Now, Wait A Minute....

Kommandant Abott to deploy his storm troopers per Hair Twitler's command. https://t.co/3zTAbMfFzY

— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) October 26, 2020

Not exactly the headline at Raw Story, but this is the only tweet they have up on the article, so take it as reflecting the article's purpose.  It wasn't this claim that made me look into the backstory, but we'll take it as read for what follows.

I did some googling, and found:

There will be 806 polling places in Harris County (Houston) on Election Day. 

There will be over 150 polling places in Travis County (Austin) on Election Day. (By my count, which seems low.)

Bexar County (San Antonio) is, frankly, bewildering; the County Clerk's website on elections, I mean.  They have 726 precincts, with, I assume, at least one polling place per precinct on Election Day.

Let's just say the list of polling locations in Tarrant County (Fort Worth) runs to 12 pages, and leave it at that (they don't provide a total number, at least not readily).

Dallas County likewise doesn't provide a convenient tally of the number of polling places on Election Day 2020, but the list runs to 13 pages.

So if you sent on Guardsman to each polling place in Harris County, you'd have enough left over out of 1000 to cover all of Travis County, with a few left over for Bexar County, but that's it.  Or you could divide them evenly and scatter 200 Guardsman over five large urban counties.  Not exactly "storm troopers" being dispatched to affect the vote, in other words.  And then there's the matter of what the Texas National Guard has to say.

According to the Texas National Guard this deployment, if it ever happens, is for after November 3rd:

Maj. Gen. James K. “Red” Brown, chief of staff for the guard’s commander, said the activation of troops would be for “post election” support of local law enforcement and the Texas Department of Public Safety, “as we did previously to deter any civil disturbance at sites in various cities within Texas.”

Protecting polling stations “has not been on any mission request or in any conversation with the governor’s office,” he said.

That seems reasonable to me, as local county and city police and sheriffs are charged with maintaining the peace at polling places, and probably don't want the National Guard trying to play "cops" for a day.  The National Guard doesn't usually want to do that, either.

Is Abbott being authoritarian here?  Pretty weak showing, unless he wants to intimidate voters in certain areas of all 5 counties, and I've never seen Abbott try anything as subtle as that.  He may regret ordering voting to start a week earlier than usual, but he's shown no sign of it (it's too late anyway, we're into the statutory period for early voting).  It seems more likely Abbott recognizes Donald Trump has stirred up a (small) hornet's nest, and it's incumbent on him to protect the people of Texas.  Abbott has shown more interest in that responsibility than in his responsibility to Trump's GOP, I have to give him that.

Really don't need to jump to conclusions every time a GOP governor does something.

I was gonna leave it at that, but Joaquin Castro had to rush to Twitter (never a good look for anybody):

This is 1950s segregated south type behavior — prospect of Texas Army National Guard at polling locations is a blatant act of voter intimidation.

Governor Abbott needs to immediately make clear that the Texas Guard will not be used to hover at polling sites intimidating voters. https://t.co/WstFuXZSAz

— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) October 26, 2020

Let Governor Abbot know how you feel about this by calling his office:

(512) 463-2000 https://t.co/ZIYXKlUYBW

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 26, 2020

There are two SAExpress articles about this. Raw Story cited one, I cited the other (which is cited in the SAExpress article Raw Story started with). I admire both Mr. Castro and The Lincoln Project (the enemy of my enemy, in their case), but this ain't rocket science, people. Everybody take a deep breath and step away from the Twitter machine. Just because you saw it on Twitter, doesn't mean you know what you're talking about (and I NEVER take Raw Story articles at face value, even though I do read them almost religiously).

This is threatening to get ramshackle, but this thread by Juliette Kayem (who appears on CNN, she says, and appears to have reasonable credentials to opine on this stuff) is good context for what's going on:

Thread on preparing for potential local violence on Election Day. The purpose of this is to tell you all what to expect in days ahead; sometimes we are not transparent enough on planning and preparedness and what it looks like. This may be long. But hopefully helpful. 1/

— Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) October 25, 2020

What's going on is probably not what you think is going on, mostly because we don't widely recognize what's going on (threats of violence surrounding the election and its results, IOW).