Election scattershooting

-- Harris County and Texas turnout continue to break records.  Marc Campos still doesn't know what's happening, so here's the breakdown for Harris County's five heaviest boxes, my guess as to how they lean, and from the SoS, Texas' fifteen-largest counties' turnout as of Wednesday.

1. Metropolitan Multi-Service Center (known colloquially as 'West Gray') with 12,802 (heavy D).
2. Juergen's Hall Community Center with 11,945 (heavy R).
3. Bear Creek Park Community Center with 11,625 (heavy R).
4. Champion Forest Baptist Church with 11,488 (heavy R).
5. Bayland Park Community Center (where I voted Monday) with 8,656. (more D than R).

Close behind are Jersey Village City Hall (R), Kingwood Library (heavy R), and Nottingham Park (heavy R), all with more than 8000 early votes cast as of last night.

Since we're just spitballing, I'd have to say that the Republicans in Harris County might not be in as much trouble as we've been portending.

Click on it for a clearer picture or go here. Note that Harris County's turnout is 50 percent larger than second-place Dallas County.  This is why the emphasis on the state's largest county is so great.  The metro counties -- Harris and Dallas, then Bexar and Travis -- are more blue than red, but third-largest Tarrant and the suburban DFW counties of Denton (6th) and Collin (7th) are crimson-colored.  The three counties that round out the top ten are blue: El Paso, Hidalgo, and Fort Bend (which is actually purple, but trending azure and there are high hopes for a flip).

-- Alas for excited Democrats, a glob of recent polling appears to show the the prize of Texas' 38 Electoral College votes just out of Clinton's reach.

-- Still think there's a big difference between Democrats and Republicans, especially in Texas?  You really need to revisit that thinking.

-- One of the more under-reported stories of late has been the polling deflation of the Libertarian ticket.  This week Johnson-Weld hit three percent; less than two months ago it was ten.  It appears that's one of the places Hillary Clinton has siphoned votes from as she has surged, and the message to millennials about moving over from Gold to Blue seems to be working.

Update: Johnson's more recent meltdowns, captured on camera by HBO and The Guardian, aren't going to help him.

-- The Justice Department is coming to monitor Houston polls for 'irregularities".

Six teams of Justice Department officials will be dispatched to observe Election Day voting at 75 polling locations in Harris County as part of an investigation into allegations that the county failed to provide reasonable access to mobility-impaired voters.

Harris County will field its own teams on Election Day as part of an arrangement approved Thursday by U.S. District Judge Alfred H. Bennett.

Bennett, however, told county officials that he found it "deeply disturbing" that Justice Department observers saw a visibly armed county investigator with a badge filming an elderly African-American woman with a walker entering a polling place this week for early voting.

"That's voter intimidation," the judge said, ordering the Harris County Attorney's Office to provide written notice explaining how it plans to avoid a repeat of the scenario.

-- Texas Leftist's endorsements were mostly Democrats, but he did work in a couple of Greens -- Martina Salinas (Texas Railroad Commission) and Joe McElligott (HD-127) -- and a couple of Republicans.  He apparently missed the memo on the shitty Dems running for the state Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals.  Socratic Gadfly knocked down the fervor for the Libertarian running for the Railroad Commission.

-- Wonder Woman flies her invisible plane to Houston to stump for Hillary today.

On Friday, October 28, Actress Lynda Carter, television’s original Wonder Woman, and Hillary for Texas will host a phone bank with supporters in Houston. Carter knows that Hillary Clinton will continue to lift up American children and families while fighting against Trump’s dangerous and divisive rhetoric. At the event, Carter will discuss how supporters can mobilize from now until Election Day to ensure that Hillary Clinton becomes the next President of the United States.

With more people voting in this election than any in history, Carter will urge Texans voters to take advantage of in-person early voting. Voters can check their registration status and learn more at iwillvote.com.

Media planning to cover the event are asked to RSVP to Miryam Lipper at mlipper@hillaryclinton.com.

Hillary for Texas - Phone Bank with Actress Lynda Carter

WHEN:  3:00 pm – Friday, October 28

WHERE: Headworks International, 11000 Brittmoore Park Dr Houston, Texas 77041

PUBLIC RSVP HERE

I'd absolutely be willing to get roped with the Lasso of Truth, but the words coming out of my mouth would still be "I have already voted for Jill Stein".

