Patti Hart reviews the bidding. On Tuesday, Jan. 8, your elected representative and senator will convene under the state Capitol’s distinctive pink granite dome in Austin for the first day of the 83rd session of the Texas Legislature. That is, unless you happen to live within the boundaries of Senate District 6, which until his [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Secretary of State’
When will we have that special election in SD06?
Sylvia Garcia would like to know. Senate District 6 candidate Sylvia Garcia, today called on Governor Rick Perry to set an election date to fill the senate district seat as soon as possible. “This is a simple taxation without representation issue,” Garcia said. “The working families of our district, most of whom are Latino and [...]
On voter confidence
There was one more interesting aspect to that poll of Harris County from last week, and it had to do with how confident voters were that the vote they cast would be counted. This KUHF story goes into that result. A new KUHF/KHOU poll shows that black voters aren’t as confident as other voters that [...]
If no one owns the problem then no one will fix it
Reading this Chron story about the problem of voter registrations done via the Department of Public Safety, it’s clear why this is an ongoing issue. Neither the DPS nor the secretary of state tracks motor voter complaints. Nor can state officials say whether any individual offices or workers process abnormally low numbers of new drivers’ [...]
Settlement reached in “dead voter” lawsuit
It’s something. A lawsuit by four registered voters alleging that the state of Texas was violating their civil rights by purging them from voter rolls has been dropped after the plaintiffs and the state reached an agreement. The Texas residents brought the suit after receiving letters from their county registrar indicating that the office had [...]
The “dead voter” saga still has some life in it
Looks like I spoke too soon when I said that the “dead voter” purge story was over. Remember that lawsuit filed by four voters and the temporary injunction granted by a Travis County judge forbidding the Secretary of State from further instructing the counties to remove any other names from the voter rolls? On Friday, [...]
Deal reached to restore SOS funding for Tax Assessor
This whole protracted standoff between Harris County Tax Assessor Don Sumners and the Secretary of State over the “dead voter” purge has apparently been the result of a misunderstanding. Harris County Judge Ed Emmett has brokered a deal with the Texas secretary of state to restore about $700,000 in funding the state had cut off [...]
SOS ups the ante against Sumners
It’s getting real at the Tax Assessor’s office. Harris County election officials got a bit of a surprise Friday morning when they attempted to open the county’s spending account on the Texas Secretary of State’s office website and found their access blocked. State officials have temporarily cut off the county’s voter registration funding. “We received [...]
SOS versus Sumners
It’s not a steel cage death match, but it’ll do. In a strongly worded letter today, the Texas Secretary of State’s office told Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar Don Sumners that his decision not to purge presumed-dead voters from the rolls before the Nov. 6 election likely violates the law and compromises the [...]
Not dead yet
As they say, reports of their deaths have been greatly exaggerated. Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Don Sumners said Monday that he would not purge from the voter roll before the November election any of the 9,018 citizens who received letters from his office in recent days notifying them that they may be dead and are [...]
The ballot propositions we won’t have
Today is the 78th day before the November 6 election. That makes it the statutory deadline for ordering an election, as noted by the Secretary of State. They cite Sec. 201.054 of the Elections Code for this, which seems wrong to me; Sec. 201.051 appears to be more on point, though that still doesn’t specifically [...]
We speak again of an elections administrator
As you know, I’ve been wondering when this might happen. Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart said he will ask the Texas Secretary of State’s Office to examine his office’s election processes after a “human error” in his office caused erroneous primary runoff election results to be posted online for hours last Tuesday. The error made [...]
Voter ID trial, day one
And they’re off, with the state bringing the funny math as part of its case. A Justice Department lawyer, Elizabeth Westfall, argued that the law has the potential to prevent 1.4 million Texans from voting who are eligible but lack the required photo identification — a disproportionate number of them minorities. Previewing the case the [...]
We apparently will have a candidate in SBOE1 after all
The Trib reviews the bidding on the Martha Dominguez situation in SBOE 1. According to the Texas Election Code, primary candidates have until 63 days before the primary election to apply to have their name withdrawn (this year it was March 12), and they must withdraw with “the authority with whom the withdrawing candidate’s application [...]
You sure you’re registered?
Your voter registration could get cancelled without you realizing what’s happening. More than 300,000 valid voters were notified they could be removed from Texas rolls from November 2008 to November 2010 – often because they were mistaken for someone else or failed to receive or respond to generic form letters, according to Houston Chronicle interviews [...]
Your voter registration card is in the mail
Someone was just asking me about this, so I’m glad to see that they’re on their way. Harris County officials prepared to ship out 1.7 million voter registration cards Tuesday – after an unprecedented nearly five-month delay resulting from a grilling court battle over redistricting. Across Texas, election officials are required to send out new [...]
“Phantom” voters
This is a molehill, not a mountain. Sixteen small counties across Texas appear to have more registered voters on their rolls as of 2010 than qualified citizens of voting age – a phenomenon prompting conservative Washington, D.C., watchdog group to question whether the “overcounts” could raise the potential for election fraud. The Chronicle reviewed public [...]
