Endorsement Regrets Watch: She’s not going to do that

Posted on November 3, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

I can’t. I just can’t.

Why do two West Texas oil billionaires — Christian nationalists waging war against secular public schools — care who becomes the next chief executive of Harris County, hundreds of miles from their homes? Why did a Houston real estate developer give $400,000, a staggering sum in a local campaign, to Republican county judge candidate Alexandra del Moral Mealer? Why did a furniture salesman, who became a celebrity by waving fistfuls of cash and promising to “Save! You! Money!” give $448,000 to Mealer in a single month? What — aside from earnest hopes of good governance — might these megadonors expect in exchange for their money? How much pressure will Mealer face to do their bidding if she wins?

These and other questions arise in reviewing Mealer’s latest campaign finance reports as she enters the home stretch of her bid to unseat one-term incumbent Democrat Lina Hidalgo. As the Chronicle’s Jasper Scherer reported, Mealer has raised $8.6 million since July 1, including $3.7 million in the past month alone. (By comparison, in the 2018 election, then-incumbent Republican Ed Emmett raised $446,000 from July through October). Mealer’s fundraising and spending in this cycle dwarfed that of incumbent Democrat Lina Hidalgo, who has raised $2.4 million since July 1, including $911,000 from Sept. 30 to Oct. 29.

One item that leaps out from Mealer’s reports is the pair of $100,000 donations from the Defend Texas Liberty Political Action Committee. This PAC is funded almost entirely by Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who made their fortunes in oil exploration and fracking and have donated lavishly to far-right candidates for the Texas Legislature and statewide offices. Among other notable gifts: Houston home builder Richard Weekley gave Mealer $400,000, the largest single donation in the July-through-September reporting period. Furniture salesman and philanthropist Jim “Mattress Mac” McIngvale and his wife, Linda, have given more than $600,000 to Mealer. McIngvale often appears in television ads with Mealer and was one of her earliest supporters.

On its face, the donation from the Defend Texas Liberty PAC is puzzling. The Harris County judge has no authority over the causes that have animated Dunn and Wilks: promoting vouchers that would provide state funding for private or religious school fees, outlawing abortion and resisting expanded recognition and rights for LGBTQ Texans. Yet they saw fit to give her as much money as they gave to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a key Republican ally in their right-wing culture wars. A review of the Defend Texas Liberty PAC’s donations, compiled by the nonprofit Transparency USA, shows at least one other donation to a local candidate: $13,000 in 2021 to Mary Bone’s successful campaign for the school board in Round Rock, near Austin.

[…]

Mealer should return the money she received from the Defend Texas Liberty PAC, if only to signal her commitment to restoring good governance unbeholden to special interests and menacing, unholy alliances.

Short of that, well-intentioned voters are left to simply cross their fingers and hope that the candidates they support will demonstrate allegiance to the people they represent, not to the donors who helped get them elected. This board, which made the tough decision to recommend Mealer for the position, expects no less from her. If she prevails over Hidalgo, we urge her to resist any urge to repay donors such as Richard Weekley for their generosity, and to politely ignore the wishes of Farris Wilks, Tim Dunn, and other, like-minded donors — even if it means losing their support in any future campaigns.

She’s not going to do that. She’s delighted to collect their money and will give them her full attention if elected. She is laughing up her sleeve at how she put one over on those naive idiots at the MSM rag. The only correct words to say here were “We’re very sorry, Judge Hidalgo. We retract our endorsement of your opponent and endorse you instead.” I’m not surprised they don’t have the courage to do that. As with the last time, I will stop here before I say something I will later regret. But you own this, Chronicle editorial board. You own this.

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Collin County DA accused of sexual harassment

Posted on November 2, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Oh, boy.

Greg Willis

Six individuals who currently work or have worked in the Collin County District Attorney’s office filed a federal civil suit Monday, alleging that they were sexually harassed, discriminated against because of their gender, and faced retaliation after reporting the allegations about their boss and his top lieutenant.

The suit names Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis, his first assistant Bill Wirskye, Collin County Judge Chris Hill, and county commissioners Susan Fletcher, Darrell Hale, Cheryl Williams, and Duncan Webb. The suit was filed by the district attorney’s chief investigator, Kim Pickrell; deputy chief investigator Keith Henslee; former misdemeanor prosecutor Fallon LaFleur; prosecutor VyKim Le; and two plaintiffs identified as Jane Doe.

The suit alleges that Willis sexually harassed female employees then retaliated against them. It says he repeatedly made sexual comments and inappropriately touched them. The lawsuit also alleges that Willis propositioned the women for sex during work trips and during regular closed-door meetings. It also claims that Wirskye routinely hazed female employees.

Le said that Willis had touched her inappropriately on at least two occasions, and the two unnamed plaintiffs recounted instances of unwanted touching and propositioning. After Pickrell and Henslee went to Wirskye with their concerns, the lawsuit alleges he retaliated by complaining about their performance.

Wirskye is also accused of referring to groups of prosecutors profanely, and called female prosecutors “bitches, whores, and sluts.” Henslee, Le, and LaFleur all recounted instances where Wirskye was allegedly retaliatory or crass.

The county commissioners were included because they “have known of this misconduct for years but have continued to enable it by refusing to take remedial action or even conduct a reasonable investigation.” A spokesperson for the county said it would not comment on pending litigation.

In addition to filing the lawsuit, the plaintiffs say they have also filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Texas Workforce Commission.

A copy of the lawsuit is embedded in the story. This case is obviously a potential blockbuster on its own, but I am specifically interested in it because Greg Willis is a good buddy of Ken Paxton’s and one reason why Paxton is being pursued by special prosecutors in his neverending Servergy fraud case, as Willis (properly!) recused himself at the beginning. Maybe any Collin County DA would have had to do the same – politics is a small world, after all, and politicians like to avoid hot potatoes when they can – but in another world maybe that doesn’t happen, and if so then the years-long saga of how the special prosecutors would or would not be paid would never have happened. Anyway, I’ll be keeping an eye on this. The DMN, whose story I was unable to read as I drafted this, has more.

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Taking seriously the threat of election violence

Posted on November 2, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

This is the reality we face.

U.S. security agencies have issued a heightened threat advisory, warning of a potential attacks on political candidates, election officials and others. The alert came Friday, the same day that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked in their San Francisco home.

NPR has obtained the bulletin issued by the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the U.S. Capitol Police.

Attacks conducted by lone actors pose the most plausible threat to potential targets, the bulletin warned. The risk of violence is fueled by an increase in domestic violent extremism, and those carrying out the attacks would likely do so for ideological reasons.

Most individuals are likely to cite the 2020 presidential election, repeating the false narrative that the results were skewed, and that former-President Donald Trump was the rightful winner, according to the warning.

Since 2021, perceptions of a fraudulent election have contributed to several attacks or violent plots, and the bulletin added that new theories of fraud undermining the midterm elections have been emerging.

The advisory said that last month, domestic violent extremists were identified as claiming the electoral system of being “under attack” and threatened violence against politicians.

With less than two weeks before Election Day, President Biden on Friday called on political figures to “clearly and unambiguously” reject political violence, calling the attack on the Pelosi “despicable.”

The president, citing news reports, drew ties between what Friday’s attacker allegedly said — chanting, “Where’s Nancy?” — and what rioters said while storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“What makes us think that one party can talk about stolen elections, COVID being a hoax, it’s all a bunch of lies — and it not affect people who may not be so well-balanced? What makes us think that it’s not going to corrode the political climate?” he said.

In the bulletin, law enforcement officials warned that the threat of violence extends beyond just politicians, with religious minorities also listed as a potential target.

We have been living under this threat for awhile now, and though I appreciate the heightened attention to it, we could have gotten this months ago. That said, we also could have gotten the clear and unambiguous rejection of violence from a whole swath of Republican elected officials, and I find their failure to take a stand – indeed, in many cases, their deflections and whataboutisms and sometimes-coy sometimes-explicit approval of the violence – to be cowardly and reprehensible. There are plenty of things our Republican elected officials in Texas could be doing right now to actually enhance election security, but instead they’re making the problem worse. And as we know, nothing is going to change as long as they remain in office. This is the reality we face.

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Larry Veselka: The Chron got it wrong in the County Judge endorsement

Posted on November 2, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Judge Lina Hidalgo

(Note: The following is a guest post that was submitted to me. I occasionally solicit guest posts, and also occasionally accept them from people I trust.)

A couple of weeks ago the Chronicle Editorial Board endorsed Judge Hidalgo’s opponent in a schizophrenic editorial that any objective reader who read it without seeing the headline first would have thought was an endorsement for reelecting Judge Hidalgo. Harris County voters should take it substantively as one.

The editorial praised Judge Hidalgo, in many ways, e.g.:

-appreciating her “dynamic mix of wonkishness and progressive optimism” and her being an ‘inspiration to many”

-saying “if given the choice, we’d rather live in Hidalgo’s vision of Harris County, where government is inclusive, transparent and ethical, policy isn’t tainted by politics, the air is cleaner, the streets are safer, more children can attend pre-K, and climate change is treated with the urgency it deserves”

-“Hidalgo has made good on her promises, including fairness in distributing Harvey funding on a ‘worst-first’ basis and investments in badly needed air monitors in polluted neighborhoods and early childhood education”

– acknowledging, but unduly faintly in only one sentence, her courageous, tenacious, yet gracious leadership in fighting COVID in a way that probably saved thousands, if not more than ten thousand lives of local citizens;

– her handling of disasters, including Winter Storm Uri with “poise and a clear head”

– “it’s true that [Hidalgo] boasts a proposed budget that that would have increased funding for law enforcement… she never tried to ‘defund’ police… her plan would boost law enforcement funding $97 million more than the previous fiscal year, including pay raises for some ‘frontline deputies.”

