Bettencourt sued over provisional ballots *update*

Final Update: Alas, the results don't change. But the TDP will press forward on Bettencourt's shady actions...

(Wednesday morning at 10 a.m.), at the federal district court hearing regarding the disposition of provisional ballots in Harris County, tax assessor/collector Paul Bettencourt’s attorneys told the court that his office had processed all of the provisional ballots by 7:00 a.m. Wednesday morning. Additionally, Bettencourt informed the media that he had actually finished the ballot process the afternoon before the hearing. However, the Harris County Ballot Board received additional ballots as late as 4:00 p.m. after the hearing, in direct conflict with what Bettencourt’s attorney told U.S. district judge Gray Miller.

"For some time now, Paul Bettencourt’s unusual effort to reject legitimate voter registration applications has raised public concerns, but misleading a court of law for partisan purposes would be beneath contempt," said Texas Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie. "Whether Paul Bettencourt is incompetent or indifferent, neither is a legitimate excuse."

Furthermore, we have received reports that Bettencourt had a private meeting with Harris County Republican Party chair Jared Woodfill the Wednesday after Election Day, after which Bettencourt’s processing of provisional ballots slowed to a near halt, despite a state law that requires complete processing of provisional ballots by the Friday after Election Day. Then yesterday, at least two witnesses observed Woodfill and an unidentified Anglo male in a private meeting with the Republican ballot board chairman, Jim Harding, between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m., just hours after the District Court assumed jurisdiction of the matter. Additionally, we have received reports Bettencourt personally called Harding and berated him regarding his comments in today’s Houston Chronicle.

In response to these reports, the Texas Democratic Party General Counsel has sent a letter to Harris County Republican Party Chairman Jared Woodfill asking him to report his actions to Judge Miller.

Further developments in future postings. More at Off the Kuff.

Update: Bettencourt got his job done, so the court action scheduled for this morning was rendered moot. But the implications on two judicial races hang in the balance, with the last votes being counted even as I post this:

In a miniature version of the 2000 Florida vote drama, election officials prepared to work late tonight toward counting the last leftover votes that could switch outcomes in two Harris County judicial elections.

The tedious work lurched forward when county voter registrar Paul Bettencourt delivered his reports on about 7,000 ballots that were cast by people not listed on the Election Day voter rolls. Some of those residents had been omitted from registration records by mistake, and their votes will be added to last week's totals.

Bettencourt's move led Democratic Party officials to drop their request today for a judge to order him to complete the tallies and open his staff's work to monitors. However, Democrats said they will press ahead next year with the part of their lawsuit that accuses Bettencourt, a Republican, of illegally rejecting voter registration applications.

He sent his work on the 7,000 or so provisional ballots to a bipartisan ballot board that will decide which ones will be added to the Nov. 4 vote total. About 1,400 of the 7,000 are expected to qualify for addition to elections for countywide offices, election officials said, in addition to about 400 ballots sent by overseas voters.

If those ballots contain votes on judicial elections, they could reverse the outcome in two contests where fewer than 600 votes separated the winners and losers as of last week. ...

Democratic candidate Goodwille Pierre, who trailed Republican state District Judge Joseph "Tad" Halbach by fewer than 600 votes, said he had faith the new totals will make him a new judge.

"I believe it will definitely show that we are ahead," he said.

In the other closest race, Republican state District Judge Elizabeth Ray trailed Democratic challenger Josefina Muniz Rendon by 135 votes.

After a court hearing today on the Democrats' lawsuit, their lawyer, Chad Dunn, implied that Bettencourt had dragged his feet on processing the provisional ballots as the deadline for counting them neared.

"We are disappointed ... that it took a lawsuit to get Mr. Bettencourt to do his job," he said. "The Texas Democratic Party will consistently stand up for the voters' right to cast a ballot and have it be counted."

Alan Bernsten's report from last night is in full below. I won't comment on it for now except to note that I don't expect to be a party to this myself, but know some who will:

Texas Democratic Party officials are asking a federal judge in Houston to block what they call illegal moves by Harris County voter registrar Paul Bettencourt as the last few votes are added to the totals from the Nov. 4 election.

U.S. District Judge Gray Miller was scheduled to consider the complaint against Republican Bettencourt at 10 a.m. today.

Bettencourt, who was re-elected last week as county tax assessor-collector, denied the allegations in general Tuesday. He said he had to withhold specific comments until he read the lawsuit and consulted with outgoing County Attorney Mike Stafford.

With two judicial races in potential limbo because they were decided by a few hundred votes, the lawsuit focuses on about 7,000 ballots that were cast before and during Election Day but have yet to be verified as ballots that can be added to the totals.

Called "provisional ballots," they were cast by voters whose names were not properly listed on voter rolls but who signed affidavits saying they nevertheless had properly registered.

A few hundred by-mail ballots sent by overseas voters also have been processed since the election. Those ballots could have been counted under state law if they arrived by Sunday.

