Texas is Trying Hard to Look Like an Authoritarian State

First, threatening election monitors. Second, there are attempts to intimidate voters trying to vote without a photo ID. Third, it arrested a Presidential candidate (Jill Stein of the Green Party, but still this is making Texas look like some central asian autocracy reminiscent of Borat's take on Kazakhstan).

My first impulse is to laugh this off, but I can't help thinking that if this happened in Mexico, Turkey, Brazil, or any other nation not fully in the developed nation inner circle that headlines would be screaming about a former democratic country falling into autocracy. My gut feeling is that this reaction is absurd, but still, I can't really think of a clear reason to worry about similar actions abroad and not at home.