So what did they see that was so wonderful about her opponent that swayed their opinion when they said this about her:

– She “can come off as combative, talking over others” and interrupting them;

– The board initially backed someone else in the Republican primary, “citing her lack of experience in governing”

– Asking whether “voters should trust an un-tested first-time candidate” without even mentioning that she was recruited to run by Ted Cruz and his wife;

– Her primary promise of “hiring 1,000 new law enforcement officers…is simplistic at this point” acknowledging how dubious such a promise is in light of the tight County budget;

– Her position in the primary opposing the reform of the misdemeanor bail system and incorrectly blaming that reform for the supposed “spike in violent crime” … “would be a deal-breaker for [the Board]” but they will now rely on her saying that she has changed her position, (will you?);

– “her understanding of the system may be incomplete and in some cases even flawed”

– She admitted that prosecuting polluters is “not first and foremost to her” and she does not think the County should address climate change, which the Board characterized as “grating in a low-lying coastal community baking in industrial emissions.”

The editorial claims that the Board was swayed by Judge Hidalgo’s supposed “failure to respond with urgency to Harris County’s crime wave,” citing as the critical factor the backlog in the Courts, while simultaneously acknowledging that Judge Hidalgo “didn’t cause the backlog … has no control over courtroom decisions on bail … [and] isn’t to blame for the provision in the Texas Constitution that guarantees virtually every defendant, even those with violent criminal records, an initial right to bail.”

The editorial went on to acknowledge that:

– “Harris County is far from the most dangerous place in the country, as Republican hyperbole would have it;

– “Mercifully, violent crime is currently declining and even at its peak, criminologists ranked Houston’s murder rate in the middle of the pack among major cities. Last year’s rate in unincorporated Harris County stayed flat….”

– The “felony backlog is down 23% since January.”

So why would the Board’s ultimate conclusion be in such stark contrast to most of its arguments?

The disconnect smacks of a lack of journalistic integrity. Did the Chronicle’s management override the independence of the Editorial Board, strong-arming the Board into backing down from its true position? The fact that the “News” department ran three front page stories about Judge Hidalgo’s opponent immediately after the endorsement evidences support for the conclusion that the lines between departments were blurred, an unforgiveable breach in journalistic ethics.

The Republicans hatched a plan for the midterms to over-hype an increase in crime coming out of two tough years under pandemic lockdowns and layoffs. Even though the Chronicle admits that violent crime has leveled off or dropped some this year, the Republicans needed something to scare people into voting Republican. This became more important once the decision overturning Roe v. Wade this summer kicked off a surge of renewed enthusiasm by
supporters of reproductive rights to register and drive supporters to the polls. Right-wing multi-millionaires and billionaires opposed to the County’s efforts to prevent flooding and pollution, some contributing as much as $350,000 to $400,000 each, began showering Judge Hidalgo’s opponent with millions of dollars of contributions to pay for deceitful attack ads against Judge Hidalgo. They knew that she could not match the millions flowing in, because Judge Hidalgo pledged in 2018 not to accept any contributions from the County’s vendors. In other words, she lived up to her campaign promise to do what all campaigns should do, but none other do, end “Pay-for-Play” politics. The Republican contributors knew that and knew, if County Judge Hidalgo were reelected with the 10 point lead she had earned over the last 3 1⁄2 years, it would mean the Republican state leaders that have carried so much water for them, and have been so bad for the majority of working people of Texas, could be in trouble. So they had to deliver the hits on Judge Hidalgo’s deserved popularity by funding a massive barrage of misleading arguments in favor of a flawed opponent.

The myriad issues confronting Harris County right now require keeping Judge Hidalgo’s steady hands on the wheel. It would be truly unconscionable for the Chronicle’s flawed endorsement and the millions of dollars in deceitful attack ads to wrest her hands away merely to turn it over to an inexperienced right-winger beholden to Trump, Cruz, and the multimillionaire and billionaire classes. Our democracy and our Constitutional rights are at stake. Embrace the wisdom expressed in the editorial while rejecting its inconsistent conclusion by voting to re-elect County Judge Lina Hidalgo.

Larry R. Veselka is a Houston lawyer and former County Chair for the Democratic Party who has been active in politics for 50 years.

NOTE FROM CHARLES: I’m just going to put this here:

A question that maybe the Chron editorial board should have asked themselves.

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November 2022 Day Nine EV Totals: Still lagging

Posted on November 2, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Nine days down, three to go: Final EV totals from 2018 are here and from 2014 are here. The Day Nine totals for 2022 are here.


Year     Mail    Early    Total
===============================
2014   60,400  191,432  251,832
2018   80,279  557,264  637,543
2022   46,417  454,309  500,726

Not off to a fast start in week 2, as both Monday and Tuesday had lower turnout than the weekdays of Week 1. I wasn’t expecting 2018-level turnout, even with the larger number of registered voters, but it’s lagging farther behind than I expected at this point. I’d like to see this turn around, but we’re running out of time for it to happen. Have you voted yet?

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DMN\UT-Tyler: Abbott 50, Beto 44 (LV) – Abbott 47, Beto 44 (RV)

Posted on November 1, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Pick your preference.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott holds a 6 percentage point lead over Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke as the race to the Nov. 8 election grinds toward the finish line, a poll released Sunday by the University of Texas at Tyler shows.

The poll of 973 likely voters contacted randomly Oct. 17-24 shows Abbott ahead 50% to O’Rourke’s 44%. When the field is expanded to registered voters, 1,330 of whom were contacted, Abbott’s lead shrinks to just 3 points.

The results differ from a recent poll by the University of Texas Politics project that showed the incumbent with a strong 11-point edge, and with one conducted by Beacon Research that was commissioned by the Democratic Policy Institute that showed just a 3-point difference in Abbott’s favor. But UT-Tyler’s findings are in line with several non-aligned polls conducted in late summer. The margin of error for the “likely voters” breakout is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Moving down the ballot, Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was leading Democratic challenger Mike Collier 44%-35% among likely voters and Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton was ahead of Democrat Rochelle Garza 42%-38%. Like Abbott, Patrick and Paxton are seeking third terms.

The poll’s data is here. I appreciate the fact that they gave us both a likely voter and registered voter result – this pollster has done that in the past, but it wasn’t always presented in a way that made it clear. I also appreciate that this story mentioned other polls and where this one fit in rather than rely on the ridiculous language of this candidate or that losing or gaining ground when comparing one isolated poll result to another, different, poll result. Having context is always better than not having context.

These numbers look reasonable enough. Both Beto and Abbott get about the same amount of support from their own voters, with independents split evenly. Beto does well among Black (78-16) and Latino (59-36) voters while Abbott crushes with white voters (63-31). Of interest in the AG race, one possible reason for Rochelle Garza to be the top performer, is that she is at 47-33 among indies, a significant difference from the Governor’s race. That’s of a small sample of a single poll, so don’t put any actual weight on it, but I’ll file it away for later if it becomes relevant. Even with their LV sample, there were a lot of “don’t know” responses in the Lite Gov and AG races, so who knows what that means. I don’t know if we’re expecting any more poll data at this point – now that we have actual votes, polling becomes of less value – but for what it’s worth, this is where we are.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that in their September poll, which was of registered voters, Abbott was leading 47-38.

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True the Vote leaders officially held in contempt

Posted on November 1, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

How long do you think they’ll be willing to sit in jail?

Federal marshals escorted two leaders of True the Vote out of a Houston courtroom on Monday morning and into a holding cell. Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips have been held in contempt of court for refusing to release the name of a person of interest in the defamation and computer hacking case against them, who they claim, without proof, is a confidential FBI informant.

They will remain in jail until they release the name of the man.

It is the latest surprise development in the strange story, which concerns — depending on who’s describing it — a right-wing elections group allegedly defaming a small technology company, or a small technology company whose alleged security flaws were exposed by a right wing elections group.

Konnech, the election management software company at the center of those claims, filed a federal lawsuit in September alleging that True the Vote’s viral social media campaign targeting the company’s founder and CEO, Eugene Yu, led to personal threats to him and his family and damaged his company’s business.

In podcasts and interviews, Phillips described a dramatic night in early 2021 in a Dallas hotel, where a man he later identified as Mike Hasson revealed what True the Vote has said was hard evidence of Konnech’s alleged influence on the 2020 election.

The involvement of a third man was unknown until a Thursday hearing, when Konnech’s attorney’s pressed Phillips for additional information about what Phillips claimed was an hours-long Konnech research session in Dallas that night. On the stand, Phillips revealed that another “analyst” was present in the room when Hasson allegedly offered evidence he’d uncovered about Konnech, showing the company had stored American poll worker data on a server in China. Neither he nor Engelbrecht would release the third man’s name, saying he was in danger from “drug cartels.”

While True the Vote’s former attorney on the matter, Brock Akers, released Hasson’s name after U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt demanded he do so earlier in the month, True the Vote’s new legal team has chosen a different path. Akers has not  appeared in court since providing Hasson’s name. Last week, Engelbrecht and Phillips were represented by Michael Wynne, a different Houston attorney, who told the court Akers was on vacation “on the Mediterranean” and would be withdrawing from the case. Wynne said Akers remained away, on a cruise, on Monday morning.

[…]

Again on Monday, Wynne said that True the Vote never had access to the data in question in the case. “The information was too large — the number of terabytes — for him to physically have taken possession,” he said. “He did not and does not have access.”

“I don’t know that,” Hoyt responded. “And neither do you.”

Wynne entered more than two dozen pages of evidence onto the record late Friday night, including dozens of text messages between Engelbrecht and individuals True the Vote has claimed are FBI agents. They also included two affidavits from Phillips and Engelbrecht, and details of Yu’s arrest in Los Angeles.

Hoyt, a Ronald Reagan nominee, was unmoved by the submission, calling it irrelevant given its failure to identify the man at the center of Thursday’s hearing.

See here and here for the previous updates. The phrases “you can’t make this stuff up” and “truth is stranger than fiction” are often overused, but they absolutely apply in this saga. I’m riveted. I’m also torn between “these two chumps will fold quickly” and “these two are dumb enough to stay in the pokey indefinitely”. Could honestly go either way. We’ll see. Juanita has more.

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From the department of “The rent is too damn high”

Posted on November 1, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

A lawsuit to watch.

