 So even though polls between Donald Trump and Joe Biden are starting to tighten, the GOP knows that they're not really going to easily pull out a victory legitimately. So the way that they are going to tip this election in their favor is if they do what they usually do, cheat, voter suppression, purge voters off of the rolls, invalidate ballots, limit the number of polling stations because they know that if they could suppress the vote, keep turnout as low as possible, they will most likely win. Now, one story is very, very brazen in how they tried to invalidate more than 125,000 ballots in one county in Texas. But thankfully, we got some good news regarding that effort and a judge has decided to throw out their case. So as the AP reports, a federal judge on Monday rejected another last-ditch Republican effort to invalidate nearly 127,000 votes in Houston because the ballots were cast at drive-through polling centers established during the pandemic. The lawsuit was brought by conservative Texas activists who have railed against expanded voting access in Harris County where a record 1.4 million early votes have already been cast. The county is the nation's third largest and crucial battleground in Texas where President Donald Trump and Republicans are bracing for the closest election in decades on Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Andrew Hannan's decision to hear arguments on the brink of election day drew concern from voting rights activists and came after the Texas Supreme Court rejected a nearly identical challenge over the weekend. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit by conservative GOP activists who have filed a battery of court challenges over moves to expand voting options during the COVID-19 pandemic that challenges have not involved Trump's campaign. Another 20,000 or more voters were expected to use drive-through polling locations Tuesday, said Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins, the county's top elections official. Several voters who already used the drive-through centers rushed to join mounting opposition to the lawsuit, including a Houston attorney whose wife was 35 weeks pregnant when she cast her ballot. She gave birth to twins Friday. My vote counts, David Hobbs said. My wife's vote counts. So at a time when we are living through a pandemic during an election, they're trying to limit the number of ways that we can vote. Why? Because they have to suppress the vote to win. They can't win by persuading voters to support their party because they know that they are a minority party and most of their ideas are very unpopular. So they suppress the vote. They try to limit the number of ways that we can vote during a pandemic when we should have more ways to vote than ever. So this party knows exactly what it's doing. And it's getting so bad that even other Republicans are starting to speak out. So the former Texas House Speaker, Joe Strauss, actually condemned what they're doing publicly saying the lawsuit attempting to disenfranchise more than 100,000 voters in Harris County is patently wrong. All of us who believe in the core ideals of this country should want more votes counted and more voices heard. While it may be too late for the selection, the Republican Party needs to return to a place where we win with ideas and persuasion rather than trying to intimidate and silence our fellow citizens. I hope all elected statewide leaders in the Texas Republican Party will stand up against these desperate tactics. Yeah, I do too, but that's not going to happen. And the reason why it's not going to happen is because even when we get Republicans who speak out against this, it's when they're not in a position of power. Like you were the speaker of the Texas House up until 2019. Why didn't you speak out then? I get that this wasn't happening in Texas, but we still saw huge amounts of efforts around the country in 2018 to suppress the vote. Look at Georgia. So why don't Republicans speak out against their party more frequently? Is it because there's this like large swath of, you know, principle Republicans who just, they're just washing all of this and they're disgusted, but they don't want to say anything? No, it's because this guy's an outlier and it's because the Republican Party, they want power so they know that they have to get increasingly fascist in order to win elections. That means silence their opposition, rig elections effectively to make sure that they win by all means necessary, even illegitimately. But they don't care at the end of the day. The goal is to get power. So, you know, the, the means are justified by the end goal, what they actually achieve. So if that means actually crushing democracy to win, that's what they're going to do. So, you know, I'm thankful that the judge throughout this case that they filed at the last minute when drive through voting was a thing that has been going on that they knew would happen. But still, the fact that we have to fight to get them to not invalidate ballots, that shows you that this party is completely irredeemable. A political party in a democracy, a so-called democracy as much as, you know, a democracy that we are should never want to invalidate ballots, even if that means they're going to lose. Because if they try to suppress the vote and rig elections that proves that they are no longer buying into this idea of democracy, they've become authoritarian, they've embraced fascism. So at the end of the day, this should be a no-brainer. But the fact that we have to even celebrate a victory where a judge says, no, you can't just like invalidate 127,000 votes, that shows you how bad of a state we're in. Like, I get it, we're all breathing a sigh of relief, right, because I was expecting this judge to not throughout this case, but thankfully he did just that. But we shouldn't have to celebrate things like this. Like, of course, it should be just a no-brainer that the votes are counted. Like, what are we doing? So, I mean, look, if Democrats somehow are able to win and take back the Senate, in spite of all of the efforts of the GOP and Donald Trump to rig this election in their favor, their number one priority is to make sure they do voting rights, electoral reform, make sure that you combat voter suppression efforts, and you strengthen democracy, consolidate democracy, because if you don't, then it may be too late. You may not be able to have an opportunity to take back power again. So, I mean, this is, this is troubling. Again, it's a victory. So I don't want to ran on everybody's parade, but it's a victory that we shouldn't have to even fight for. There shouldn't even be a fear that votes that have already been cast will be invalidated. But this isn't the end of it. Donald Trump is going to fight to basically stop the vote from being counted if he sees that he has some advantage electorally from declaring early on election days. So, I mean, we're in a really tumultuous period, tumultuous period in American history. And it's going to get ugly if they actually are successful at carrying out their undemocratic agenda.