Roles in Politics

• 1. Providing information — the basic function, but complicated by the "softening" of news: hard news (fact-focused, policy-relevant) is increasingly crowded out by soft news (entertaining, sensationalized, low policy substance) as outlets compete for eyeballs.
• 2. Maintaining democracy — 19th-century media was highly partisan ("yellow journalism" = sensationalized, exaggerated reporting). 20th century brought professionalism (objective, neutral, accurate reporting, separated from opinion/editorial pages). Investigative journalism has declined due to fewer reporters, but remains important — open meetings and open records laws (strengthened after the Sharpstown stock fraud scandal of the early 1970s) are the media's key tools for digging up what officials would rather hide.
• 3. Setting the public agenda (agenda setting) — media coverage strongly shapes which problems officials feel pressure to act on (e.g., the Snook, TX highway-bypass tree controversy forcing TxDOT to change its plan after Houston Chronicle coverage), though the Texas press competes for agenda-setting power against the governor, legislative leaders, and interest groups, who often have more resources.
• 4. Shaping our views — the media rarely change firmly held opinions (people practice selective perception/retention — hearing what confirms existing beliefs) but strongly influence undecided/low-information voters through: priming (which issues become the yardstick we judge leaders by — classic example: Clayton Williams's rape joke and refusal to shake Ann Richards's hand became the defining story of the 1990 governor's race), framing (how an issue is characterized — e.g., "defund the police" framed as either "redirect some funding" or "eliminate police" produced wildly different poll results depending on wording), and attack ads (negative advertising — works by generating free media coverage AND by making marginal supporters abstain rather than switch sides).

LO 6.3 — Media in Campaigns & Citizen Movements

• Texas has 20 media markets (more than any state but California), which is why statewide campaigns are so expensive — 2018 and 2020 U.S. Senate races cost candidates/supporters $139M and $90M respectively.
• Horserace journalism — coverage focused on who's ahead in the polls rather than substantive policy differences; a persistent media/campaign complaint.
• Digital campaigning became standard starting 2008–2012: Obama's social-media targeting, Rick Perry's 2010 "ask 12 friends" Facebook strategy, Ted Cruz's 2012 upset primary win fueled by digital ad targeting.
• Civic engagement — actions addressing public concerns (voting, volunteering, contacting officials, discussing politics). Texas has historically ranked below the national average, though the gap has been narrowing.
• Protests (Tea Party, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo) increasingly rely on social media to organize, fundraise, and recruit — with real but limited policy success (e.g., "defund the police" gained little traction outside Austin, while removing Confederate monuments saw significant success — 33 of 114 nationwide removals through 2018 were in Texas, the most of any state).

LO 6.4 — Bias in the Texas Media

• Bottom line from the research: little systematic ideological/partisan bias in mainstream/professional media — individual biased stories exist but "balance out" over time (media scholar Timothy E. Cook: newsmaking is shaped more by routine journalistic institutions than by individual reporters' attitudes).
• Bias IS real and growing where audiences self-select: Fox News (consciously conservative) vs. MSNBC (consciously liberal) vs. CNN (traditionally objective, now rated left-leaning by Media Bias/Fact Check); talk radio (long dominated by conservatives); blogs (split left/right, fewer in the center).
• Reporters, as a group, skew more liberal/Democratic than the general public; owners/management skew more conservative/Republican — the two tendencies tend to offset each other in a newsroom.
• Two OTHER real biases researchers consistently find: a bias toward entertainment over substance, and a commercial bias (protecting advertisers and parent-company interests).
• Public trust in media has declined sharply since the mid-1980s and now breaks heavily along party lines (in 2020, most Democrats trusted media on COVID-19 info; most Republicans did not).

LO 6.5 — Women & Minorities in Texas Media

• 2019: racial/ethnic minorities were 40% of the U.S. population but only 22% of journalists and 18% of newsroom leadership — a gap essentially unchanged over 20 years.
• Women (~half the population) were 41% of both newsroom staff and management in 2019, and tend to be paid less than male colleagues.
• Coverage of minority Texans has improved over time (fewer overt stereotypes, more varied contexts) but critics still find subtler stereotyping, under-coverage relative to population share, and disparities in how similar violent events get framed depending on the race of those involved.
• A Ford Foundation survey found all racial groups agreed Black Americans are portrayed more negatively than reality; nearly half of minorities felt White Americans are portrayed more positively than reality.
• Univision is the largest Spanish-language network in the U.S. (started in San Antonio/LA, 1962); Telemundo is second. Spanish-language primetime news regularly beats English-language competitors in Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio.

LO 6.6 — Government Regulation of the Media

• Prior restraint — censorship/suppression BEFORE publication; U.S. courts are highly suspicious of it. Established nationally in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971) — the "Pentagon Papers" case, allowing publication of classified Vietnam War documents despite government objections.
• The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is the primary federal media regulator — still heavily regulates broadcast television; radio and cable were deregulated in 1996.
• Net neutrality — the principle that internet service providers must treat all data equally (no paid fast lanes, no throttling lawful content) — the central current battle over Internet regulation; the FCC adopted it in 2015, then repealed it in 2017.
• Shield law — protects journalists from being forced to reveal confidential sources in court. Texas passed its shield law (the Free Flow of Information Act) in 2009, becoming the 37th state to do so.
• Defamation — a false statement that damages someone's reputation; libel if written, slander if spoken. Since New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), public figures must additionally prove "actual malice" to win a defamation suit — a much higher bar than private citizens face.
• SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) — a lawsuit (often over libel) filed mainly to intimidate and financially drain a critic into silence rather than to win on the merits. Texas passed a strong anti-SLAPP law in 2011 (strengthened 2013), but business interests won a significant rollback of its scope in the 2019 legislature.

LO 6.7 — Change in the Media: More Sources, Less News?

• Concentration of ownership — fewer than 10 corporations now own most national newspapers, magazines, and broadcast/cable networks. In Texas: TEGNA owns 15 TV stations (including major-metro ABC/NBC/CBS affiliates); iHeartMedia (based in San Antonio) owns 72 of Texas's ~2,400 radio stations, including most major talk-radio outlets.
• Homogenization of news — the increased likelihood that chain-owned outlets run the same story the same way, losing local/regional flavor — driven by outlets relying on wire services and shared corporate feeds instead of original local reporting.
• Soft news — growing emphasis on entertainment, scandal, and horserace coverage over substantive/hard news, driven by competition for advertising revenue since the mid-1980s when networks began demanding profitability from news divisions.
• Capitol press corps — reporters covering the state capitol full-time. Texas's press corps shrank from 66 (1991) to 32 (2016) — though it partially rebounded to 85 credentialed reporters by 2021, mostly due to growth in TV reporters.
• Commercial bias — the tendency to favor a parent company's interests by running favorable stories or suppressing unfavorable ones; documented in surveys of local news directors reporting advertiser pressure on content decisions.
• The book's open question: will digital/social media ever be able to replace the sheer *quantity* of original, professionally vetted reporting that a well-staffed traditional newsroom used to produce? So far: no clear answer, but newspapers remain the source that most other media (including blogs) still originate from — one Pew study found 99% of blog stories originated in traditional media first.