Renters are suing Richardson-based RealPage and some of the largest property management firms in the nation for allegedly forming what they call a “cartel” to artificially inflate apartment prices above competitive levels.

Five renters are challenging RealPage and seven property management firms — including Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. — days after ProPublica published an investigation on landlords’ use of RealPage’s proprietary YieldStar algorithm to push the highest possible rent prices on tenants for apartments across the U.S.

“RealPage strongly denies the allegations and will vigorously defend against the lawsuit,” said RealPage spokeswoman Natalie Dent. “Beyond that, we do not comment on pending litigation.”

Earlier this week in response to the ProPublica story, RealPage told The Dallas Morning News: “Revenue management software cannot control the market because it does not consider or have visibility into market availability. Additionally, the article implies vacancy and resident turnover have increased due to revenue management, which is exactly opposite of what has occurred, as both have steadily declined over the last decade even as revenue management software usage increased.”

The class-action suit was filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of California on behalf of all renters of multifamily real estate leases from landlords who have used RealPage’s pricing or lease renewal-taggering software.

“Today’s lawsuit plausibly alleges that lessors of rental units have coordinated to drive rents up to unprecedented levels, exacerbating the nation’s affordable housing crisis,” said Gary Smith Jr., an attorney at Hausfeld representing the renters. “We look forward to vindicating our clients’ rights in this important federal antitrust litigation.”

The suit claims landlords independently priced their leases based on their own assessments of how to best compete against other landlords until about 2016, when they agreed to use a common third party, RealPage, which collected real-time prices and supply levels and used that data to make pricing and supply recommendations. The landlords would follow RealPage’s suggestion with the expectation that others would do the same, the suit said.

The lawsuit is targeted at some of the largest managers of apartment complexes in the nation, including Greystar Real Estate Partners LLC, headquartered in Charleston, S.C.; Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co.; FPI Management Inc., based near Sacramento; Mid-America Apartment Communities Inc., based in the Memphis area; Chicago-based Equity Residential; Essex Property Trust, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area.; and three Seattle-based firms: Avenue5 Residential LLC, Thrive Communities Management LLC and Security Properties Inc.

You should read the Pro Publica article that seems to be the foundation of this lawsuit; you can also listen to this What Next TBD episode in which host Lizzie O’Leary interviews the author of the article about it. I don’t know what the likelihood of success is for this lawsuit. Federal suits can take years to work their way through the system, and SCOTUS looms at the end of the line if the result is too unfriendly to business interests. I do think this is an issue that could and should be championed by progressive politicians, and could gain a lot of traction. Nobody really likes the idea of secret algorithms taking advantage of regular people, so the opportunity to have a good fight for real oversight of a problem that’s costing lots of people lots of money is one that should be taken. I’ll keep an eye on this.

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White Oak bike trail extension: The final polish

Posted on November 1, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

I haven’t seen a news story or press release to say that the White Oak bike trail extension is now fully open, but what I have seen is bicyclists using the trail. So open it must be. And since the last update a month ago, there have been a couple of finishing touches. Observe:

HeightsTrailExtensionDone

HeightsTrailExtensionFullViewDone

If you zoom in, you can see bike riders in each of those photos. I have not yet had the opportunity to use the trail myself yet, but it’s on my to do list.

One more thing: All the construction equipment is gone, and I was wondering if there had been a finishing touch added to the Frasier Street entrance to the MKT Trail. Alas, that is still a no:

MKTTrailFrasierEntranceDone

Maybe I can will it into existence someday.

Since I’m sure you’re all wondering what public works project in my neighborhood I’ll obsessively chronicle now that this one is finally in the books, well, it looks like work is about to begin on 11th Street. These signs appeared about a month ago:

BigChangesComingTo11thStreet

And hopefully there will be some action on the A Tale Of Two Bridges project. So don’t you worry, there will be more pictures soon.

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All of the judicial Q&As for this cycle

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

At the end of the primary cycle, I rounded up all of the interviews and judicial Q&As done for the primaries and runoffs, so that you’d have them in one place. As I ran the November interviews, I included links to the others I had done before, but I never did round up all of the latest judicial Q&As. Here they are now, in case you want to review them before you vote.

Justice Julie Countiss, Chief Justice, First Court of Appeals
Ted Wood, Chief Justice, First Court of Appeals
Judge Mike Engelhart, , First Court of Appeals, Place 4

Judge Brian Warren, 209th Criminal Court
Judge Josh Hill, 232nd Criminal District Court
Judge Lori Chambers Gray, 262nd Criminal District Court

Judge Tanya Garrison, 157th Civil District Court
Judge Beau Miller, 190th Civil District Court
Judge Cory Sepolio, 269th Civil District Court
Judge Donna Roth, 295th Civil District Court

Judge Gloria Lopez, 308th Family District Court
Judge Linda Dunson, 309th Family District Court
Judge Sonya Heath, 310th Family District Court
Judge Michelle Moore, 314th Juvenile District Court

Judge Audrie Lawton Evans, Harris County Civil Court at Law #1
Judge LaShawn Williams, Harris County Civil Court at Law #3

Judge Alex Salgado, Harris County Criminal Court at Law #1
Judge Shannon Baldwin, Harris County Criminal Court at Law #4
Judge Toria Finch, Harris County Criminal Court at Law #9
Judge Genesis Draper, Harris County Criminal Court at Law #12
Je’Rell Rogers, Harris County Criminal Court at Law #14
Judge Tonya Jones, Harris County Criminal Court at Law #15

Judge Jerry Simoneaux, Harris County Probate Court #1
Pamela Medina, Harris County Probate Court #2
Judge Jason Cox, Harris County Probate Court #3
Judge James Horwitz, Harris County Probate Court #4

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Contempt of court in the True the Vote lawsuit

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Wilder and wilder.

After a chaotic day of testimony on Thursday, a federal judge in Texas found Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips — known as leaders of the group True the Vote — in contempt of court. They are facing accusations of defamation and computer crimes from a company at the center of a viral right-wing social media campaign engineered by the conservative voting organization.

The judge informed the pair they would face jail time if they do not comply with the terms of a court order by Monday at 9 a.m.

“I expect both defendants to be present,” said U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt, a Ronald Reagan appointee, looking at their table. Marshals, he said, would be ready to arrest them.

Thursday’s finding of contempt was the latest in a string of twists in the civil suit filed in September by Konnech, a Michigan-based company that provides poll worker management software to elections offices.

In filings and testimony, the basic facts and plot lines have shifted from week to week, often producing unexplained contradictions. True the Vote’s telling involves a lengthy middle-of-the-night hotel rendezvous, double-crossing federal agents, confidential informants, and security threats on two continents.

Konnech’s lawsuit, on the other hand, alleges that True the Vote’s baseless and racist accusations against the company’s CEO, Eugene Yu, forced him and his family to flee their home in fear for their lives and damaged the company’s business. Meanwhile, Yu was arrested and charged by the Los Angeles district attorney on allegations of storing government data in China, in breach of its contract, that appear similar to at least some of the allegations True the Vote has made, and Los Angeles officials have said they received an initial tip from Phillips.

For years, Engelbrecht and Phillips have come under fire for promoting election conspiracy theories while offering scant evidence to support them. But their current campaign against Konnech is forcing them to back up what they’ve said since August on far-right social networks and platforms in the more skeptical setting of a federal courtroom.

See here for the previous update. It’s impossible to convey how chaotic this all was without excerpting huge portions of the story, so just click over and read the whole thing. I have no idea what happens next – as far as the near future goes, either Engelbrecht and Phillips will be spending some amount of time in the federal pokey or they will finally give up the evidence they’ve been required to present – but what is clear is that these people are not operating on the same plane of reality as the rest of us. There have always been people like that in the world, but they used to mostly inhabit the fringes. Now they’re much more mainstream, and there’s no obvious precedent for any of this. I suspect we have not reached the pinnacle of the craziness here yet. The Chron has more.

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Drought is not good for pumpkins

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Sorry, kids.

By school of Fear, Fair use

This year’s hot, dry weather has wreaked havoc on Texas agriculture, and the state’s pumpkin crop has not been spared. Farmers and agricultural experts say that drop in supply has translated into higher prices for pumpkins popular for display and jack-o’-lantern carving this fall.

“We didn’t have not even half as many pumpkins on the vine as we should have [this year],” pumpkin farmer Chris Hacker told KUT. “They’re not turning out as good as previous years.”

Hacker grows pumpkins on 150 acres in Knox County, between Dallas and Lubbock. He says his crop relies on irrigated water to thrive. But even with that supply, the extreme heat stopped pumpkins from growing.

Pumpkin flowers, he said, become difficult for insects to pollinate in extreme heat, so fewer of them grow into the beloved seasonal gourds.

“The pollen just wasn’t working the way it should,” Hacker said. “If you have too many days over 95 degrees consistently, then the pollen just goes stale. No matter how many bees you got out in the field working, it just doesn’t work.”

In Floyd County, the state’s top-pumpkin growing region, growers have also reported below average yields, according to the Texas Agrilife Crop and Weather Report.

“This year was a lot like 2011 in that we were starting to get 100 degree days early in May … and we had them all summer,” Jerry Coplen, an AgriLife Extension agent in Knox County, said.

Texas is not a big pumpkin producer compared to some other states. According to the Agrilife report, Illinois produces 90% of the nation’s pumpkin harvest, if you include pumpkins grown for food.

But when it comes to specialty “ornamental” pumpkins used for seasonal display, the drop in local or statewide production can still impact prices, Coplen said.

Any time the year 2011 is invoked in a weather-related story, it’s bad news. Hope things are better next year.

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November 2022 Day Seven EV totals: On to Week 2

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Fresh from Sunday night: Final EV totals from 2018 are here and from 2014 are here. The Day Seven totals for 2022 are here.