Why do we make it so hard to vote?
News item: Many voter registrations around the country are outdated or incorrect. Some 24 million voter registrations in the United States contain significant errors, including about 1.8 million dead people still on the rolls and many more approved to vote in multiple states, according to a report released Tuesday. Even though the inaccuracies impact one [...]
Texas files suit to preclear voter ID
They’re a mighty busy bunch at the OAG these days. The Texas attorney general’s office today filed suit against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice to have the state’s controversial voter ID law implemented without further delay. The law, Senate Bill 14 by state Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, was scheduled [...]
SOS sends voter registration info to DOJ
Took them long enough, not that I’m complaining. Two weeks after Texas’ voter ID law was scheduled to go into effect, the measure is back in the U.S. Department of Justice’s hands. The Texas secretary of state’s office on Thursday submitted its latest batch of data in hopes of satisfying the federal government’s request for [...]
Your voter registration card is not in the mail just yet
Another side effect of the Supreme Court stay. Even if you’ve registered to vote in Texas, you won’t be getting a new voter registration certificate until February. Although the latest blue cards expired at the end of the year, counties are waiting to mail out new ones until a long legal battle over the state’s [...]
Look out, here comes The Donald
Make of this what you will. Donald Trump supporters have met an official ballot deadline in Texas, paving the way for the business mogul to become a third-party candidate there, a source close to Trump tells The Blaze. Trump himself acknowledged the filing in a statement. According to an email sent by the source to [...]
DOJ defers again on voter ID
In addition to the interim maps, we got some more good news yesterday. Texas provided “incomplete” information that does not enable federal officials to determine whether their proposed voter ID law would be discriminatory, the Justice Department said in a letter Wednesday. Essentially, the letter from DOJ Civil Rights Division Voting Section Chief T. Christian [...]
It’s not “he said, she said” if one of them is factually correct
This Chron story from Monday about a mishap at the County Clerk’s office really annoys me for what it doesn’t say. A manual being using to train election judges for next week’s elections contains inaccurate information, reflecting a new voter identification law that has not yet taken effect, Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart said Monday. [...]
DOJ defers on County Commissioners map
More information, please. The U.S. Department of Justice, charged with considering whether Harris County’s redistricting map meets the requirements of the Voting Rights Act, has asked the county for more information to make its ruling. The DOJ letter is here. What they asked for was basically this: 1. A detailed explanation of the process leading [...]
News flash: Voter ID will mean fewer people can vote
I know, I’m as shocked as you are. As many as a quarter of voters in some small Texas counties might not be able to cast ballots if the federal government allows the new state voter ID law to go into effect. And in some places, the potential for that decrease in the number of [...]
The SOS responds to DOJ on voter ID
Two weeks ago, the Justice Department asked some questions about Texas’ voter ID law as a condition for preclearance. The Secretary of State has now given some answers, though they may not be what DOJ was looking for. Under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the Department of Justice or the federal courts reserve [...]
Making it harder for veterans to vote
Well done, Republicans. Ann McGeehan, director of the Secretary of State’s elections division, said last week at a seminar in Austin that photo ID cards issued by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs are not acceptable forms of military ID to vote, according to a recording provided by the Texas Democratic Party. Jordy Keith, a [...]
Texas Supreme Court dismisses voting machine lawsuit
This came out late Friday. Dealing a blow to critics of electronic voting machines, the Texas Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a case brought by Travis County voters that alleged the machines were not secure or reliable. The machines “are not perfect. No voting system is,” Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson said in his opinion. But [...]
More on Sumners and the LWV
I’ve got some updates on the change in policy by Tax Assessor-to-be Don Sumners regarding voter registrations at naturalization ceremonies. First, Sumners has acknowledged the need to get pre-clearance from the Justice Department for any changes to voter registration procedures, so the change has been suspended pending resolution of that. Linda Cohn, the Voter Registration [...]
Were the Green signatures obtained illegally?
Wayne Slater follows up his previous reporting on the petition signatures that were gathered by an outside organization for the Green Party with the question about the legality of it. It’s unclear who paid for the petition drive, but funding went through Take Initiative America, a Missouri nonprofit corporation. Buck Wood, an Austin lawyer and [...]
Here come the Greens
As Perry noted the other day, the Green Party of Texas submitted petitions to the Secretary of State to get on the ballot in certain races in Texas. They failed to do so in 2006, so this will be the first time in eight years that you will see them on your eSlate machine, assuming [...]
No official guess on turnout
The Secretary of State doesn’t want to speculate about turnout for today’s election. “We are not making a projection on the turnout for tomorrow,” Russell Dillard, spokesman for Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade, said Monday. “It’s pretty difficult to do for primary elections.” [...] Andrade is reluctant to guess an overall number because recent [...]
What happens now in HCC District 8?
As we know, after the filing-deadline shenanigans in the HCC Trustee District 8 race, brother-in-law candidate Arturo Aguilar said he was withdrawing from the ballot. As I noted at the time, that meant there were no other candidates who had filed before the deadline for that office. The question is what happens in that race? [...]