Ajamu Baraka at UTD on Friday, TSU on Saturday

Say this for the Greens: they clearly understand that because the Texas Democratic Party is so lame, the best opportunity for collecting the most votes is right here.

-- See Ajamu Baraka speak at the University of Texas-Dallas on Friday, October 28.  Details here.  Introduced by one of my very favorite Congressional candidates, Gary Stuard, running in the 32nd (incumbent Pete Sessions, no Democrat filed).

-- And on Saturday, October 29, at Texas Southern University.  Details here.

In his own words, speaking about the Green Party's Southern Strategy.

We have to recognize, as we struggle to dismantle this system, we also have to survive. We have to build dual power where we confront and utilize the state and local level to win real concessions for the people, while we also make sure that we have independent structures outside of the state and we’re building within these independent structures additional survival programs. So what we have for example is Cooperative Jackson in Jackson, Miss., that’s committed toward building real worker co-ops. Those kind of efforts we need to support, and if we had nominal state power, we have in our platform a program to provide real, direct federal support to worker cooperatives and businesses as part of a transitional program.

We also believe we’ve got to have federal intervention to address the astronomical rates of unemployment among people of color—both in the urban area but in the parts of the country that people seem to forget about, the rural areas. And the grinding unemployment and grinding poverty that we find. We have to force local and state governments to address this specific reality that face black youth and black working-class people in general. While we struggle, we have to build structures, and one of the structures there for the taking is, in fact, the Green Party structure.

What I’m engaged in right now is a Green Party Southern strategy where we suggest specifically to black folks in the South that you have an instrument that can be used if you want to challenge the power of the Democrats in the various states to mount a real opposition to the control of the Republicans. Even in those states where you have Republican political control, there’s still a lot of collaboration with the Democratic Party. People are comfortable playing that role and they’re not really providing a real challenge to these Republican governors. If you want to have real opposition, you have to have a structure in place to engage in real oppositional politics. The Green Party can be that force that provides an instrument of direct challenge and to also place pressure on those black Democrats that continue to sell out the interests of black communities by collaborating with white power in the South.

Does this sound like white privilege to you?  All your conceptions about what the Green Party is and stands for have been turned on their ear.  If you're still undecided on whom to vote for at the top of your ballot -- but especially if you're thinking about writing in Bernie Sanders (just ten states will count those, and none of them are Texas) -- take another look.

Turnout swollen as voters wish to be done with this election

Pro tip: voting early stops the flood of junk to your mailbox.  (The state runs a program every night marking early voters each day as out of the pool, so for example, I cannot go back and vote again today.  Or tomorrow.  Or on Election Day.)

Monday's turnout of 67,471 in-person voters shattered the (Harris) county record of 47,093 set in 2012 for the first day of early voting. Another 61,543 mail ballots had been returned as of Monday, bringing the total number of early voters so far to 129,014 in Texas' most populous county.

Records were also broken by substantial margins in counties such as Dallas and Tarrant, which reported first-day turnouts of about 43,000 each. Bexar and Travis counties reported about 30,000 first-day voters apiece.

Also in Nueces (heavy D not so much) and Denton (formerly blood red but these days a little more purple).  Update: And via Chisme: Williamson, Bastrop, and Hays, the suburban (R-dominant) counties surrounding Austin and Travis County.  Charles's post keeps us up to date on the minutia of the first voting day in this cycle; my experience yesterday at the Bayland Park EV location in southwest Houston has me rethinking what I should be forecasting as to how things might turn out for Texas and Harris County.

That photo above (courtesy Chron) is what my usual EV poll, the Fiesta Mart on South Main at Kirby Drive, in the shadow of NRG Stadium, looked like yesterday about 1 p.m. as I pulled in to find parking.  Out the door, across the front, and wrapping around the corner of the building to some distance I could not see.  That photo -- and this next one more clearly -- shows the line doubling back, serpentine-style.

I don't know whether that was earlier or later in the day.  All I know is when I saw that queue -- again in just single file, not back and forth as the photos show -- I turned my truck toward the exit and headed for Bayland.

