I do not understand the point of this article at all. Time was when early voting amounted to a handful of absentee ballots, sent in by the elderly, infirm and conscientious after attesting they would not be able to go to the polls on Election Day. Today it’s open to everyone and accounts for almost [...]
Posts Tagged ‘absentee ballots’
Everybody loves early voting now
From the County Clerk’s office: The Chief Election Officer of the County, Stan Stanart, announced [Monday night] that Harris County voters set a new record for voting during the first day of Early Voting in person. 47,093 persons voted on Monday, shattering the November 2008 first day total of 39,201. “We had a record breaking [...]
Now you see those votes, now you don’t
Tuesday was not a good day for the County Clerk. Zerick Guinn went to bed late Tuesday, believing he had won the Democratic nomination for Precinct 2 constable by a comfortable margin. By morning, he had lost the race by three votes. An incorrect vote tally in that race, posted for more than two and [...]
Poli Sci profs against voter ID
Rice political science professor Mark Jones writes an op-ed in the Chron that does a thorough job of dissecting Texas’ contentious voter ID law. Nearly one out of every three Texas counties lacks an operational DPS office, and no office is open after 6 p.m. or on weekends. DPS offices in the largest urban counties [...]
Early voting after one full week
Here are your seven day early voting totals for the 2012 primaries, and some historical context to go along with them. Year 7 day Early 7 day % Final 7 day % Early % ============================================================== 2004 R 11,330 28,217 38.91% 82,212 13.78% 34.32% 2004 D 8,607 22,523 38.21% 78,692 10.94% 28.62% 2008 R 28,773 66,375 [...]
How many votes will be cast early this year?
I’m not talking total number, I’m talking what share of the vote will be cast early. The professionals think it will be a lot. “The early vote is more important this time than perhaps in any cycle in my lifetime in Texas,” said Republican consultant Matt Mackowiak, 32. Upping its importance this time is what [...]
Early voting begins today
Feels weird to be talking about early voting for the primaries now, doesn’t it? Well, ready or not after all this time and all these twists in the road, here we are. Here are your early voting locations and schedule. I note with interest there is a new EV location in the Galleria area – [...]
DOJ refuses to preclear South Carolina voter ID law
Good. The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday rejected as discriminatory a South Carolina law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. The action by the department’s civil rights division, coupled with Attorney General Eric Holder’s call 10 days earlier in Austin for more aggressive federal review of such laws, appears to increase [...]
Final early vote total
Early voting ended Friday, with the last day repeating the 2007 pattern of roughly doubling earlier numbers from the week but never taking big jump as was seen in 2005 and 2009. Here’s the final daily EV report from the county, plus the 2009 spreadsheet, the 2007 daily EV report, and the Erik Vidor spreadsheet, [...]
Early vote totals, Days Two and Three
Here are your Early Voting totals for Day Two and Day Three. As a reminder, here’s my spreadsheet from 2009; the Erik Vidor spreadsheet that has running totals from 2009, 2007, and 2005; and a new addition to my data sets, courtesy of the County Clerk’s office, the full daily EV report from 2007, which [...]
Early voting totals, Day One
Here’s the Day One early voting totals for Harris County, which you can compare to the 2009 totals here. My buddy Erik Vidor also put together a spreadsheet with 2005 and 2007 totals that you can see here. There’s a lot of numbers tro keep track of, so let’s go through them. – The total [...]
Primary date will not be moved
A bill that would have moved the primary elections in Texas to April was amended at the last minute to move up the filing deadline instead. After a testy exchange, House lawmakers gave initial approval to a voting bill that would push up the election filing period in order to give military voters more time [...]
Bill to move back primary date advances in House
From the DMN: A Texas House committee on Friday unanimously passed a military voting bill that, among other things, would push the state’s political primaries into April from March. The legislation also would move primary runoffs into June and might compel many cities to move their local elections from May to some other date. A [...]