Year     Mail    Early    Total
===============================
2014   57,546  137,137  194,683
2018   77,347  429,009  506,356
2022   44,163  354,100  398,263

Saturday’s in person total of 41K was surprisingly low, while Sunday’s 25K was much more in line with expectations. Because Saturday in 2018 was much busier, the 2022 pace has fallen off a bit, though the in person total is still about 82.5% of what it was four years ago. The early vote for 2022 after seven days has now exceeded the entire early vote from 2014. An average of about 59K per day for this week, not much higher than the average for the first seven days, would make the 2022 early total be greater than the final turnout for all of 2014. Obviously, we want to aim much higher than that, and we have many more voters now than we did eight years ago – and also four years ago. We’ll see what this week holds. Have you voted yet?

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Weekend link dump for October 30

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Yeah, Bill Murray is a jackass and has been for a long time. I’m just going to have to accept that.

Happy 100th birthday, BBC.

“I happen to agree that there has been, in fact, a Mitt Romney radicalization process. But it is quite the opposite of what this narrative suggests. It isn’t rooted in Republican anger on behalf of Romney but in Republican anger against Romney, and over time that anger has grown to be not just against Romney the man but also against the values he represents.”

“Which means the Sandy Hook families, who are now creditors for both Jones and Free Speech Systems, could find themselves in a very odd position: Trying to get their hands on all of Jones’s personal assets while also working within a legal system that is designed to keep Free Speech Systems and Infowars — which only really works if Jones works there — up and running.”

“We’re about two weeks away from Election Day, but some voter intimidation efforts are already underway in Arizona, painting an ominous picture of just how far some Big Lie activists may go to push their debunked voter fraud narrative during the midterms.”

Two words: Robot tentacles. Yeah, I don’t know either.

“In advance of election night, I think it’s useful to calibrate expectations to the fundamentals, not to polls or vibes.”

“It would be hard to find a clearer example than this of the difference between government negotiation of drug prices and the private market.”

“States passing abortion bans reflect what only a small minority of their constituents actually want”.

Turns out, HR Haldeman was absolutely right about Billy Graham. And once you know that, it’s a lot easier to understand how the much-beloved Billy Graham begat his shitbird son Franklin.

Long live Larry the Cat, who has now served as Chief Mouser to the UK Cabinet Office through the terms of four prime ministers. And counting.

RIP, Ash Carter, former Secretary of Defense who opened military combat jobs to women and ended a ban on transgender people serving in the military.

RIP, Jules Bass, animator, producer, director and composer who partnered with Arthur Rankin Jr. on the stop-motion and animated holiday TV specials Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.

“This idea that vote by mail is a form of voting that inherently advantages Democrats is just flat wrong. It is a mode of voting that creates opportunities for political parties to mobilize their supporters.”

“Let’s talk about why the price of gas drives people crazy”.

RIP, Jerry Lee Lewis, rock and roll pioneer and Hall of Famer.

Lucianne Goldberg has died. I have no further comment.

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What will Tarrant County do this year?

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Hoping for a blue result at the top and at least closer races below it, but we’ll see.

Eight years after voting for Gov. Greg Abbott, Angela Martinez found herself waiting in line Tuesday to snap a photo with Beto O’Rourke, his challenger in this year’s nail-biting gubernatorial contest.

Martinez, a 33-year-old marketer for a pediatric home health agency, has never identified as strictly liberal or conservative, she said, and sometimes feels like “a walking contradiction.” If there’s a spot for her on the traditional political spectrum, she hasn’t found it. When she voted for Abbott in 2014, Martinez identified with what she saw as the then-attorney general’s Christian family values.

But since then, Martinez has soured on Abbott. She feels Abbott didn’t do enough in the wake of the deadly winter freeze in February 2021 to prevent the state’s electrical grid from collapsing should a similarly catastrophic weather event hit Texas in the future. As someone who values “the sanctity of life,” Martinez is uneasy about the state’s blanket ban on abortions that took effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this year.

“My mother had the freedom (to seek an abortion), my aunts had the freedom,” Martinez said while waiting to meet O’Rourke at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth. “Why shouldn’t we?”

Voters in Tarrant County, the state’s last major urban county dominated by Republicans, just barely broke for Democrats at the top of the ticket in the last two elections — O’Rourke won there during his 2018 Senate bid and so did President Joe Biden two years ago — stoking Democrats’ hopes that the path to the governor’s mansion, and the end of their decadeslong exile from statewide office, goes through Tarrant. Boosting those hopes is infighting this year among Tarrant County Republicans — who insist the party is united.

The year that O’Rourke carried Tarrant during his near-miss bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Abbott won the county by more than 66,000 votes and nearly 11 percentage points — outperforming every other statewide Republican on the ticket.

Four years later, Abbott’s team is “confident” the governor will win Tarrant County once more, Abbott’s chief strategist Dave Carney told reporters last week while acknowledging the county is competitive. “It’s going to be a battle,” Carney said.

At his campaign stop at the UNT Health Science Center, O’Rourke expressed optimism that 125,000 people who have been added to the county’s voter rolls since he ran in 2018, combined with discontent over the power grid failure during last year’s winter storm, the state’s abortion ban and Abbott’s response to school shootings would help deliver him the county.

“Abbott has given us a huge, huge opening” in Tarrant County, O’Rourke said. “So many people are looking for the common ground and the common sense that’s been missing from our state government.”

But as Democrats express optimism because of O’Rourke and Biden’s victories, Republicans continue to dominate down-ballot races in Tarrant County — a sign of the GOP’s enduring dominance here.

“They have now a little bit of history that suggests that Democrats might be able to win in Tarrant County,” said James Riddlesperger, a political science professor at Texas Christian University. “On the other hand, there has not been a countywide Democrat elected for county office in Tarrant County in this century.”

Statewide Democratic candidates in 2018 and 2020 slightly outperformed their cumulative margins in Tarrant County. In 2018, the small number of local countywide candidates did a tad better than the statewide slate as a whole, scoring in the 47-48% range. In 2020, the same slight improvement was still there among a larger collection of local countywide candidates, but they finished in the 46-47% range for the most part.

Tarrant, as noted before, had been a reliable bellwether of the state as a whole through the 2016 election, but as with the other large urban counties, and several of the large suburban counties, it became more Democratic than the state. It’s just that Tarrant started in a redder place than the others, so they still lag behind by a bit. I suspect they will again be slightly bluer than the state as a whole, but if there’s a step back from 2018 or 2020, that will be reflected in Tarrant’s numbers as well. I believe the larger trends will continue, whether this year is in line with that or not. I hope that means a blue Tarrant sooner rather than later – as we know, there are a plethora of State House districts that were drawn to be modestly red, and CD24 looms as the best future pickup opportunity – but whether that’s this year or not I couldn’t say.

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Texas Central insists they’re still alive

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

It’s something, I guess.

A lawyer for nearly 100 property owners who are living with the threat of their land being seized said he will seek legal action against Texas Central, the company that for a decade has promised to build a bullet train between Dallas and Houston, if the company does not provide more details about the looming project.

Landowners whose property could be in the path of the train track have petitioned the company to answer their questions. Patrick McShan, the lawyer representing property owners, said he’s prepared to ask a judge to allow him to depose the company — which has said little about the project — to get answers for his clients.

[…]

McShan’s list of questions included inquiries about the company’s leadership and permits for the project.

Robert Neblett, Texas Central’s attorney, said the company spent a “considerable sum” of money acquiring property for this project. Neblett added the company owns hundreds of tracts of land purchased for this project, but he did not confirm The Texas Tribune’s analysis of property owned by Texas Central.

“Texas Central’s chief executive is Michael Bui. Texas Central is not currently looking for a CEO to replace him nor is it looking for a new Board of Directors,” Neblett said in an emailed statement to the Tribune.

Neblett added that Texas Central plans to obtain any and all federal Surface Transportation Board certifications required to construct and operate the project.

Bui is a senior management consultant with FTI Consulting, a business advisory that lists corporate recovery as one of his qualifications. Bui also served as an adviser to a private energy company that provided power to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas following its court-ordered restructuring after the February 2021 freeze that caused hundreds of deaths while knocking out power and heat to millions of people.

Texas Central made a rare public statement Wednesday, sharing a photograph of Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, Houston City Council members and Greater Houston Partnership President and CEO Bob Harvey during an “investment and trade mission” in Tokyo and Chiba, a sister city of Houston.

According to a news release Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office released Thursday, unnamed representatives of Texas Central said, “the landscape changed since March 2022, when the company underwent a restructuring effort, and the future of the high-speed train remains bright.”

Houston and Dallas leaders have long championed the project that would connect the two cities. Turner said the bullet train would be an economic stimulant for the entire state.

“We had some very productive and constructive discussions about the train in Japan,” Turner said. “The leadership in Houston is very supportive and wants it to happen. I look forward to working with Texas Central and our state and federal partners to advance this project. If you build it, people will take full advantage of it.”

Still in contention is how much land the company has acquired in the 10 years since the project was announced, and how much land is still needed for the bullet train.

See here, here, and here for the background. As noted in the story, the Texas Central Twitter page had its first new post since July, so that’s something. I’d like to see more activity than that, but at least the mirror test shows that there’s still some breath in there. For now, I’ll take it.

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The Corpus Christi desalination plant fight

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

This ought to be interesting.

Texas regulators issued an environmental permit Thursday for the Port of Corpus Christi to build what could become the state’s first seawater desalination plant — but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may refuse to accept it.

The state permit for a desalination plant on Harbor Island represents the culmination of years of business strategy, political maneuvering and lawyering effort on behalf of the port, which wants to build a large-scale facility to convert seawater from the Gulf of Mexico into freshwater. The marine desalination plant is expected to cost at least half a billion dollars to construct; an estimate provided to the Texas Water Development Board puts the cost at more than $800 million.

Environmental groups have fought the project for four years on the grounds that wastewater from the plant could harm sensitive coastal ecosystems.

Now the port also will have to spar with the EPA, which can refuse to recognize the state permit on the grounds that it doesn’t comply with the Clean Water Act. The federal agency is concerned that Texas’ permit may not be sufficient to protect aquatic life and water quality, according to letters obtained by The Texas Tribune, and that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality did not send the permit to the EPA for federal review.

The dispute centers on what type of permit is required: The EPA believes the desalination plant needs a “major” environmental permit — which requires EPA review — while TCEQ says the facility should be considered a minor project, which does not require federal review.

