Bay Area Houston

Seriously. I am NOT making this up.

First, what is a joint primary. Here is the Chair of the Harris County Republican Party, Cindy Siegel, explaining it in her OP-ED in the Houston Chronicle:

Essentially, under a split primary, each party runs its own primary, sharing the location but having separate lines with separate machines and election workers — one for Republicans and one for Democrats.  In contrast, under a joint primary, both Republicans and Democrats line up together in the same location and share voting machines.

This isn’t a new concept. About 8 years ago the Harris County Elections Administrator proposed a joint primary. They setup a demonstration room and invited the parties and media to test it out. I did. It was simple. Instead of having two sets of voting machines, two separate areas for Republican and Democratic primary voters, and two groups of volunteers, there are only one of each. A voter signs in, selects which primary they want to vote in, receives a code, then votes.

The fiscally conservative republicans didn’t want to participate even though it would save the County millions. The plan was scrapped. So why have they agreed to participate now? Glad you asked! In the 2023 legislation session the Republican controlled Legislature passed a number of bills that makes the job of Elections Administrator much harder especially in the 3rd largest county in the country. The bills were designed to make the county fail so the state could take over.

So why now? Again lets let the Chair of the Harris County Republican Party, Cindy Siegel, explain it:

This past December, the Republican Party requested Harris County run a split primary. Two weeks ago, however, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office issued an advisory regarding Senate Bill 924, explaining that holding a split primary in a county the size of Harris County is impossible due to the constraints of the new law. 

Yep. The Republicans want a split primary because they fucked it up. It was their doing. In the past, because of low turnout, the County would combine precincts so instead of having over 1000 voting locations there would be about 300. The bill now eliminates combining precincts so there is a need for voting machines and associated equipment for over 1000 locations. And guess what? The County doesn’t have that many machines, or volunteers to man those machines.

So now the Republican Party is riding in on a white wing horse to save the day from a problem they created and is expecting to take credit for it. It’s like a kid trashing his room then getting paid to clean it.

You should read the OP-ED. Stupid republicans.