Moving the primaries back
In the 2007 legislative session, there was some energy to move the primary date up in Texas, on the theory that an earlier primary would finally enable Texas voters to have a say in the Presidential process, which was usually decided by the time our turn rolled around. That ultimately went nowhere, and it turned [...]
So much for Abbott’s big “voter fraud” case
Back in 2005, Attorney General Greg Abbott announced with a flourish a rash of arrests in South Texas on various counts of voter fraud. These arrests, some of which were announced while the Lege was debating a voter ID bill, were cited as evidence by Abbott of an “epidemic”, for which voter ID was naturally [...]
RV voters
Really interesting story about a group of RV owners who “live” in a park in Polk County and vote there, but are seldom actually physically present. On the one hand, Escapees Inc. is a business catering to recreational vehicle enthusiasts. Rainbow’s End, its headquarters, features a 140-acre RV park complete with a swimming pool, more [...]
Important dates for the runoff
From the inbox, from the County Clerk: April 13, 2010 – Primary Runoff Election: Important Dates Authority conducting elections – Political Party County Chairs First Day to Apply for Ballot by Mail – February 12, 2010 (if did not request runoff ballot on application for primary ballot) Last Day to Register to Vote – March [...]
Recount coming in HD146?
It’s not official yet, but I can’t imagine there not being a recount in a race decided by 11 votes. [Borris] Miles, a former police officer who owns an insurance business, said he had not yet received a concession call from [Rep. Al] Edwards, but looked forward to working with him “and getting him alongside [...]
Primary early voting, Day One
I’m not going to create a daily spreadsheet of the early voting totals by location this election, as life is just too short. I do have a spreadsheet showing the 2006 dailies by location, thanks to Hector DeLeon in the County Clerk’s office, from which I can tell you that there were 24,602 early and [...]
Deadline for mail ballots is February 23
The following is from the County Clerk’s office: THE CLOCK IS TICKING ON BALLOT-BY-MAIL REQUESTS FOR THE MARCH PRIMARY ELECTIONS Houston, TX, – The last day eligible registered voters may submit a ballot-by-mail request for the upcoming Primary Elections is Tuesday, Feb. 23rd. The request must be in the Harris County Clerk’s Office by the [...]
More on the early voting turnout so far
The Chron writes about the early voting turnout so far. After four days, nearly 10,000 more Houstonians voted early than in the general election, a trend Harris County Clerk Beverly Kaufman said she predicted. “Voters just weren’t engaged back in November,” she said. “Now that the race has narrowed to two candidates, there’s much more [...]
Runoff EV report, Day 5
Today’s inclement weather may not have closed the polls down, but they did reduce the number of voters by a considerable amount. Only 3287 hardy souls made it out to an EV location, some of which saw fewer than 20 people all day. After five days of early voting, a total of 35,317 in-person and [...]
Early voting: Out with a bang
Today was by far the heaviest day of Early Voting, with 17,072 ballots cast, which is nearly as much as Wednesday and Thursday combined, and also nearly as much as the final day of 2003. In the end, 71,368 in-person ballots and 9,148 absentee ballots were cast, for a total of 80,516; the comparable numbers [...]
Early voting: One more day
Tomorrow is the last day of early voting. If you haven’t voted by 7 PM on Friday, you’ll need to show up at your precinct polling location on Tuesday to have a say in this election. Here’s a press release from County Clerk Beverly Kaufman with some information about how things will be on Tuesday: [...]
A look at the District H runoff
Professor Murray takes a look at the upcoming runoff in District H, taking into consideration the 1992 Congressional election in which Rep. Gene Green won a runoff against Ben Reyes and the early and absentee voting patterns from this election. You can see my take here. All I know is that early voting begins in [...]
Dewhurst makes the case against Voter ID
That wasn’t his intent, of course, but it’s clear to see in his plea for a “compromise” on the measure that the more people like Lt. Gov. Dewhurst argue for voter ID legislation, the more obvious it is that they’re pursuing a partisan fix to a non-existent problem. “I still can’t believe we’re not really [...]