Revising and Extending Our Remarks on King Abbott's latest "proclamation"

"Now therefore, heed their voice. However, you shall solemnly forewarn them, and show them the behavior of the king who will reign over them."
1 Samuel 8:9

We may have jumped the gun a bit yesterday, PushJunction explains:

GREG ABBOTT did a thing yesterday that's being misrepresented in the media. Following the July run-off election, Abbott issued a proclamation expanding early voting for the November election.

In addition to expanding the early voting period, Abbott allowed for mail-in ballots to be returned in person on more than one day as permitted by law. Terrible negotiating with himself while Democrats sued and abused almost every election law on the books.

This isn’t the first time Abbott’s been a punching bag on the topic of election integrity.

During the legislative session, he threw a massive bone to Democrats by agreeing to a sweetheart settlement, stopping list maintenance activities kicked off by his then-Secretary of State.

The apparent deal, settlement for the late-session confirmation of a loyal employee, was spiked by Democrats.

The same thing happened here. Abbott gave election administrators an inch by allowing mail ballots to be turned in on more than one day, and lead by Chris Hollins and Dana DeBeauvoir, they took a mile by ballooning the number of drop sites.

Abbott returned a modicum of order yesterday. Now he needs to stop other illegal election activities to prevent them from being used in the future.

To the degree to which we drew an incorrect conclusion about the legality of this move, we apologize.

However, a couple points:

• Given the way Abbott has acted in recent months, it's hard to avoid drawing any other conclusion.  After he's accused of behaving in a lawless manner, it's easy to assume the worst.  Abbott doesn't exactly have a lot of benefit of the doubt left on this topic.

• That being said, why permit the single drop off location.  If Abbott is concluding, apparently correctly, that state law doesn't give county election administrators this authority...why is he allowing them to do it at all?!?  The policy is incoherent.

Bottom Line:  We suppose yesterday's announcement is a move in the right direction, but for the counternarrative to take hold so easily illustrates Abbott's squandered credibility.