The Texas Supreme Court on Sunday denied a Republican request to invalidate nearly 127,000 drive-thru votes cast in Harris County. Harris County set up 10 drive-thru polling sites for early voting, which ended Friday, and Election Day, to make voting easier and safer for Texans during the pandemic. However, the outcome of the case is still not guaranteed as the Republican plaintiffs also filed suit in federal court, which is set to hear the case this morning.
One of the plaintiffs is Steven Hotze, a coronavirus and QAnon conspiracy theorist, who said “the deep state could have been the ones that orchestrated this whole viral problem with the virus.” During the racial justice uprising this summer, Hotze told Texas Governor Greg Abbott in a voicemail he should order the National Guard to kill protesters; he said, “shoot to kill the son of a bitches. That’s the only way you restore order. Kill ’em.”