Experience has taught me that Fiesta has a small area for voting, a smaller number of voting machines (less than 24) and that a line out the door generally means a line snaking down the aisles inside the store.  In 2008 I waited 45 minutes to cast my ballot during EV's first week, the longest I've ever stood on queue to vote, and my wife waited about the same time on the only Saturday of early voting.  In 2012, a larger turnout than four years' previous, it took us both about half an hour to vote together at Fiesta.

Bayland has more parking, more e-Slates (yesterday, about 36), which means an extra election clerk manning a third JBC, the machine that prints the four-digit access code the voter uses to sign in to access his or her ballot.  (A more detailed description of this process is here.)  As I parked and walked in, I asked some of the card pushers outside if they were getting any reports about the wait time.  I also asked some voters as they made their way past me to their parked cars.  The consensus was an hour-ish, in some case 90 minutes, and one person said 'two hours'.  That gave me pause, but I ambled on toward the end of the line anyway.

It became rapidly clear to me that this would be a long wait, but it appeared to be steadily moving along and so I queued up, read my phone for 10 or 15 minutes and then took note of the fact that the Bayland poll also had the line folding back on itself through several meeting rooms inside the community facility.  The longer I waited, the more I wished I had not, although there were many voters much older than me sticking it out, and there were plenty of chairs in each room to sit and wait, so I hung on, though my feet and back were both aching after the first hour.

The rationale for enduring this should be obvious by now.

"We just want to get it over with," Sam Tabb said as he stood in line at a polling station in Pasadena. "We will be glad when this whole thing is over. It's just been a real zoo. In my lifetime, it's probably the worst election ever."

Brandy Holmes, a 31-year-old engineer who said she'd marked Monday on her calendar weeks ago, echoed that sentiment. "Let's just get this over with."

It was another hour and fifteen minutes before I reached the clerk's tables, and having performed this pollworker task myself in many elections in the past, immediately noted the bottleneck: the clerks at the sign-in table were moving the mass of weary voters far too slowly.  While there were three rows of twelve e-Slates, each row with its own JBC clerk, the e-Slates themselves were mostly unoccupied; at least eight of the voting machines on each row were standing vacant, waiting for a voter.  I found that to be inexcusable but did not offer a complaint.  (At Fiesta, a voter typically has to wait a minute or two for an e-Slate to become available after signing in and getting a PIN).

Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart said he'd expected a record-breaking turnout of as many as 55,000 voters, but that even he was surprised by the number who actually came out.

Stanart said his office did receive numerous complaints about long lines at early-voting spots. He recommended that those planning to vote this week check the turnout numbers by location at HarrisVotes.com and head to a spot with low turnout to avoid long lines.

Elections officials will be sending extra laptops to select locations on Tuesday in order to speed up the process, Stanart said.

The lines started forming early and stayed long throughout the day, snaking around buildings at polling places at several locations. By the afternoon, Harris County election officials said voters were casting 6,000 votes per hour. As the polls closed, people were still in line at some places.

It turns out I probably would have had a shorter wait had I stayed at the supermarket: as the County Clerk's spreadsheet revealed last night, Fiesta processed under 1300 voters, well behind its usual top ten heaviest county boxes, while Bayland had over 1900.  No telling how many folks saw long lines at both polls, and elsewhere throughout the county, and did not bother.

Perhaps the slowdown wasn't those clerks' fault, though.  Some voters had questions that bogged things down a bit; some were slow to produce ID, but none that I saw were being forced into the 'affidavit of reasonable impediment' to producing photo ID-route.  While my wait was about to come to an end, I asked one of the officiating clerks about that process and she said those voters would have to defer to a side table, complete the affidavit... and then go to the back of the line.  The clerk at that table was playing a game on her phone.

Here it is important to note a truism with respect to long waits at polling places.

Reminder that when you see hours-long voting lines in cities, that's not democracy in action, it's voter suppression in action. https://t.co/pLzK0UltRn

— Adam James Platt (@AdamPlatt1999) October 21, 2016

We've known this sort of thing has happened at least since Election 2004, when despite the HAVA's enactment in the wake of the debacle that was Election 2000, several factors -- among them Ken Blackwell, Diebold, and specifically black precincts in Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati -- threw Ohio to George Walker Bush.

