Bay Area Houston

Harris County continues to make great strides in making voting easier.

Yesterday I had a demonstration of the new voting machines that will be in use for the May 1, 2021 elections. Unlike the “wheel” the new machines by Hart InterCivic Verity Duo are intuitive, easy to use and has a PAPER BALLOT! 

The process is easy. Check in. Enter your code via a touch screen. Insert your blank paper ballot. If necessary adjust the size of the text. Using the touch screen, select the candidates of your choice. Review your selection then print your ballot. Verify it again then scan it in the scanning machine print to leaving.

The ballots are counted and stored for recount purposes. The touch screen does NOT count votes or store your selections. It just provides an easy way to select your candidates and prints your ballot. If by chance your ballot is not correct, the election judge will invalidate the ballot and you will start over.

Couple this new system with the ability to vote at any early voting center and any voting center on Election Day and voting has become much easier. The County also provides a wait time notice on their website to determine how long the lines are and provides the voter with the ability to go to a site with shorter lines.

Meanwhile our State Representative Dennis Paul is working hard to limit mail in ballots, make voter registration more difficult, and make it illegal to pass out water to those standing in line.

#NoPlaceButTexas

Yet another example of #NoPlaceButTexas. This is truly embarrassing.

Today House Bill 1725 will be heard in committee by Representative Dennis Paul. The bill will end the use of drop off boxes or drop off sites for mail in ballots. It begs the question “Why?”. Drop off boxes are in use in 40 states leaving Texas in a minority. Again. Voters can sit at the table, make their choices, then drop off their ballots while taking a walk to the grocery store. Here in Texas, or at least in Harris County, voters had the option of dropping the ballot off at their local county court house or at a drive through facility. They also had the opportunity to mail it.

Dennis Paul defended this stupidity with an email to his constituents:

If a person has the ability to make an in-person appearance, they are able to vote in person just as easily.  Those who are disabled, sick, elderly, and those who have lost faith in the USPS, can stand in long lines and sweat like a pig to vote like everyone else. 

OK. The last sentence wasn’t exactly what he said but you get the idea. The bill will be heard this morning. I am interested in hearing Paul stoop to a new low by carrying Abbotts political laundry.

Representative Dennis Paul is in a safe district. He will have that seat until he qualifies for a State provided pension or until he wants to leave. It is a solid red, red, red seat. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he is leading the way for the Republican Party on filing bills to make it more difficult to vote.

Here in Harris County our elected officials have made it very easy to vote. They created Voting Centers allowing voters to vote in any location during early voting and Election Day. They created drop off centers across the County allowing voters to drop their absentee ballot off and trace it’s progress. They created over night voting locations that 10s of thousands of voters used in 2020. In 2022 they will adopt new voting machines with a verifiable paper ballot. Unfortunately Dennis Paul has filed bills to stop most of this. 

Here are the bills Paul has filed:

HB 1725 will prohibit voters from using a drop off site for their absentee ballot. 

HB 2265 confirms there will never be more than 12 hours of Early Voting on any day during the Early Voting Period. No voting earlier than 7:00 a.m. and no voting later than 7:00 p.m. This prevents 24-hour voting as some counties set up in 2020. 

HB 2263 makes it clear that Election Officials may not cure an unsigned, incomplete, or incorrect Voter Registration Application, Ballot, or Ballot by Mail Application. The bill also requires that on any candidate’s Petition in Lieu of a Filing Fee, if the document had to be notarized twice it must be accompanied with a signed affidavit explaining what was cured, by whom, and when after the first notarization.

Texas Representative “Money” Mayes Middleton of Galveston spent over $2.5 million of his own money to win a seat in the Texas House. If this race was competitive, and it wasn’t,  he would have needed about $500,000 to win. His opponent raised only $4000 and had absolutely no idea what it meant to run besides running. So Money Mayes won and is doing the bidding of the Republican Party to limit access to voting. 

Money Mayes has filed House Bill 1026 which will remove deputy voter registrars from registering voters on behalf of the county. VDRs reach out to potential voters to help them register. They are responsible for registering the vast majority of new voters. They are required to train every 2 years and there are serious consequences for breaking the rules of the program. I personally have never heard about any abuse of this program but that doesn’t stop Money Mayes.

I am sure Money will say something like “I’m protecting the sanctity of the vote” or something like that. Money really should look up the word sanctity as in the “sanctity of marriage” when it comes to Donald Trump. LOL They have no idea what the word means

Watch for other Representatives like Dennis Paul HD129 to co-sponsor this stupidity. You can track this and other bills at LegiScan.

From The Houston Chronicle

Harris County Commissioners have voted in favor of creating County wide Voting Centers as proposed by County Clerk Diane Trautman. What does this mean to voters and what’s the downside? I was fortunate to be invited to Trautman’s office to discuss this as well as the proposed Combined Primary voting locations. (more on the primaries later)

Early Voting
Early voting will not change. If you vote early you simply vote at any early voting location in Harris County. Unlike in the past these locations will also be available for voting on Election Day.

Election Day
On Election Day voters can vote at ANY voting location in any precinct or at any early voting location. There are no longer “Precinct” voting locations. Instead there are “voting centers” located in your precinct. So on Election Day you simply vote where you used to vote in your precinct, or at any early voting location in Harris County, or at any voting center in any precinct in Harris County. Got it?

On Election Day in 2018 we helped about 100 voters who came to the Clear Lake Library, an early voting location, find their precinct voting location. Now those individuals would simply vote there on Election Day. All the early voting locations in Harris County will be available on Election Day.

Finding a place to vote
On Election Day you can access the County Clerks website, enter an address, and it will display the 5 nearest voting centers along with an indication of how heavy the traffic is at that location. (Red, Yellow, Green lights) So a voter could vote close to their work, or school, or anywhere in the County.

The Downside
So voting centers might sound too good to be true. What’s the catch? For voters there is no catch. It’s easier. It’s just plain easier to vote.

For candidates and their consultants who pour over the election results as they come in an attempt to predict the outcome based upon precinct voting, it’s not going to be that easy. Since there are no “precinct voting locations” that analysis will not be able to be performed since someone could vote in a different voting center in a different precinct. Candidates locked in a close election may have to wait till all the locations have been counted.

The bottom line
The use of voting centers was not to help the consultants predict when to pop the champagne. They were created to help the voter voter. And it will.

Great job Harris County Clerk and staff!

The Kingwood and Galveston County tea party is hosting an event to discuss ways to further suppress the vote in Texas probably due to the results of the November election. What is disturbing is that our own State Representatives are sponsoring this including Senator Larry Taylor and State Reps David Money Mayes Middleton and Dennis Paul. They must be scared of what is coming in 2020.

A full report will follow.