“If the TCEQ issues [the permit] without responding to the EPA … the EPA’s position will be that it is not a validly issued [permit],” Earthea Nance, regional administrator for the EPA’s Dallas-based Region 6, wrote in a Sept. 2 letter to TCEQ Commissioner Jon Niermann. Some experts speculated that the EPA may sue the TCEQ to determine whether Texas is legally obligated to consult the EPA on such seawater desalination permits.

TCEQ commissioners on Thursday seemed to dismiss the EPA’s concerns. Commissioner Bobby Janecka said he considered the federal agency’s objections but called them “outside our window of decision” on whether to issue the permit.

The Harbor Island plant is one of five marine desalination facilities proposed for Corpus Christi Bay — all racing to be the first built in Texas. Two are proposed by the Port of Corpus Christi and two by the city of Corpus Christi. (The port and the city have soured on one another as partners on desalination.) The fifth plant was proposed by a now bankrupt plastics company, which has since been taken over by Corpus Christi Polymers.

Water demand in the Corpus Christi region’s water planning area — pushed by a growing population and a boom in manufacturing and petrochemical facilities that need water to cool their plants — is expected to outstrip supply by more than 31,000 acre-feet, or about 10 billion gallons, by the end of the decade if new water sources are not secured, according to the state’s water plan.

The water planning area — made up of 11 counties in South Texas’ Nueces River Basin along the coast — projects that 70% of its new water resources will have to come from desalination plants by 2030.

“The potential for water independence from these kinds of facilities is very big,” said Manish Kumar, an associate professor of environmental and chemical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, who has worked on and advised desalination projects. “The significance is huge, because we have the coastline, we have energy and in many places, we have a need for high-quality water.”

While Texas already has more than 50 plants that desalinate brackish groundwater into freshwater, according to a state database, seawater desalination is much more technically difficult, energy intensive and expensive to achieve on a large scale because ocean water is much saltier than brackish groundwater.

The seawater plants also give less bang for buck: Marine desalination plants are able to convert around 40% to 50% of seawater into freshwater, while groundwater desalination plants convert closer to 80%, Kumar said. The remaining water — made saltier by removing most of the now fresh water — is discharged as waste.

There’s a lot more, so read the rest. The environmental groups stress that they are not opposed to desalination, but they don’t think the TCEQ has done enough to ensure that the wastewater will be disposed of safely – basically, they want it dumped farther out into the Gulf of Mexico, where it can be more easily dispersed. I don’t know how much that might add to the cost of the project, or how big an effect it might have on future projects. I do know that the lawsuit that will result if the EPA decides this is a “major” project and requires their review will be another opportunity for the right-wing legal machine to attack the regulatory state, and I would rather that be avoided if possible. We’ll see how it goes.

UPDATE: I drafted this a couple of weeks ago, and more recently a lawsuit has been filed by residents of a historically Black neighborhood in Corpus Christi to stop this construction on the grounds that it violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We’ll see how that goes.

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How long has it been since the Fifth Circuit upheld a voter suppression law?

Posted on October 29, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

However long it’s been, they’re back at it.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

A federal appeals court on Wednesday revived a 2021 Texas law that set new residency requirements for voter registration, including one that civil rights groups alleged essentially blocked college students from signing up.

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court’s ruling that blocked most of the law for creating an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.

[…]

The judges found the groups, LULAC and Voto Latino, failed to prove they had endured harm as a result of the law and therefore lacked standing.

“It’s unfortunate that we have such a conservative, anti-voting rights 5th Circuit,” LULAC President Domingo Garcia said. “We’ve been representing Latinos of Texas since 1929. This is the first time in recent memory a court has ruled we do not have standing. We believe we were right on the merits that this is a voter suppression bill that should be overturned.”

Garcia added that the group plans to request a rehearing by the full court, which is often considered one of the most conservative courts in the country.

Senate Bill 1111, which took effect Sept. 1 of last year, requires that anyone using a P.O. Box to register must also provide documentation of a physical residential address, such as a photocopy of a driver’s license.

It also prohibits voters from establishing or maintaining a residence “for the purpose of influencing the outcome of a certain election.”

Lastly, it bars voters from establishing a residence in a place they have not inhabited or at a previous residence, unless they live there at the time of the designation and intend to remain there.

“It’s a recognition of the obvious that they really didn’t have standing and they are not harmed because all (the bill) does is simply say: Don’t register at an impossible address,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, who authored the bill.

LULAC and Voto Latino had argued that the law had forced them to have to divert resources toward educating the public about the changes and it chilled their speech when it came to what they could say about how to register to vote.

Garcia said LULAC spent more than $1 million to counteract election laws like SB 1111, but the judges sided with Texas in finding that the group failed to show how such expenses were directly related to that law, as several election laws were passed in 2021.

U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel mostly left the P.O. Box provision in-tact, reasoning that the state has an interest in preventing voter registration fraud and the request for verification of a physical address is not a severe burden. A response to that request with a new address, Yeakel clarified, should be considered a change of address with no further action needed.

Yeakel had enjoined the two other provisions. He argued that there are valid reasons for changing an address that may influence the outcome of an election but not in a malicious way, such as “voting, volunteering with a political campaign, or running for an elected office.”

The final provision relating to where a person lives or intends to stay would make registration near-impossible for college students, senators or other groups of people who live in multiple locations throughout the year, Yeakel said.

“The burden imposed is ‘severe,’ if not insurmountable,” Yeakel wrote. “Such an insurmountable burden is not easily overcome … And the possible repercussions are not just complete disenfranchisement, but also criminal liability.”

See here for the background. You will note that I anticipated this outcome, so at least I’ve got that going for me. I would just like to know, if this law is constitutional, if we can prevent certain lowlife perennial candidates from registering at warehouses around town for the purposes of establishing “residency” to run for office. I’m sure the Fifth Circuit will be able to justify that, I would just like to see them do it.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

It’s really tough on LGBTQ students right now

Posted on October 29, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Not a surprise, unfortunately.

Schools remain a hostile place for LGBTQ students, according to a new report from the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, which found a decline in access to resources, books and supportive clubs for those students.

Nearly 70% of LGBTQ students felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, according to the biennial report released last week. More than 78% said they avoided school functions or extracurricular activities because they felt unsafe or uncomfortable.

The findings come from the 2021 National School Climate Survey, which the organization has conducted every other year since 1999, offering a look into the unique experiences of LGBTQ students at schools across the nation and pointing to possible improvements.

“This year’s report shows we must make additional progress before LGBTQ+ youth are at minimum safe in schools where they can thrive and reach their full potential,” said Aaron Ridings, deputy executive director for public policy and research. “The attacks on LGBTQ+ youth from anti-LGBTQ+ extremists continue to create a chilling effect that threatens the wellbeing of gay and transgender youth across the country. We need leaders in states across the country who will uphold basic civil and education rights and let educators teach and students learn.”

Conditions have improved for LGBTQ students over the past two decades, according to the organization, though improvement has recently stagnated and researchers found few positive changes this year.

The organization that authored the report said it recommended that schools increase student access to appropriate and accurate LGBTQ resources, support student clubs, provide professional development to school staff, ensure that policies do not discriminate against LGBTQ students and create policies that ban harassment or bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

You can read the report, but honestly I think we have a pretty good idea. Lots of states, including but hardly limited to Texas, have been pushing all kinds of homophobic and transphobic policies, from curriculum changes to book banning to just out and out hateful rhetoric. The current election threatens to make things worse. What did you expect? Sure, things are better now than they were in the past, but there’s no guarantee that will continue. We have a lot of work to do.

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We have different definitions of “failure”

Posted on October 29, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

And by “we”, I mean DPS head Steve McCraw and everybody else.

Weeks after Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw said he would resign if his troopers had “any culpability” in the botched police response to the Uvalde school shooting, he told families calling for his resignation Thursday that the agency has not failed as an institution.

“If DPS as an institution — as an institution — failed the families, failed the school or failed the community of Uvalde, then absolutely I need to go,” McCraw said during a heated Public Safety Commission meeting. “But I can tell you this right now: DPS as an institution, right now, did not fail the community — plain and simple.”

McCraw made the remark during a frazzled nearly 15 minutes of comments after several families of the 19 children who were killed spoke during the meeting’s public hearing portion. Two teachers were also killed during the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary.

At least three sets of relatives — as well as state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio — addressed McCraw, sharing the pain they endure every day and castigating government officials who have failed to release accurate and complete information about the shooting since it occurred.

“Typically when situations like this come up, you expect people to tell you the truth, to be transparent, to own up to their mistakes — nothing much to it,” said an uncle of Jackie Cazares, one of the children killed. “But every single time, it seemed like a lie after lie, misinformation, roadblock after roadblock. You can’t begin the healing process.”

Last week, DPS fired the first trooper in connection to the incident, Sgt. Juan Maldonado, who was one of the first and most senior troopers to get to the school. The agency revealed in September at least five troopers were under investigation for their conduct that day.

[…]

As he spoke, relatives of the victims who were present in the room appeared infuriated. Looking at the leader of the state’s top law enforcement agency, they broke their stare to shake their heads.

Afterward, McCraw told the commission he wanted any families present to have an opportunity to respond.

Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old nephew Uziyah Garcia was among the children killed, walked to a podium.

“Are you a man of your word?” Cross asked.

“Absolutely,” McCraw said.

“Then resign,” Cross responded.

Honestly, I can’t add anything to that. I approve of this message. Texas Public Radio has more.

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November 2022 Day Five EV totals: A closer look at mail ballots

Posted on October 29, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

The numbers are what they are.

Nearly half as many people have so far voted by mail in Harris County as in 2018 during the same period, state data show.

About 31,000 voters submitted mail-in ballots by the end of the day Thursday, compared with 56,000 at this point four years ago. A similar trend is taking shape at the statewide level, where Republican voters who previously relied on mail ballots are likely opting to vote in person early or on Election Day, political analysts say.