Voter suppression, you see, is even more difficult to prove than so-called voter 'fraud'.

(Is the system 'rigged', as Trump has stoked the fears of?  The right answer is: it always has been, in some form or fashion, small or large -- from the time of Landslide Lyndon and before -- all the way to the present day.  It's just that the only people complaining about it are the ones who think it's rigged against them, and that changes from one election to the next.)

So let's hope that this blue wave poised to sweep Texas, boosted perhaps even by the so-far mythical Latino surge, isn't going to be intimidated by Republican efforts to build -- or hold their fingers in -- the dike against it.  And speaking of water, bring a bottle with you, maybe a snack, possibly your medications, to the poll when you get ready to cast your ballot.

So for the money shot: that ten-point lead in Harris County no longer looks like an outlier, and it's a pure tossup that Texas flips, unless voter turnout starts to wane through the rest of the EV period or on Election Day itself.  Nate Silver still doesn't think so, but I feel like I need to hedge my longstanding skepticism.  I think it's within the Democrats' grasp ... but they could still fumble it.

Update: DBC with "Texas Swingin'? I Ain't Buyin' It."

Update II: Here's more goat-entrail reading from EV Day One from Texas Monthly and the Chron (tl;dr: it's still too early to say, but the trends are interesting).

The 2016 P-Slate

-- For President of the United States:

-- For US Congress, Seventh District:  None.

Jim "Frack You" Cargas is en route to a third consecutive beatdown at the hands of John Culberson.  Frack both of these rotten fellows.  This race is left blank, again, on my ballot.

-- For Texas Railroad Commission: Martina Salinas, Green Party.

Picking between the two major party candidates for this office is actually worse than choosing between Trump and Clinton.  So for all you straight-party voting morons out there on both sides, wise up and split your ticket.  The Libertarian has been praised, but Texas needs an environmental steward and not another corporate stooge on the board that regulates the oil and gas industry.

-- For Justice, Texas Supreme Court, Place 3: Rodolfo Rivera Munoz, Green Party.

Munoz seeks to become the first indigenous American elected to the state Supreme Court.  He elucidates the reasons he has for running in videos on his Facebook page.

-- For Justice, Texas Supreme Court, Place 5: Charles E. Waterbury, Green Party.

The Democrats have a strong candidate, but I won't be voting for her.

-- For Justice, Texas Supreme Court, Place 9: Jim Chisholm, Green Party.

The Republican incumbent is heavily favored, and the Democrat is a placeholder (no updates to her FB page since January).

-- For Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 2: Adam King Blackwell Reposa, Green Party.

The Democrat is a former Republican who favors the death penalty to a greater degree than even the notorious chief justice of this court, Sharon Keller.  Pass.

-- For Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 5: Judith Sanders-Castro, Green Party.

The Democrat is an embarrassment to the Democratic Party.  A complete and total embarrassment.

(Betsy) Johnson filed in the last hour of the last day to put her name in contention, the Texas Democratic Party confirmed.

State District Judge Sid Harle of Bexar County - who lost a bid for the GOP nod for the Place 5 seat - said he met Johnson after she was dropped from the appointment list for indigent defendants facing felony charges in 2011.

He said other criminal court judges pressed for the action. Since he was the presiding judge, she came to his office to dispute it.

"I hear this clomping outside my door, and she comes storming into my office in, of course, combat boots," said Harle. He said he advised Johnson to work as second chair without pay in a couple of trials to prove to the judges she could try a case, but she refused with an expletive.

Johnson, who is described as partial to unconventional attire such as the combat boots noted by Harle, couldn't be reached for this story. She didn't respond to an email inquiry, and there was no answer at the telephone number she has listed with the State Bar of Texas.

I've covered this previously.  If you vote for this person -- and especially if you're voting for her as a result of a mindless straight-party ticket -- then you're just as bad as she is.

-- For Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 6: Robert Burns, Democratic Party.

Finally a statewide Democrat I can support.  Let's hope Hillary Clinton's coattails in Texas are long enough to get some balance on the CCA.

-- First Court of Appeals Democrats Jim Peacock and Barbara Gardner should be elected, as should be Fourteenth Court of Appeals Democrats Candace White and Peter Kelly.

