Crunch time for Chris Bell

And no, that isn't the snow and ice under your feet (which in my neighborhood was all gone before the sun even came up this morning). No, Politicker suggests that the early vote is going Joan Huffman's way:

Numbers are out from the first day of early voting for the state Senate District 17 runoff, and they appear to point to a more competitive race between Republican Joan Huffman and Democrat Chris Bell.

There are now three days of EV in the can, and while Tuesday's numbers jumped up a bit, Wednesday's were severely depressed by the weather.

Early voting, which began Monday and runs through Friday, brought 3,822 voters to the polls on Monday in the five district counties — obviously a far cry from the 223,295 total votes in the initial election. But on a percentage basis, Bell strongholds aren't voting as much, while Huffman's strongholds are becoming an increasingly larger proportion of the electorate.

For example, in Harris County, which includes Houston, Bell won the Nov. 4 race, 38 percent to 21 percent. However, Harris County voters made up 53.6 percent of the vote in the initial election. On Monday, they accounted for only 41.1 percent. After Harris, the second-largest county in the district is Fort Bend, which represented 27.8 percent of the Nov. 4 vote and went to Bell, 39-36. On Monday, Fort Bend accounted for only 19.7 percent of the vote.

Huffman's biggest strength was in Brazoria County, which she carried, 37-27, on Nov. 4. However, Brazoria County voters were only 9.5 percent of the electorate in the special election. On the first day of early voting for the run-off, they made up 19 percent of all voters.

The numbers aren't all bad for Bell. He dominated the counties of Galveston and Jefferson on Nov. 4 by margins of 49-18 and 58-7, respectively, and both of those counties have more than doubled their percentage of the electorate, based on the early sample. Galveston rose from a 4.1 percent share to 9.9, while Jefferson increased from 4.9 percent to 10.1.

However, even with the increased weight proportionally of those counties, they still only make up 20 percent combined of the vote, meaning potential slides in Harris and Fort Bend would be more important.

Today and tomorrow are the final two days of EV, and the hours are longer, stretching from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. both days. Let's push this race over the finish line for Chris Bell, and put another much-needed Democratic Senator in Austin.

Yesterday's Bettenquit Follies

Houston's "blizzard" kept me from attending the TDP presser and from posting this update yesterday. Alan Bernstein was there and files this report (as they say on teevee). At the end of the excerpt are a couple of emphasized portions:

"Mr. Bettencourt's late-night resignation announcement is his attempt to avoid bringing to light the inner workings of his office over the past several years and still does not ensure that the problems surrounding Harris County voter registration will be resolved," the state (Democratic) party said Wednesday in a statement distributed by Houston lawyer Chad Dunn.

Republican Bettencourt, the tax assessor-collector, said it was ridiculous to suggest he and his staff purposely foiled voter registrations or that his resignation was triggered by the lawsuit.

...

Dunn, the Democrats' lawyer, said the lawsuit was expanded to, among other things, include as plaintiffs four people whose voter registration applications were stymied by what the party calls the county's "unlawful and hyper-technical voters registration activities." The lawsuit alleges Bettencourt's staff has disenfranchised voters by using unwarranted technical reasons for rejecting their registration applications.

Bettencourt said the four were rejected for routine, justifiable reasons involving their paperwork, and that the registration system in the county works well.

"You are going to have mistakes made," he said. "What you do is fix them."

The bipartisan ballot board that decided whether to accept provisional ballots cast by voters whose names were missing from the Nov. 4 rolls accepted some that Bettencourt's staff had classified as incomplete. His staff was unable to get thousands of registrations onto the rolls before early voting.

Bettencourt apparently still will have to give pre-trial testimony in the lawsuit after this month and will be represented by the new county attorney, Democrat Vince Ryan.

That first part above is why I believe that a new tax assessor/collector/voter registrar deserves to be relieved of the VR portion of their job title. As explosive as the legal complaint of malfeasance is, the fact that thousands of people didn't get to vote because their paperwork (a postcard, mind you) couldn't get processed in time reveals a incompetence of the rankest order on the part of Bettencourt and his staff. Put aside the partisan rancor and even the alleged criminal mischief for a moment: can a new department head get this job done more effectively than an incumbent with several years of experience at it? I'd have to be pessimistic, no matter how talented that person may be.

Bettencourt kept the inner workings of the voter registration process as secretive as he could. The FNG is going to have to do many things better, and one is to open up the process to observers -- media, political party, and otherwise -- in a significant way. Not for nothing, but Beverly Kaufman has a few cycles of experience dealing with HCDP observers like myself and John Behrman (and others before us) analyzing the county's vote counting -- with us suggesting changes, arguing for more security, and so forth. She has -- grudgingly at times -- moved closer and closer to our requests for improved e-Slate integrity, including L&A and parallel testing, tightened chain-of-custody security, and more. She hasn't done every we have asked; she fights us some and slow-walks us too much, but she has certainly demonstrated far more openness and allowed more "sunshine" into the vote tabulation process conducted by her staff than Bettencourt ever had a nightmare about.

If commissioners court intends to seriously address the mess that is voter registration in Harris County, it will remove the task from the purview of the tax assessor/collector's office and give it to the county clerk.

As for Vince Ryan defending Paul Bettencourt against a TDP lawsuit, that is going to be comedy gold down the road.