Early voting & political misinformation | Dallas News Live

There's also some controversy over an LGBT mailer. Joining me live, Rice University political analyst Mark Jones. Mark, let's start with early voting turnout. We talked about this on Battleground yesterday. Should people not get too, let's just say, excited of assuming what these early voting numbers say so far? Right, it's early in the first quarter. We don't know if this is going to be indicative of the entire process. it could be that we are going to have notably higher turnout than in past elections it could also simply be that a lot of people who normally vote early but later in the early voting period are voting on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday or even that some people who often vote on election day are voting early and then voting early in the early voting process we do know from the numbers that came in on Monday night reviewing them that an overwhelming majority of these people who are voting early have all always vote so these are frequent voters these are people that are often many uh people who vote in the primaries so these are our most active voters so it's not necessarily indicative of massive turnout although it does reflect that at least within certain demographics especially Democrats you have a very high level of enthusiasm which is motivating them to turn out to vote but that's one area where elections are won we're going to look at the lower propensity voters those are the ones that will actually determine the outcome of this election how much of this turnout could be due to just campaign fatigue people are tired of seeing all the ads and so they said when the polls open i'm going to vote oh that's part of it i mean and certainly the better campaigns scan the voter rolls every night and pull people off their text message list or their direct mail list uh when they see that they've already voted not all campaigns are that professional though so it doesn't mean that if you vote that's going to end the text messaging but it should actually reduce it but it what it won't reduce are all those pleas for money those will be continuing until well past November 3rd i was talking to one of my co-workers Monday actually about this and you just answered it so there is a system where the campaigns are able to see if you vote it and so there there is a chance that all these texts that people are getting could reduce as we get closer to election day, right so every voter has a voter file with a unique number. Dallas County Elections, for instance, post the results usually every night. The campaigns have access to those. They run those into a database and that tells them who has voted and who has not voted for the people who, once they've voted, they generally will check them off and then the better campaigns will then stop sending them texts because those texts are inexpensive but they aren't free, but some of the campaigns don't do that, but yes but the moment you vote early, all of the campaigns throughout the state know you voted early. Wow so hopefully go vote early, so that you can get off all these text chains and I've been getting so many text messages, but this is like the first campaign, Mark, where I've been getting a ton of text messages from both sides let's shift gears to another story that's making headlines these LGBT mailers, now they're an actual organization but this organization is saying they didn't send them. We traced it back to a company in Wyoming. Mark, talk about the politics of this. Of, I mean, it is real information, but this organization says they didn't send them, right so the key here is that someone is sending out these mailers misrepresenting themselves as being this one group, I believe it's called Tent uh, I think what it is designed to do is you can see it's not, it's primarily going to homes where you have K through 12 children or pre-K through 12 children And the idea is to elicit a reaction among the parents who will say, What is this indoctrination of my children? Are they trying to convert my children? That it'll elicit some type of negative reaction. That negative reaction will then get the parent to think about LGBTQ issues. And then potentially, if they weren't going to turn out to vote, turn out to vote, and vote Republican because on issues of transgender children, transgender gender-affirming care, and transgender women and girls playing in women and girls sports, the Democratic candidates and Republican candidates have very different issues. So I think that's primarily what it's designed to do, but it does so in a very subtle way. That is, if you didn't know it was about politics, you wouldn't know it was about politics. That is, uh it's pretty it comes out just like seeming like it's coming from this organization that uh promotes the rights of LGBTQ and particularly transgender children and transgender members of the community but it's done in a way to elicit a negative reaction we're seeing it across the state uh as we have it down here in Houston I guess you all saw it in Dallas yeah Houston can't have anything for itself now even even the dubious illegal uh campaign mailers Dallas gets them as well um but you know he but it's clearly I I would assume that what they're doing is they're targeting low propensity Republican voters people who normally might not turn out to vote but this to use this as a way to sort of get them or mobilize them or spur them to turn out to vote based off this issue and because this is one of the issues that Republicans have been hammering in a lot of their ads showing the distinction between Republicans on one hand and Democrats on the other when it comes to transgender children, transgender affirming care, the rights of parents regarding whether their children transition or not. All of that is a topic that Republicans would like voters to be thinking about, rather than, say, thinking about the economy, where a majority of Texans have a negative view over Donald Trump's handling of the economy and the overall standing and evolution of the economy, both here in Texas as well as across the country. And Mark, the timing of this is very strategic, right? I mean, these start going out right before people go to the polls. And while if the information is correct, the point is that the organization itself says they didn't send them. Like you mentioned, they're targeting families who have children. And so someone who's not as informed, this may could sway their decision possibly. Exactly. That's what it's designed to do. It's actually from putting aside the ethics and the legality of it. it's a pretty effective strategic move because you're doing it late enough where it's during the early voting period where it's likely to have maximum effect. But because the window between now and election day is so short, it's unlikely that we're going to really resolve who's doing this and try to link it back to a campaign before election day. Although the group or person or individual who sent this out may very well be facing criminal charges in the future because what they are doing is illegal. Rice University political analyst Mark Jones, thanks for your time. Thank you.