Texas Senate moves to end countywide voting on Election Day

[LetMyPeopleVote]

I was one of the county democratic party representatives on the committee that approved countywide voting in my county and I testified to the Harris County Commissioners Court on the adoption of county wide voting in Harris County back in 2019. I ended up waiting 6 hours to give a three-minute speech to the County Commissioners Court. The then head of the Harris County Democratic Party is a friend and was really happy that I made the time to speak to the commissioners court. I also spoke at a couple of the public meeting held to discuss the adoption of county wide voting. BTW, there were a couple of GOP nut cases who spoke who objected to making voting easier.

In Texas, you can vote anywhere in the county for early voting and in the counties that have not adopted county wide voting you had to vote in your precinct. I was the election judge for my precinct for a couple of democratic primaries and as a favor to the county election office, I was the republican election judge for the GOP primary once. In my precinct we were at a local elementary school who hated being a voting location. Four out of the six times, I was an election judge were put in an annex building in the back of the school. I used to do a trail of election signs from the front of the school back to the annex where the voting machines were located. Once my county adopted county wide voting, the county stopped using that elementary school and set up voting centers. My youngest child has been working over the years at one of the voting centers which was one of the top turnout locations in the county.

To quote Paul Begala, "Texas is not a red state or a blue state but a non-voting state." Texas is becoming more urban and less rural which means that Texas will become blue unless the Texas GOP can suppress the vote.

Link to tweet

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/04/20/election-day-countywide-voting-texas-senate/?utm_campaign=trib-social&utm_content=1682033387&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

Countywide polling locations on Election Day would be banned in Texas under a bill approved by the Texas Senate on Thursday.

Senate Bill 990, authored by Republican Sen. Bob Hall of Edgewood, passed 17-12 along party lines. The bill — if approved by the state House — would eliminate countywide voting centers on Election Day and require residents to vote at an assigned precinct, typically in their neighborhood. Larger voting centers would be permitted through early voting.

Currently, 90 counties — including large metro counties like Harris and Dallas as well as rural ones — are approved by the secretary of state’s office to use countywide voting centers on Election Day.....

The bill is part of a yearslong effort by Republican lawmakers in the state to tighten voting laws. For years, GOP leaders have said that there needs to be stricter interpretation of the state’s voting laws to ensure the security of the vote. That motivation increased after 2020 when former President Donald Trump claimed without substantiation that current election laws had led to his electoral loss.

[yellowdogintexas]

1. Tarrant (Ft Worth) has county wide voting & voters love it

I do not think these bozos understand that they are handicapping their own voters as well as their opposition's voters.

Being able to pop into any election location and vote has stopped the "oh no you can't vote here, you have to go to XXX! It's 6:45, do you think you can make it? " Our voters will have anywhere from 200 to 350 places to vote on Election Day (depending on the type of election).

Our only option prior to Voting Centers was to have the voter vote provisionally, which could possibly eliminate certain contests from the ballot.

The system we use is user-friendly, very secure and has all paper ballots with the voter's selections printed on the document. If the voter realizes they accidentally voted for the wrong person, we can spoil the ballot and issue a new one. Our voting machines are touch screens with no memory; they do not even produce a total # of votes per machine. We have other equipment which does that.

Hopefully the House will tell the Senate to go take a hike. I know my State House Rep will vote No. I have not heard anything so it is possible it did not get out of committee. The 90 counties which use this process are all the high population counties, (7 total) and a mix of the lower population counties. Most of those have at least one city of 50,000.

The county judge here wants to completely replace this brand new system, go back to precinct only voting, hand marked paper ballots (nothing electronic) which would be counted and tallied by the precinct workers prior to sending to the Elections Office.

This judge would also like to do away with Early Voting and Mail In Voting if he could get away with it. He has already driven off our most excellent Elections Administrator.

We just finished Early Voting; on the last day, a uniformed officer from the County Sheriff's department showed up to watch our elections workers load up the ballots and other items required by the county for closing out the election. She was there when we closed the polls, recorded the totals from all the machines which produce them, sealed and locked all the equipment, and prepared the ballot carrier for transport (also locked and sealed)

Utterly ridiculous!