Republicans unveil bracket voting to boost voter turnout in '26 election

It's a three-fold problem the GOP faces: 

• Recruiting more hands and eyes on the election process, making sure each and every vote is counted.
• Coming up with a sexy new voting method to rival the left's call for Ranked Choice Voting.
• Tapping into an ever-growing demographic of sports fans as a source of new voters, especially basketball fans.

This week the Travis GOP Committee on Voting Affairs rolled out a bold concept to help with all three dilemmas: 

A bracket-style tournament ballot for the 2026 primary election! 

Just in time for March Madness in two years, Republican voters will be able to participate in a series of bracket-style matchups between Republican candidates. Like with a tournament, each winner will advance to the next level until a winner is decided. And it would totally eliminate the need for an expensive runoff.

"With an estimated 9 million people watching pro basketball spring tournaments on TV, it's incumbent upon us to find a way to reach this dynamic demographic," an unsourced press release from the Travis GOP stated. "Even though this will require multiple trips to the polls, we feel this will have the effect of not only boosting voter turnout but creating social events centered solely around voters cheering on their favorite candidates -- as well as increasing sales at local sports bars and places where smartTVs are sold."

The release also said something about how there's no way on earth such rabid fans would let anything out of their sight -- let alone allow a vote to be stolen. The new voting method would allow each and every voter to be their own personal referee. 

Interest group Moms Against Smartphone Gambling warned that a cottage industry of online betting could emerge from this system, but that the pros far outweigh the cons -- especially giving families a healthy social distraction on otherwise busy spring evenings during the school year. 

Here's how it would work in Travis County: 

The tournament field would comprise up to 68 primary candidates. Among the field, 32 automatic bids are given to winners of each quadrant of the county. The other 36 candidates receive at-large bids from a selection committee to be appointed by Precinct Chairmen. (Still reading? Good.)

The four lowest-ranked automatic bid candidates and the four lowest-ranked at-large candidates in the tournament enter in special play-in games called the First Four at the start of the tournament. The rest of the field is split into four "regions" of 16 candidates and those candidates are seeded from 1 to 16. The top candidate in each region plays the 16th candidate, the second plays the 15th and so on and so forth and amen. The field plays a 6-round single-elimination tournament, in which a single loss ends a candidate's chances of becoming the party's nominee.

Tournament-voting would take place over three weekends when Austinites should probably be outdoors enjoying nature, instead, starting with "Selection Sunday," but only after church hours. The whole fiasco would end in early April with semifinals and finals, held just in time for ... 

... April Fool's Day.

But seriously, the Travis GOP is opposed to Ranked Choice Voting, which makes about as much sense as a seed tournament.