The only Harris Democratic state district judge you should not vote for is running in the 215th, Elaine Palmer.  I'll cite her Republican challenger (but won't be voting for him myself).

-- Harris County District Attorney: Kim Ogg.

-- Harris County Attorney: Vince Ryan.

-- Harris County Sheriff: Ed Gonzalez.

-- Harris County Tax assessor/Collector: Ann Harris Bennett.

-- Harris County Commissioner, Place 1, Rodney Ellis, and Place 3, Jenifer Rene Pool.

-- Here's a great resource that lists all the Harris County candidates, all races and parties.  Among them, and if I could do so, I'd be voting for Joshua Darr (G) in CD-02 (Ted Poe, incumbent), Hal Ridley (Green, no Democrat running) against the odious Brian Babin in CD-36, Joe McElligott in HD-127 (G, no D running against R incumbent Dan Huberty) and Brian Harrison (G) in HD-147 (Garnet Coleman, incumbent).

-- I'll be voting Against on HISD Prop 1, aka recapture.

Here's the League of Women Voters' Guide, here's the HGLBT Caucus card (very useful for Harris judicial contests) and Deb Russell -- the Green Party's Travis County Sheriff candidate -- also has a progressive's voting guide posted at Facebook for the state capital region.

Questions about other races elsewhere in Texas?  Leave 'em in the comments.

Update: Two hours and twenty minutes on queue at Bayland Park to vote this afternoon.  A 'longest ever' record for me.  I voted there because the lines looked longer at Fiesta on South Main, where the longest I ever waited to vote before today was 45 minutes in 2008.  I believe anybody who might be waiting until Saturday or next week to vote early might be in for a longer wait.  IJS.

The Polls are Open Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance celebrates the opening of early voting -- and the beginning of the end of the very worst election in our nation's long history -- as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff analyzes the state of the polls in Texas.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos encourages all Democrats to show up at the voting polls. Texas Democrats have a fighting chance this year. We can right a boatload of Republican wrongs. Nasty Ladies of Texas Unite! Houston is not impressed by Trump.

Socratic Gadfly, given ongoing recent problems in his (Deep East Texas) area, says it's time to nationalize the Internet.

Can Hillary Clinton actually carry Texas in the Electoral College?   PDiddie at Brains and Eggs notes that blue teamers are desperately trying to squeeze out the 1 or 2% the Green Party is polling in order to do so.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes Sean Hannity's pick for speaker of the US House, Louis Gohmert, isn't the worst East Texas Republican this week. Brian Babin is.

Bay Area Houston has instructions for those who plan on voting illegally.

Texas Leftist has his first candidate questionnaire posted: Matt Murphy (R), HD-147.

Two Lewisville ISD Special Olympics volunteers were feted, reports the Texan-Journal.

And Neil at All People Have Value admired the urban amber waves of Houston. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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Jonathan Tilove passes along the thoughts inside Donald Trump's head, as foreordained by South Austin's very own Alex Jones.

Zachery Taylor wonders if Hillary Clinton is indeed rigging the 2016 election (with Trump's help).

The Rag Blog's David Hamilton, one of its original contributors, endorses Jill Stein for president.

Cody Pogue thinks that a bad president is better than a revolution.

BOR is crowdsourcing Texas Republican elected officials' support of Donald Trump, and Kyrie O'Connor and Eileen Smith are #NastyWomen.

Daniel Williams and Leah Binkovitz explain the options in the HISD recapture referendum.

The Texas Election Law Blog rounds up some good reads on voter registration and resistance to it.

Keep Austin Wonky does a deep dive on the “Go Big” mobility bond.

PoliTex reports that candidates are lining up to file against incumbent Fort Worth city council members for next spring's municipal elections.

Lawflog notes another day and another judge's ethical whitewash.

The Lunch Tray wants to know why it's hard to find out information about sugar in school food.

Transgriot reminds us that it is not incumbent upon the people who are being oppressed to forgive their oppressors.

John Wright at the Texas Observer rounds up the latest LGBTQ news from around Texas, including Lite Guv Dan Patrick's push for an anti-trans bathroom bill in next year's legislative session.

Ashton Woods at Strength in Numbers turns in his 'gay' two weeks' notice.