Overall, turnout during early voting has also trailed slightly behind 2018. In the 30 counties with the most registered voters, about 11.1 percent have cast a ballot so far, though four counties had not yet submitted updated tallies as of Friday morning. About 16.1 percent had voted by this time four years ago.

The 31,000 mail ballots in Harris County make up about 1.2 percent of its registered voters. But in 2018, about 2.4 percent of registered voters’ ballots had been shipped off and counted by now.

Republicans in the past have had a 2-to-1 advantage in the vote-by-mail category, and the practice expanded in the 2020 election as the coronavirus spread. But as the pandemic waned, and after former President Donald Trump cast doubt on the integrity of the method, data shows Democrats now have the edge.

“Prior to 2018, voting by mail was really the bread and butter for Republican candidates,” said Derek Ryan, a GOP strategist whose company produces election data analyses. “And then (Trump) started discussing how potentially unsafe voting by mail could be, and I think that message has resonated with the Republican base.”

As of Wednesday in Harris County, 52 percent had previously voted in a Democratic primary, and 36 percent of mail voters had previously voted in a Republican primary, according to Ryan’s analysis. Yet, Republican voters have the upper hand in person, 41 percent to 34 percent.

[…]

Ryan, who’s been involved in politics in Texas since 2000, said this is the first election cycle he can remember in which most Republican candidates have not sent out mail ballot applications to registered voters.

Harris County elections spokeswoman Leah Shah said the county received far fewer applications that came from campaigns in this election — about 27,000 compared to 57,000 in 2018. Overall, the county received about 78,000 applications, compared with nearly 120,000 in 2018, she said.

“We’ve done a significant amount of education through the summer to ensure people feel confident in voting by mail,” Shah said. “It’s still an extremely important option for people who can’t come in person. We certainly want to encourage people to do so if needed and if they’re eligible.”

As noted, the in person early voting totals for Harris County right now are quite close to the 2018 numbers. The vote by mail totals are down quite a bit, and for sure that’s mostly Republican dropoff. For what it’s worth, in the 2018 general election in Harris County, Republicans had a slight lead in straight ticket votes on the mail ballots, though the Dem candidates for the most part had a modest edge overall. In 2020 Dems had a solid lead i mail votes, and I expect the same this year though with a smaller number of total mail votes cast. In the end, as I’ve said before, I would expect most of the former mail voters to turn out in person.

As for the Republican voters having an edge so far with in person voters, remember three things: One, the earliest voters tend to be the most faithful ones, so they’re disproportionately the strongest partisans. Two, going back to 2012 there have generally been more votes cast in Republican primaries than in Democratic primaries. The high water total for both parties in a primary is about 329K, with Dems hitting that mark in 2020 and Republicans in 2016. Not everyone votes in a given year’s primary so you can’t just add up the votes for each year, but my point is that to a first order approximation, the total number of people with an R primary history and the people with a D voting history are roughly the same.

(Yes, there were 410K Dem primary voters in 2008. That was 14 years ago. People move, people die, and we have about 700K more registered voters now in Harris County than we did then.)

Finally, there are a lot of people with no primary voting history. In 2018, when Dems had 159K primary voters and Republicans had 167K, every Dem other than Lina Hidalgo got at least 606K votes in November, while Republicans of the non-Ed Emmett variety got at most 560K (Hidalgo beat Emmett 595K to 575K). In 2020, with 329K Dem primary votes and 195K Republicans, it was at least 814K votes for Dems and at most 740K for Republicans. There are a lot of votes still to be cast.

Here are the totals through Friday. Final EV totals from 2018 are here and from 2014 are here. The Day Five totals for 2022 are here.


Year     Mail    Early    Total
===============================
2014   54,300  104,147  158,447
2018   65,232  315,030  380,262
2022   37,810  287,185  324,995

There were about 55K in person voters on both Thursday and Friday. Given the rains on Friday, it’s possible that total might have been higher otherwise. The 2022 in person tally continues to run at a bit more than 90% of the 2018 total (91.2%, if you want to be more precise), while the mail ballot total is about 80% of what it was in 2018. A simple and dumb extrapolation would suggest about 698K in person early voters plus 52K mail voters for a total of 750K, compared to 855K in 2018. I still think we wind up closer than that. The Trib has a nice daily tracker that as of last night was updated through Thursday, if you want to follow that along. I’ll post the next update Monday morning.

Posted in Election 2022 | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The “abortion sanctuary cities” lawsuit at SCOTx

Posted on October 28, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

A big decision this will be.

The Texas Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday over whether a defamation case brought by several abortion funds against prominent anti-abortion activist Mark Lee Dickson should be dismissed.

In 2019, Waskom in Harrison County became the first Texas city to largely outlaw abortion and groups that assist it, like abortion funds, by adopting a Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn ordinance, following a campaign started by Dickson.

Then in 2020, three abortion funds — the Afiya Center, Texas Equal Access Fund and Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity — sued Dickson, the director of Right to Life of East Texas, for defamation. Dickson had referred to the groups, which provide financial assistance to patients seeking abortions, as “criminal organizations” in statements on social media.

On Wednesday, Dickson’s attorney, Jonathan Mitchell, said his client’s statements were not defamatory because they were true.

“They are criminals because they have violated the criminal laws of Texas, which imposes felony criminal liability on any person who quote ‘furnishes the means for procuring an abortion,’” said Mitchell, a former solicitor general of Texas. He is also the architect behind the the state law that made performing an abortion illegal after fetal cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy.

[…]

In particular, Mitchell argued that Texas never repealed an 1897 law that punishes those “furnishing the means for procuring an abortion” and that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, didn’t make funding another person’s abortion a constitutional right.

“The court should say that these statements, far from being nondefamatory, are actually true to prevent future lawsuits like this from ever getting off the ground,” Mitchell argued. “This has been a campaign to intimidate constitutionally protected speech.”

Mitchell added that there are other grounds to dismiss the case, arguing that the abortion funds would have to prove Dickson made his statements with “reckless disregard for the truth.”

Beth Klussman, an attorney for the state of Texas, also spoke in support of Dickson. She argued that his statements were protected because they were opinions, similar to how opponents of the death penalty refer to executions carried out by the state as murder. Attorney Jennifer Ecklund, who represents the abortion funds, responded that Dickson’s language should be considered a factual statement because it was specific rather than about broad topics.

“We have a defendant who specifically said I am telling you as a fact that this is the state of the law and that these people are committing crimes,” she said. “That is a very singular set of facts.”

Ecklund added that the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling made Texas’ pre-Roe law in question unconstitutional at the time, and therefore calling the abortion funds “criminal” infringes on their freedom of speech and association. And she said the groups have been complying with the law since the Dobbs decision.

“People are afraid to associate with them. People are afraid to donate. People are afraid to express their views for fear that they will also be called literal criminals who might be prosecuted based on things that they believe were totally constitutional,” Ecklund said.

See here for the background. I think Dickson’s defense is contrived and should be rejected, but it has just enough plausibility that it could persuade SCOTx that is has meaning. I’d love to hear what the lawyers think. This is a ruling on a motion to dismiss, so I’m assuming that the suit has previous survived such a motion at the district court and with the appellate court. We’re supposedly expecting an answer in the spring. You know what I’m rooting for.

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How voting machines work

Posted on October 28, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

A bit of public service from TPR that almost certainly won’t be read or believed by the people who need to see it.

So how do the voting machines used in Texas elections actually work?

First off, only two voting systems manufacturers are certified to sell their systems in Texas: Hart InterCivic and Election Systems & Software (ES&S).

Hart InterCivic systems are used in 113 counties, including Harris and Tarrant counties. ES&S systems are used in the other 141 counties, including Bexar, Travis, and Dallas counties.

Republican Texas Secretary of State John Scott explained in this video that these companies’ machines must be certified by the Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan federal body, and the state.

“In Texas, we have even higher standards for our voting systems which must be certified by our office in conjunction with computer science experts and legal experts at the Texas Attorney General’s Office,” he added.

When either company makes an update to its machines or software, it must be re-certified before it can sell those updated systems.

One false allegation that circulated around voting machines is that they are hackable because of a connection to the internet. Scott explained why this isn’t true.

“Voting machines in Texas are never connected to the internet,” he said. “In fact, in order to be certified in Texas elections, they cannot even have the capability of connecting to the internet.”

This allegation comes from a misunderstanding about how voting data gets transferred and counted.

Both Hart InterCivic and ES&S use encrypted USB drives inside their voting systems to collect voting data and physically move those drives to county election departments to tabulate, or count, votes. The drives are designed in such a way that they can only pull data from and provide data to pre-approved computers, so they can’t be plugged into a random laptop and be tampered with.

Scott said there are extensive protocols in place to ensure the drives themselves aren’t stolen or lost.

“Once early voting begins in Texas, there are strict requirements and chain of custody protocols that poll workers must follow continuously with each voting machine,” he said.

That includes transporting the USBs in bags with numbered seals, so it’s easy to tell if they’ve been opened before they were intended to.

Once those USBs are brought to the elections department after early voting ends, they’re locked up until they can be tabulated on Election Day.

There’s more, so read the rest. The sad truth is that the facts are boring and the unhinged conspiracy theories are sexy and exciting, but what are you gonna do? The fact that SOS John Scott is part of the problem is regrettable, but this is the hand we’ve been dealt. Show the denialists in your life the facts and don’t give them an inch. It’s the best we can do.

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Endorsement watch: Ash for Garza

Posted on October 28, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

You can say that again…

Here’s his opinion piece, which I hope gets picked up by some larger papers.

Rochelle Garza

My parents came to America from ex-Yugoslavia with no property or money. They had to learn American English and America’s customs. Like so many immigrants, they built a life in America for my brother and me. And they both became proud U.S. citizens.

Our family’s story of authoritarianism has informed nearly every aspect of my life. It propelled me into the profession of law, to safeguard the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution. It compels me to represent people accused of violating those laws and who can’t afford an attorney. And it is why I am a Libertarian. I fight every day to ensure that the State does not overstep its authority, and to protect our freedoms.

