Last month, and for the second time in less than ten years, I and a relatively small number of Democratic precinct chairs got to pick a replacement nominee for a powerful office whose incumbent had died at an inconvenient time. To say the least, having that much responsibility is not something I relish.
I say “inconvenient” because in each case a minor shift in the timing would have completely altered the outcome. Had El Franco Lee died two months earlier, there would have been an open seat primary to replace him, as he would not have been able to file for re-election. Had Sheila Jackson Lee died two months later, she would have remained on the ballot this November and been succeeded in a special election and runoff early in 2025. This is what happened when then-Sen. Mario Gallegos died, shortly before the 2012 election.
But because they died in that short period between the filing deadline for the primary and the withdrawal deadline for the general election, state law provided the means for precinct chairs to pick someone new. It’s wild to me that it has happened twice in relatively short order, but here we are.
I’m fine with there being a precinct chair process to replace a deceased nominee (*), even as I fervently hope I never have to take part in one again. It’s not the best possible way to do this, but it’s the best one that is workable in the potentially very limited time span available to pick a nominee, as was the case with CD18. Let me address a few points here:
– The precinct chair process allows for some form of democracy. It’s far from perfect, and is obviously a very small sample of the voting population, but it’s still a group of people coming to a consensus.
– There’s no way to make any kind of broader election work. For one very important thing, as was the case this year, there’s just not enough time. For another, this is a party nomination process, not a general election. Texas has open primaries, but you can only vote in one. As the replacement-nomination process is more like a primary runoff, any broader election process would need to be limited to people who did not participate in the (in this case) Republican primary or runoff. This is doable, of course – we do it now with the primary runoffs – but it’s another layer of complexity, and the potential for everything from honest screwups to deliberate malfeasance is higher than usual.
– Also, too, remember that primaries are run by the parties, which means that the expense of putting on a special replace-the-nominee election would fall on the party. There’s no dedicated source of funds for such contingencies, so coming up with the cash would be yet another level of chaos, uncertainty, and delay.
– I have seen some arguments for leaving the deceased nominee on the ballot and then resolving the matter later with a special election. Putting aside matters like cost and low turnout, I as a resident of CD18 especially object to not having a member of Congress in place in January, for when the next House Speaker is chosen and the Presidential election is certified. I hope I don’t have to explain why those things are important.
– I have also seen some arguments that we precinct chairs should have decided (somehow) on a placeholder candidate, who would then resign the seat in January (hopefully after the Presidential inauguration). I suppose someone could have put themselves forward as a placeholder (one could argue that Sylvester Turner did exactly that, though with a longer time frame), but what is stopping said “placeholder” from changing their mind once in office? You may recall that Gene Locke, who was named as the interim County Commissioner in Precinct 1 following Commissioner Lee’s death, initially promised to complete his term and then go back to the private sector, until he decided he would like to pursue the nomination for a full term. There’s nothing to stop a placeholder from changing their mind.
So the question I’ve been wrestling with is, what could we realistically do to make the precinct chair process more democratic? What could we do to have it better reflect the will of the broader electorate, in the time available to do so?
Ideally, anything suggested here would be debated and if sufficiently meritorious adopted as a rule by the Harris County Democratic Party. Trying to get a revision to the existing law seems like too steep a hill to climb, and also one where the end result could easily be taken out of our hands. Nothing passes the Lege on Democrats alone, after all, and this is our process we’re trying to improve. The Republicans are free to do what they want, I’d prefer to keep them out of our piece of it.
The one thing I think is doable is for the HCDP, or a standing committee within the HCDP, to put together a primary voter outreach survey, to be sent via some hopefully secure method to known Democratic Party primary voters, to get their input on the known candidates. This would require that candidates make their intentions known in a timely manner, for a brief document listing the candidates and asking for the preferences of the recipients to be put together and sent, and for the results to be compiled and disseminated to the precinct chairs. What they then do with that guidance is another matter to debate.
Questions to answer before anything like this could be rolled out:
– How much time is allotted for this process? Remember that the timeline for naming a nominee could be six or seven months (as it was in 2016) or barely one month (as it was this year). Any workable process needs to accommodate the full range of possibilities.
– How is a deadline for candidates to announce themselves determined?
– What if any qualifications are there for wannabe candidates?
– How are the recipients of the survey determined? How much of a Dem primary history do you have to have to take part, in other words? What if anything do we do with new voters?
– How are the surveys sent? How much time do we give the recipients to respond? How many times do we pester them about it?
– What do we want these surveys to ask? Is it a straightforward “who would you vote for”, in the way of a public opinion poll, or a “who are your first/second/third choices”, with some way of sorting that out?
– What results do we provide to the precinct chairs? Like, do we tell them “here’s what the people in your precinct said”, or do we tell them “here’s what all of the people said”?
– As noted, do we then just leave it up to the precinct chairs to decide how to use this information, or do we provide some form of guidance, in the guise of recommendations or requirements?
This is obviously not a simple task, and it may be a lot of work for something that doesn’t happen again for 40 years. I think it’s worth talking about, and I’m open to hearing your thoughts. I’m willing to take this up with the HCDP next year – we’re not touching this before November, that’s for sure – but just writing this down shows me how complicated it gets. Is this worth it? Am I going about it all wrong? Let me know what you think.
(*) In 2018, the entire precinct chair population got to select the nominees for a couple of district and family court benches that had been created by the previous Legislature, with the creation date being after the primary filing deadline for reasons I have forgotten. (Greg Abbott appointed judges to fill those benches from their creation date, so only Dem nominees needed to be picked.) I don’t consider that to be particularly analogous and didn’t have anywhere near the same levels of anxiety about it. As such, I don’t think this scenario, which seems to me to be less likely to occur as it is more in our control, is worth worrying about.
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I agree that there doesn’t seem to be one easy answer. Even leveraging the VAN or county information on who voted in the just-conducted primary to mail out surveys leads to the possible issue from the selection of Rodney Ellis to replace El Franco Lee on the ballot. As Ellis was on the ballot, someone needed to then replace him as State Senate nominee, and the replacement was also on the ballot as a State Rep nominee, so likewise needed to be replaced, so that would have been three mailings (as you cannot assume needing a replacement on the other ballots without assuming the nominee ahead of time). At least we avoided that with this election, as none of the contenders were going to be on the ballot in November otherwise.
The state using the special election mechanism for something like this would also be a possibility, though as you pointed out, that takes the state actually passing a law to do it and doesn’t fix the problem of cascading; if anything, it prolongs the process, as there would possibly be a runoff, then a resignation and need for a new special election, etc., and we’re months into a new lege/Congress.