Texas one of the many battle grounds for this election

Francisco Leal, staff writer

This election year there is a new state that could be fair game for either the Democrat or Republican Party, this state being Texas. The state of Texas has been red representing the Republican Party ever since 1976. The reason for this is due to the predominant conservative beliefs all over Texas that are very similar to the beliefs of the Republican Party. These conservative beliefs are more concentrated in certain parts of Texas. Some of these parts of Texas being Collin, Denton, and Tarrant county.

However recent polls done all over the state show that both republican and democratic candidates have the same amount of support literally being in a percent tie. This tie has been holding steady for the past week. These polls results are so groundbreaking due to Texas never been considered a swing state in the recent past. The state has always been secure electoral points for the Republican Party.

In the United States, presidential elections are decided through the electoral college system; this system gives a certain amount of points to each state depending on their population. Texas has one of the highest point counts with a total of 38 points due to its population of 29 million people. Another reason there is so much uncertainty about which party will win Texas is due to the election being less than a week away and the polls still being so tied usually by now a party would have already taken a lead in the polls.

A big factor that could decide who wins Texas this election is mail-in voting. This election won’t be like any in the past due to the global pandemic that will be making people vote in a different way this year there will be the greatest amount of mail-in voting in every state.  This method of voting will be very helpful for states with a high spreading rate such as Texas. Even though this method of voting is much safer for people at risk for contracting the Coronavirus it is very time-consuming to count votes by hand therefore we might not get the results the day we are expecting.

Every election day is held on November 3rd however, this year there are probably millions of mailed-in votes that must be read by hand. All these votes can only be counted on election day. this will take a tremendous amount of time because it’s not just about reading them but also making sure they aren’t froglet. just in Texas, there have already been thousands of mailed-in votes cast already. We could be looking at our election becoming an election month not knowing the exact amount of votes of every state including Texas until towards the end of November.

Republicans and Democrats facing off (Francisco Leal)