That’s also why I decided to run for Attorney General of Texas. A democracy should offer choices. With only two major political parties on the ballot in an extremely important race, I entered this race to give Texans a third choice.

But on the eve of the election, giving Texans a third choice feels inadequate. The stakes are now simply too high for me to settle merely to be another option for Texans who, like me, love our state, love our country and value our freedoms.

I have thought long and hard how to say this, and I don’t say this lightly. Ken Paxton is the poster child for corruption and authoritarianism. And if he is allowed to continue, we might have to be the ones to flee.

The office of the Attorney General is incredibly powerful and not very well understood. Basically, it acts as the police officer for the state, enforcing our laws.  At least, that’s what it’s meant to do. Under Ken Paxton, it is a weapon that is used against innocent Texans. It is also a tool for him to avoid obeying the law himself. Like a bad cop on steroids, he is using his insider knowledge to get away with crimes, and his very great power to take away our freedoms, from intimidating people from voting to stealing property owners’ land.

I know that many voters are reluctant to throw away their votes on a third-party candidate. So if you feel that your vote may not count, then voting for Rochelle Garza is the better choice. Therefore, I am taking the extraordinary of recommending Rochelle Garza for Attorney General over Ken Paxton. Not voting or voting for me may not be enough.

This is a pivotal moment in American history that we are facing. Our way of life hangs in the balance. Ken Paxton isn’t playing politics-as-usual. He is taking pages from the authoritarian playbook. And we cannot afford to play politics-as-usual. That is why I am taking this unheard-of step.

We must kick Ken Paxton out of office in order to save our liberties.

While Rochelle is the Democratic candidate, there is a lot of overlap with our Libertarian values.  She believes in legalizing marijuana and is against using public domain to steal our land for an ineffective border wall. I believe not only that she will respect the rule of law but that she will fight for our freedoms.

While we have seen some prominent Republicans endorsing Democratic candidates this cycle, I can’t recall a situation like this before, in which a candidate running in a partisan race endorsed one of their opponents. I’d have to search to find the examples, but it’s happened in primaries and special elections and non-partisan races, usually when one candidate for whatever the reason suspends their campaign. If you can think of a recent on-point example to accompany this, please leave a comment.

Does this make much of a difference in the race? Probably not much. It will be interesting to see if Ash score less than his Libertarian peers, as that will at least provide some kind of metric. And it only really matters if Paxton fails to get at least fifty percent of the vote. Whatever happens, I thank Mark Ash for recognizing the stakes of this race, and doing his part to make a difference.

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Univision: Abbott 46, Beto 42

Posted on October 27, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Another registered voters poll, with a supersample of Latino respondents.

Republican Governor Greg Abbott leads Beto O’Rourke in the Texas governors’ race by more than four points, even though the Democrat has more support among Latinos and Blacks.

The increase in the cost of living dominates the concerns of registered voters in Texas for the November 8 elections and is emerging as a decisive factor, according to a survey by Univision News and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs of the University of Texas.

Half of the 1,400 respondents – including Hispanics, Whites and African-Americans – considered inflation to be the biggest problem facing the administration and the new Congress that will emerge from the elections to be held in two weeks time.

[…]

Overall, Latinos in Texas represent about 25% of the state’s registered voters and lean towards the Democratic Party candidates. White voters remain the majority and are more likely to be Republican.

This is clearly seen in the gubernatorial race. Some 58% of Latinos and 70% of African-Americans say they will vote, or are inclined to vote, for O’Rourke. Meanwhile, Abbott, the current governor, has the support of 63% of White voters, giving him a four-point overall lead (46% – 42%).

The same goes for polling in the congressional election in November which could redraw the balance of power at the federal level. Although the preference of Latinos and African-Americans on the performance of the current Congress largely favors Democratic Party candidates, Republicans have the overall advantage.

While 55% of Latinos and 75% of African Americans say they will vote for Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives, only 25% of Whites say they will do the same, and 63% will vote for Republican candidates. That gives Republicans a seven-point advantage (47% vs. 40%) in overall voter intention in the state.

President Joe Biden’s popularity isn’t helping Democratic Party candidates. The weakness in the economy is due to many factors – the hangover from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, among others – but historically voters always blame the incumbents.

Overall, 55% of registered Texas voters have a poor image of Biden, while 40% view him favorably. Among Latinos the numbers are reversed (40% – 55%), but the percentage who view him “very favorably” (26%) is nearly equal to those who view him “very unfavorably” (24%).

This is a trend that Univision News polling has observed since the beginning of the year.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, has a 49% favorability rating among registered voters in Texas. It is much lower among Latinos, at 34%.

Crosstabs are available here. They also did a poll of Nevada, which I didn’t look at. The last Univision poll I blogged about was from late October 2020, in which they had Trump up by a 49-46 margin. Trump actually won by five and a half points, 52.0 to 46.5, so while they were a bit off it’s pretty close.

There are two main takeaways from this poll for me. One is that it is further evidence of a significant split between “likely voter” (and “Extra Supersized Likely Voter”) polls and simple “Registered Voter” polls, following on the heels of the Beacon poll, the Marist poll, and the LV-screened UT/TPP poll. Maybe we will find that the LV screens were off, maybe we will find that a lot of voters who said they preferred Dems didn’t vote, maybe we won’t know what difference it made. The point here is that whatever we think, we should acknowledge that these differences in approach are yielding differences in result. We don’t know yet if one is superior to the other. Maybe the final totals will end up in the middle. This is a weird year with a lot of uncertainty. It’s foolish to put all your chips on one particular outcome.

The other is that as was the case in 2020, we are getting very different signals about how Latinos will vote across the polls. This poll, which has Beto carrying Latinos by a 58-28 margin, is the best result for him we have seen. Like the Telemundo poll, this one has an actual survey-sized sample of Latinos, with a standard-sized margin of error, which ought to make it more accurate. That said, they were too rosy on Democratic prospects for Latinos in 2020, and their story makes it clear that Republicans have an edge on at least the economy right now, so who knows what could happen. I am trying to stay hopeful without being a chump.

One last point is that both Abbott and The Former Guy are in positive approval territory, while Beto and Biden are negative. Given that, the closeness of this poll is remarkable. That also may be an indicator of a difference in voter enthusiasm, which would be in Republicans’ favor. Just noting it for the record.

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We hit a new peak in voter registrations

Posted on October 27, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

It’s good to see, whatever it “means”.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Texas now has almost 17.7 million voters — 1.9 million more than four years ago, when Gov. Greg Abbott won re-election.

New voter registration totals from the Texas Division of Elections show the state’s voter rolls are continuing to grow even faster than the population. While the state’s population has grown about 7 percent since 2018, voter registrations have grown about 12 percent.

Nowhere has the surge been bigger than in Harris County, where 230,000 people have been added to the voter rolls since 2018. Tarrant and Bexar counties are next, with more than 130,000 more voters than four years ago. All three counties voted Democratic in the 2020 presidential election.

The result is that at least 1 of every 5 voters in Texas never cast a general election ballot in the Lone Star State prior to 2014 — a remarkable wild card in a state that had stable politics and a slow stream of new voters for a generation before that.

Some of the biggest percentage increases in voter registrations are coming from booming counties that voted Republican in 2020.

Comal County, just north of San Antonio, saw a 29 percent increase in voter registrations from four years ago — the highest growth percentage of any county in the state. Not far behind was Kaufman County, east of Dallas, which also grew by about 29 percent.

[…]

Since 2014, Texas has added 3.6 million voters — roughly equivalent to the populations of Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The increase can be traced to 2014, when a group of campaign strategists from President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign launched an effort they called Battleground Texas to build an army of volunteer registrars.

See here and here for some background, and here for historic data. It’s wild that this has accelerated so much in recent years – we’ve talked about how Harris County was basically flat for years prior to 2012. This will have to slow down, at least to equalize to the rate of population growth, but today is not that day.

The increase in voter registration is absolutely a factor in the recent surge in turnout. In 2014, with 14 million voters and 33.7% turnout, there were 4.7 million total ballots. With 17.7 million voters, 33.7% turnout would be almost 6 million votes. Needless to say, we expect a higher percentage turnout than that this year. If we get the 8.3 million voters we got in 2018, that’s 47% this year, while it was 53% in 2018. I don’t know what we’ll get and I’m not trying to make a projection, I’m just noting that we have a higher floor now.

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Math test scores took a hit during the pandemic

Posted on October 27, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

The decline started before the pandemic, but kept on going from there.

Students in Houston and across the nation showed “appalling and unacceptable” declines on the 2022 Nation’s Report Card, adding to mounting evidence that the pandemic impacted young people already facing academic and mental health challenges.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said low-performing students’ scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress were faltering even before the pandemic and now all performance levels are showing sharp declines. The nation must take swift action and invest more in education to reverse these troubling trends, he said.

“It’s heartbreaking, and it’s horrible,” Cardona said. “It’s an urgent call of action. We must raise the bar in education.”

The U.S. Department of Education administers the NAEP every other year to fourth- and eighth-graders across the country. Comparisons can be made among states, as well as among 27 of the country’s largest school districts. Desegregated results from Houston, Austin, Dallas, and Fort Worth ISDs are available, as are state totals. Score range from 0 to 500.

Results for Houston ISD show:

  • In math, the number of fourth-grade students performing “below basic” on the math NAEP increased 14 percentage points to 37 percent since 2019. On average, Houston ISD fourth-graders scored a 226, compared to 235 in 2019. The national average this year fell to 227.
  • The average score of a white fourth-grader in HISD on the math test was a 260, compared to a 212 for Black students and a 223 for Hispanic students. Additionally, 22 percent of white fourth-graders reached the “advanced” benchmarks of the math test, compared to 2 percent of Black and Hispanic students.
  • About 44 percent of eighth-graders in Houston ISD performed “below basic” on the reading NAEP, an increase from 41 percent in 2019. Their average score was 247, falling 2 points lower than 2019 scores and 8 points lower than the national average. White students averaged a 275, while Black students averaged 236 and Hispanics 244.
  • Additionally, only 4 percent of white eighth-graders in Houston ISD reached the “advanced” benchmark on the reading test.

