Harris County election details

Kuffner beat me to it, but I have some information he doesn't (it comes from time spent at the logic and accuracy testing for Hart InterCivic's e-Slates, which took place last week at Beverly Kaufman's office) ...

-- There will be 874 voting precincts in the nation's third-largest county. Some precincts will be combined in polling places, being determined by your respective county commissioner even now.

-- There are 263 ballot versions in the general election, and more than a hundred others for "limited" voting (for example, someone from out-of-state voting just a presidential and/or federal candidate ballot).

-- There are thirteen different election entities, which split precincts in some cases (such as school districts and MUDs).

-- The special election for SD-17 (79 precincts in Harris, but also on ballots in Jefferson, Brazoria, Fort Bend, and Galveston counties) will be at the very top of the ballot, above the presidential candidates and even the straight-party button. Alan Berstein explains:

The contest will appear before the "straight ticket" option that allows voters, with a single physical motion, to vote for all candidates of a particular party, from president to justice of the peace. But, since there are multiple Democrats and Republicans in the SD 17 race, the straight ticket vote would not apply to it anyway. Voters in the district can mark their choice in that race and then get on with the businesses of voting "straight ticket" or cherrypicking their way down the ballot.

Chris Bell will appear first on the ballot in Fort Bend, Galveston and Jefferson counties, in the third position in Brazoria County, and in Harris County Bell's name appears as the last one listed in the SD-17 contest. As I have previously noted -- and despite what you may have read elsewhere, like in Al's post above -- he is the one true Democrat in the race.

-- Here's a sample ballot, listing all of the races. You will obviously get to vote for a single Congressional and statehouse candidate to represent your area, but all of the judicial candidates and all of the Harris County executive races will appear on your ballot (if you're voting in Harris, of course).

-- The deadline for voter registration is October 6. Register, verify your registration, or learn which candidates represent you through the various links listed here. Early voting begins October 20. Here are the EV locations, hours, and more useful information.

-- Harris County election officials project that 1.2 million votes will be cast here. If that holds historically accurate it would represent about 20% of the statewide tally, which works out to six million Texas votes.

-- Finally, Harris County will be parallel-testing its voting machines for the first time ...

Parallel testing, also known as election-day testing, involves selecting voting machines at random and testing them as realistically as possible during the period that votes are being cast. The fundamental question addressed by such tests arise from the fact that pre-election testing is almost always done using a special test mode in the voting system, and corrupt software could potentially arrange to perform honestly while in test mode while performing dishonestly during a real election.

And I will be present as they do.

Update: Kuff points out in the comments that I have significantly understimated the statewide turnout.

So do we have a deal or not?!?

At 1 p.m today we had "fundamental agreement on a set of principles". At 5 p.m today John Boehner spoke on behalf of House Republicans declaring no deal.

Cleared and queered in a matter of hours.

(Please, no one take offense at my use of the phrase "queering the deal". Except for you queers in the Congressional Republican delegation.)

This crisis is tailor-made for the free marketeers: if the deal passes, every one of them can point and scream "Socialist!" at their Democratic opponents. If it fails they can declare that they fought the good fight to the voters (since public opinion is running overwhelmingly against the bailout).

So to recap -- Bush insists the Democratic Congress bail out all of his Wall Street buddies, so that the Republicans in the Senate and House can both vote against it and continue taking the campaign contributions from their Wall Street buddies. It's really a perfect scenario; that is, if you're the prototypical conservative hypocrite.

And of course, we all continue to wait while McCain stalls on showing up for tomorrow night's debate.


Get more yard signs here.

McLame needs a timeout

While he figures out how to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Maybe he should send his running mate to stand in for him. No time like the present to see if she would be ready on Day One.

Post-Ike traffic snarls make Houston's roads even worse

Last Thursday evening I left my house -- ten minutes before the electricity was restored -- and drove from West U to Copperfield, near 290 and 6 on the northwest side, a distance of about 40 miles that takes normally an hour at posted speeds with some traffic.

It took two hours and fifteen minutes. I regularly travel to Beaumont, a hundred miles away, in an hour less than that.

Over the weekend we ventured out for food a couple of times and instantly regretted it: four-way stops at nearly every intersection, with gridlocked cars clogging the lanes at each crossing that had a functioning traffic signal.

Yesterday the Chronic reported that the traffic jams on Monday, with many employees and school children returning for the first time in a week, were among the worst ever across the city:

Metro officials on Tuesday agreed to open high-occupancy vehicle lanes on U.S. 59 and U.S. 290 after traffic on many freeways came to a complete halt during the rush hour Monday, the first day many Houstonians went back to work after the storm.

Today we learn that our county judge -- "recognized worldwide as a transportation expert" -- won't have all the traffic lights restored before oh, maybe Election Day:

With darkened intersections leading to traffic snarls on freeways and city streets, officials are searching for at least some relief by putting more officers on traffic-directing duty and reopening high-occupancy vehicle lanes.

Traffic signals at about 1,200 Houston area intersections were not yet working Tuesday but should all have at least a flashing red light by the end of next week, said Mike Marcotte, the city's director of public works and engineering. ...

Getting all the city's traffic lights functioning at pre-Hurricane Ike levels could take until November, Marcotte said.

That article is sprinkled liberally with the same feel-good BS that last week's all-GOP press avails were similarly full of. Go read it. You'll get diabetes from the candy-coated smarm:

"I've been amazed with the courtesy our drivers have been showing," Marcotte said.

"More and more signals are being put in working condition every day, hour by hour almost," said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, who convened a meeting of transportation officials Tuesday afternoon to seek solutions to the problems. "The flow in the community is getting better."

"For the most part, Houston is behaving extremely well," said Art Neely, who has driven a cab for 25 years.

A cab driver complimenting Houston drivers. That's wow-worthy all by itself. (Have you seen how those crazy cabbies cut through traffic? They're worse than the wrecker drivers. But I digress.)

Ed Emmett led the parade of Republican officials running for re-election across every local teevee channel last week: Rick Perry (yes, he's running for re-election), Bill White (yes, he's a Republican and he's running for governor in 2010 too), John Cornyn, Michael McCaul, John Culberson (who at least publicly bitched a little when his command center ran out of pizza) and even that Michelin Man Tuffy Hamilton from washed-out Orange County managed to get some face time with the cameras. They cried out in unison "All is Well!" even as two million people had no electricity and the PODs couldn't get any ice.

I say we elect a few Democrats to county offices so that they can at least share some of the blame come the next hurricane, eh?