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.

Today, with no gays

Attorney Jerry Simoneaux is taking off today. So are the 10 other people who work at his Houston law firm.

Eric Weitzel was already scheduled to be off from his retail job, but he plans to call in anyway.

Simoneaux and Weitzel are among the gay men and women in Houston and across the country taking part in today's "Day Without a Gay" economic boycott. Outraged by the recent passage of California's Proposition 8 to overturn state rules allowing same-sex couples to marry, they and their supporters want everyone to be clear on where they stand.

"We aren't going to lie down and let people treat us as second-class citizens," said Weitzel.

Participants are "calling in gay" or, like Simoneaux, shuttering their businesses and closing their wallets as part of a national protest that aims to illustrate the impact of the gay community on the economy and boost awareness of gay rights.

Several of the people in this article are friends of mine (well, Facebook friends at least). Many more I am acquainted with though progressive political activism. The discrimination that is busily being codified into law in this country -- recall that we did this in Texas a few years ago -- does the memory of the Founding Fathers, and those who came afterward to correct the discrimination they overlooked, a supreme disservice.

Kris Banks, president of the Houston Stonewall Young Democrats, said there has been more outrage and activism over California's ballot initiative than there was in 2005, when Texans approved Proposition 2, which outlawed same-sex marriages.

While the gay community has made progress in mainstream media and culture, Banks said Proposition 8 was clear evidence that politically, there's still a lot of work to do.

"When the right to marriage was taken away in California, it was more of a spit in the face than anything we've seen so far," he said.

Proposition 8 has been challenged legally, and the California Supreme Court is expected to rule next year.

A brief digression: I continue to be astounded at the very existence of the Log Cabin Republicans, just as I would Chickens for Colonel Sanders or Jews for Hitler. "Well he does/they do some good things" just doesn't seem to even the scale. Continuing ...

Today's largely grass-roots protest coincides with International Human Rights Day and is patterned after a similar 2006 economic boycott organized by Latino immigrants. Word of the boycott has been passed along on Internet sites such as Facebook, where more than 8,000 people have joined the group "Day Without A Gay."

In Houston, the Facebook group claims nearly 200 members, with about 80 saying they might participate in today's boycott. Nationally, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people contribute more than $700 billion to the economy, organizers said. They hope to make their absence felt today.

For many participants, "Day Without A Gay" is also about giving back. Those who skip work are encouraged to spend the day volunteering. Weitzel said he plans to hand out coats and blankets to Houston's homeless.

Simoneaux will work at the Houston office of Foundation for Marriage and Family Equality, where he and Christopher Bown launched Texas' annual same sex wedding celebration and demonstration seven years ago.

Local activist Meghan Baker isn't scheduled to work tomorrow, and she plans to spend half of the day volunteering for Houston Area Teen Coalition of Homosexuals.

"The movement will have to start with each individual person taking responsibility to make it better," she said. Last month, Baker founded Impact Houston, an umbrella group to help generate greater communication among local gay rights groups.

"It's too bad that it's usually an adversary, something to fight against, that brings people together," said Baker who went to California in August and married Lindsey Baker, on the first anniversary of their ceremonial wedding in Texas.

Preventing two people from marrying each other -- note that's two PEOPLE, not 'a person and a box turtle' -- simply because some don't approve has never turned out well; just re-read Romeo and Juliet for a clue.

And as Jon Stewart inquired of Mike Huckabee on last night's Daily Show: "At whay age did you choose to not be gay?"

Exactly.

Take the day off, and don't buy anything today. After all, your civil rights may be next.

Tuesday's Bettencourt Follies

This promises to be the holiday gift that keeps on giving. First, the Texas Democratic Party will have a press conference tomorrow morning to announce the next step in their legal action against Paul Quittencourt:

Bettencourt's announcement that he would resign came suspiciously the day after additional legal activity was undertaken by the Texas Democratic Party—action which could shed light on misdeeds that have occurred within Bettencourt's office for years. It appears Paul Bettencourt is hoping that he can sneak off behind a late-night resignation announcement and the problems facing his office will simply go away. But that is not the case.

“The TDP will continue its efforts to bring accountability and transparency to the Harris County voter registration process. And Paul Bettencourt will have to take responsibility for any wrongdoing that has occurred within his office,” said TDP attorney Chad Dunn.

Wednesday December 10, at 10:30 a.m., at 1300 McGowen in Midtown. I'm going to try like hell to be there.

And Liz Peterson has a couple of interesting developments to report:

The Harris County Administration Building is still abuzz with rumors over who'll get picked to replace Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt.

The most intriguing scenario mentioned so far involves the possible nomination of Commissioner Sylvia Garcia, who would give up her seat to position herself to challenge County Judge Ed Emmett in 2010 or to run for a statewide office.

Picking Garcia would give a Democrat control of the voter registration process, something that party has got to want. But Emmett would get to pick her replacement, likely giving the GOP a fourth seat at the table.

Garcia said the rumor is "absolutely not true."

Color me skeptical as well. But this is definitely more intriguing ...

The new Republican supermajority could just move the voter registration duties from the tax office to the County Clerk's office, headed by Republican Beverly Kaufman.

That idea, apart from any Garcia chatter, is already being circulated by Jim Harding, a Republican who chairs the county's bipartisan ballot board.

Last month, he blamed faulty work by Bettencourt's staff for delaying the counting process. Harding's comments triggered a bit of a brouhaha after Bettencourt left an emotional message on his answering machine.

In an e-mail to Commissioner Jerry Eversole, Kaufman and leaders of the Harris County Republican Party, Harding said such a move would "streamline all of the voter activity from initial registration to final certification of an election under County Clerk leadership."

This shift of responsibility seems to me to be distinctly possible, given the controversy of Bettencourt's tenure as voter registrar, the steadier reputation of Kaufman, and more significantly the rumors of her retirement before 2010, when the election of County Clerk is scheduled to appear on the ballot. I doubt Ms. Kaufman is anxious to take on the management of this rather large task at the end of her career. Furthermore, Councilwoman Sue Lovell is strongly rumored to be interested in the job, with Kaufman in the race or not (Kuffner notes Lovell has a few unfriendlies).

More juicy details in tomorrow's Follies, without a doubt.