Houston ISD Superintendent Millard House II said support services will be key to improving scores.

“While these challenges are not unique to HISD, providing students and families with the necessary academic and non-academic supports as detailed in our community driven five-year strategic plan, will address many of these needs,” House said in a statement. “We are confident that these investments in our students such as requiring a librarian, counselor or social worker, and supporting our schools with the highest need through our RISE program, will ensure a more equitable, targeted approach increasing positive academic outcomes.”

The first STAAR results post-pandemic weren’t so bad, but there was definitely an impact on poorer students. I feel reasonably confident that we can make up the lost ground, but what we can’t ever get back is those years of those kids’ lives. At a certain point, the effect of the learning loss has real long-term negative effects. That’s a problem that won’t go away.

One more thing:

There’s more to the thread, but you get the idea. Don’t let people go jumping to conclusions around you. The Trib and Texas Public Radio have more.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of October 24

Posted on October 27, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance exhorts everyone to go vote as they bring you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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November 2022 Day Three EV totals: A lot like Day Two

Posted on October 27, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Sorry, the days are long and my mind is full and I don’t have anything interesting to say. I will at some point. For now, this is what we get. Final EV totals from 2018 are here and from 2014 are here. The Day Three totals for 2022 are here.


Year     Mail    Early    Total
===============================
2014   46,293   61,150  107,443
2018   55,506  190,455  245,961
2022   28,536  176,964  205,500

There were 56K in person voters yesterday, and a bit over 4K returned mail ballots. At this point, 2022 is running about twice as high as 2014, and that gap will grow, while at about 80% of 2018 overall but more than 90% of 2018 in person. The 2018 dailies stay pretty flat though the last day, with an odd dip on the second Wednesday. I think 2022 will catch up, at least for the in person totals. Have you voted yet?

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Beacon Research: Abbott 48, Beto 45

Posted on October 26, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

A different poll result from what we had been seeing.

A poll affiliated with the Democratic Policy Institute has Beto O’Rourke tailing Gov. Greg Abbott by 3 points in the race for Texas governor, a margin narrower than other recent polls.

The poll was released Sunday, ahead of Monday’s start of early voting. Beacon Research surveyed 1,264 registered Texas voters between Oct. 15 and 19 for the nonprofit, which describes itself as developing “common sense policies that meet the needs and desires of the majority of our citizens.” The organization’s principal officer is Najy A. Metni, according to IRS documents — an O’Rourke donor. Metni has donated $50,000 to O’Rourke this election cycle, campaign finance and other public records show. Abbott’s 3 point lead — 48% to O’Rourke’s 45% — is subject to a 2.8% margin of error.

“Simply put, as voters begin heading to the polls this week, the Texas Governor’s race is anybody’s ballgame,” the institute said in a statement.

The poll puts the candidates in a closer race than other polls released in the past several weeks, including one by the Texas Politics Project at UT-Austin released Friday that had Abbott with a widened lead over his Democratic opponent. The October poll had Abbott ahead by 11 percentage points compared to five points in a poll released in September.

The poll data is here, though it doesn’t contain crosstabs. I was going to cite the recent Marist poll as a second closer result for Beto in October, but that four-point spread was for registered voters, with no screen applied. They reported a 52-44 Abbott lead among “definite” voters, but for whatever the reason didn’t include a number for those who called themselves “likely”. I continue to be puzzled by and skeptical of the distinctions between the “Likely” and “Extra Super Duper Likely With A Cherry On Top” voters. For what it’s worth, in this particular poll, they gave numbers for all voters (Abbott 48-45), “Definite” voters (Abbott 48-46), and “Less Likely” voters (Abbott 43-34). Maybe they just have a different “Likely Voter” screen than others do, or maybe they’re seeing something different. It’s hard to put a lot of faith in a single stand-out result, so make of this what you will.

One other poll came out this week, from Siena College, which has Abbott up 52-43 among “Likely” voters. They had him up by a 50-43 margin, also among “Likely” voters, in September.

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The counting process

Posted on October 26, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

I don’t think I had seen this explained before.

Harris County residents likely will have a long night waiting for election returns Nov. 8, according to county Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum.

It takes around one minute for the county’s equipment to read a digital drive that contains a polling location’s vote count — and election workers will be receiving a drive from each of the county’s 782 polling locations.

The county’s equipment can read two of those drives at the same time, which would put the total counting time — assuming no problems arise — at more than six and a half hours.

“That sort of tells you how long it’s going to take to process all of the results that come in from Election Night,” Tatum said.

“The reality is that we will not have all of the final results tabulated before midnight,” Tatum added. “The math simply does not lend itself to allow us to do that.”

The county has not had complete results before midnight in decades, owing largely to the population and sprawling geography poll workers had to traverse to turn in ballot boxes and voting machines after the polls closed. In recent years, however, wait times for results have stretched further into the early-morning hours. This year’s March primaries took 30 hours to tally, prompting harsh criticism of Tatum’s predecessor, who later resigned over vote-counting issues. Harris County was the only one in the state to exceed the 24-hour limit.

Tatum said the elections office’s top priority is accuracy over speed.

“We just need our voters to know that simply because all the results aren’t in before midnight doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong,” Tatum said. “It’s just the process.”

Asked why the county does not have more equipment available to cut down the reporting time, Tatum said the challenge is balancing speed and accuracy.

“If you have multiple readers going, you want to be sure that the operators that are operating those readers are following the processes and procedures. So, if we have the opportunity to add in an additional reader, we’ll do that. But right now, our plan is to read two at a time. They are expensive equipment. It’s about control and accuracy in the process.”

Sounds reasonable. Usually, we get most of the votes tallied by around midnight – the May elections were both like that, thanks in part to the reduced turnout. The primary this year was an exception, and the blowback from it was exacerbated by a lack of communication from the Elections office. Here, Administrator Clifford Tatum lays out a schedule for when we can expect updates, and if we get that plus clear communications if and when something is causing a delay, I think we’ll be fine. Campos has more.

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Ramsey and Cagle finish sabotaging the budget

Posted on October 26, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

They got what they wanted.

Harris County’s prolonged political battle over the budget came to an end today. For over a month, the two GOP members of Commissioners Court have broken quorum, skipping meetings to prevent Democrats from passing their proposed tax rate and budget for fiscal year 2023.

They skipped again Tuesday, despite multiple major items on the budget that impacted millions in funding for law enforcement, flood control and the Harris Health System. Here’s a play-by-play of how it all went down, from the Houston Chronicle’s government reporter Jen Rice.

You can read the rest, but it’s more of what we’ve seen before. If you don’t like the cuts to the Sheriff, the DA, and the constables that will now happen, take your complaints to Commissioners Cagle and Ramsey. They’re the ones that made this happen.

UPDATE: Chron editorial: Harris County Republicans just defunded the police.

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November 2022 Day Two EV totals: Just the facts

Posted on October 26, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

I’m just going to get into it, I don’t have anything to add to the numbers. Final EV totals from 2018 are here and from 2014 are here. The Day Two totals for 2022 are here.


Year     Mail    Early    Total
===============================
2014   42,752   40,595   83,347
2018   53,947  127,963  181,910
2022   23,630  120,402  144,032

There were about 59K in person voters yesterday, compared to 63K for 2018. Obviously, the overall mail ballot total is down as noted before, but in the end I expect those votes to mostly show up as in person votes. I’m sure I’ll have more to say going forward, but for now we’re up to date.

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November 2022 Day One EV totals: The in person experience

Posted on October 25, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Here’s your Chron story about Day One of early voting.

More than 60,000 registered voters Harris County decided Monday they couldn’t wait any longer to cast a ballot for their choices in the 2022 midterm election.

Monday was the first day of early voting in Texas, and more than one out of every 50 Harris County turned out to cast their ballots, according to the Harris County Elections Administration office. Voters this year are casting votes for Texas governor and Harris County judge, along with dozens of other state and local races. In Harris County, a printed-out ballot would be 20 pages long, officials said

Few problems were reported at the county’s 99 early voting locations Monday, but voters did find themselves standing in line waiting to cast their votes.

[…]

Texas now has nearly 17.7 million voters, which is 1.9 million more than four years ago, according to the Texas Division of Elections.

Harris County alone has about 2.6 million registered voters. Since 2018, about 230,000 people have been added to the rolls in Texas’ most populous county.

Most people across the state are expected to vote early, which has been the trend for Texas elections since 2008.

Whether this year’s midterm will have record turnouts remained to be seen. Elections officials in the largest counties outside of Harris County said turnout appeared to be slightly lower on the first day of early voting, compared to the 2020 and 2018 elections.

Here’s the story about voter registration totals, which I’ll get into separately. You’re here for the daily EV totals, and I aim to please:


Year     Mail    Early    Total
===============================
2014   41,520   20,215   61,735
2018   52,413   63,188  115,601
2022   21,779   60,834   82,613

I’m just focusing on midterm elections this time. The third week of early voting in 2020 makes any comparisons there hard to do. Final EV totals from 2018 are here and from 2014 are here. The Day One totals for 2022 are here.

Two things to note. One is that the mail ballots are way down, not just from 2018 but also from 2014. I saw some speculation about this on Twitter, as statewide mail ballots are also way down, that it’s mostly Republicans giving up on voting by mail due to the constant brainwashing about it by their lord and master The Former Guy. We can’t be sure about that, but it’s a reasonable hypothesis. We’ll know for sure when the votes get tallied. I’d guess that some number of other mail voters have also decided just to vote in person and not mess with that hassle now.

Two, the in person total for today is pretty close to what we had in 2018. Remember how much we freaked out about the turnout that year? I suspect in the end we’ll be pretty close, and may very well surpass it. Remember, we have a lot more voters now, so for a similar percentage of turnout the absolute total will be higher, and I also think we may have more Election Day voting, with probably more Republicans waiting till then. I’ll feel better about making pronouncements after a few days of actual voting.

I will try to post these daily, but may fall a day behind depending on how busy my evenings are. For now, this is where it is. Have you voted yet?

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