No results from the overseas and accepted provisional ballots have been made public yet. The mailed ballots generally favor Republican candidates while the provisionals are expected to favor Democratic candidates, according to several political experts.

Since last week's election, Bettencourt's voter registration staff has been checking those provisional ballots against records and reported on each one to a ballot board, whose members are appointed by political parties. Technically, the board decides which votes will be added to the totals before the election results are made official by Commissioners Court, which is scheduled to accept the results Monday.

But, the Democratic officials said in the lawsuit, Bettencourt is providing incorrect information to the board, delaying the counting, refusing to let in observers and has illegally denied voter registrations.

The list of Democratic plaintiffs includes lawyer Goodwille Pierre, who trailed Republican state District Judge Joseph "Tad" Halbach by fewer than 600 votes in the election. In another civil court race, Republican Judge Elizabeth Ray trailed Democratic challenger Josefina Muniz Rendon by fewer than 200 votes.

About 1 million votes were cast in each of the two judicial races in which the opponents are currently separated by less than 1,000 votes.

Bettencourt said his staff would be done with the 7,000 or so ballots by late Tuesday — proof, he said, that he was not keeping the ballot board from making decisions by today, the flexible counting deadline suggested by state law.

Bettencourt said he gave a Democratic representative, Collyn Peddie, a tour of his provisional ballot processing system last week but refused on the advice of the Secretary of State's Office to allow anyone to serve as a monitor.

In an affidavit attached to the lawsuit, Peddie cast doubt on Bettencourt's system based on her one-hour presence. She said she saw provisional ballots "set aside" despite notes showing they had been cast by voters who had registered to vote at state Department of Public Safety offices.

The suit charges that Bettencourt may also be improperly blocking votes only because voters had listed commercial, rather than residential addresses and had not been given a chance to explain any discrepancy.

Bettencourt acknowledged to the Chronicle in July that a few voters' registrations had been delayed because they lived in new dwellings previously listed on property rolls as non-residential.

Obama ballin'

Instead of shirts and skins, it was "That One" vs. "This One":

Oh, PLEASE nominate the hillbilly diva in 2012 (and more bloggerhea)

That would be perfect.

I think what we're seeing here on our media today is someone who really, really wants to be your nominee, and is trying to keep her profile high for the next four years. Truly hilarious and pathetic at the same time. I just have to hope that the GOP will fall for the ruse.

-- Try to pace yourselves, player haters. It's going to be a long eight years. Trust me on this.

-- Who, or what, is killing the blogopshere?

Blogging seems to have entered its midlife crisis, with much existential gnashing-of-teeth about the state and fate of a literary form that once seemed new and fresh and now seems familiar and tired. And there's good reason for the teeth-gnashing. While there continue to be many blogs, including a lot of very good ones, it seems to me that one would be hard pressed to make the case that there's still a "blogosphere." That vast, free-wheeling, and surprisingly intimate forum where individual writers shared their observations, thoughts, and arguments outside the bounds of the traditional media is gone. Almost all of the popular blogs today are commercial ventures with teams of writers, aggressive ad-sales operations, bloated sites, and strategies of self-linking. Some are good, some are boring, but to argue that they're part of a "blogosphere" that is distinguishable from the "mainstream media" seems more and more like an act of nostalgia, if not self-delusion.

That paragraph opens Nicolas Carr's somewhat disconcerting opinion that a "corporate shakeout" of sorts is coming ... or perhaps has already arrived.

Bart seems a little bitter:

Kos the multi-gazillionaire makes so much money he's killing all of us. When people go to advertise on the web, most of that money goes to Kos.

He's the Wal-Mart of the Internet, killing the mom and pop bloggers.

Even Hillary stupidly spent her money there - nobody hates her more than Kos.

I don't know if this is a big deal or not -- or if it's any deal at all. Markos has certainly gotten awfully rich from blogging, something that is conspicuously not happening to anybody else. There is some stratification occurring but that might be just plain old capitalism and a maturing blogging "industry". The big boys like Kos and the second tier are certainly separating from the riff-raff (like me) through the self-linking strategy described in the link, but again that may just be part of the maturation cycle. I -- and most of the rest of us blogging in our parents' basement in our Cheeto-stained underwear -- don't do this for the money, after all. It'd be nice, but it's probably not going to happen at this point. And there are few new bloggers popping up as well (maybe that's not a bad thing either). But it used to be said that if you wrote well and often that people would find you.

I don't think that is altogether true any longer. What do you think?

Veterans Day 2008

Best-of-election-2008 Wrangle

Time for another Texas Progressive Alliance weekly blog round-up -- with a twist. In this edition, TPA member blogs bring you some of their best posts from the past year of election coverage. Enjoy this trip down memory lane, courtesy of the TPA.

Muse enjoyed all things Hillary leading up to the March 4th Texas Primary. There was the Hillary endorsement post that made her mom cry. A high point was the event where Muse fulfilled her lifelong dream to touch Bill Clinton. (Little did she know there would be a more up close and personal opportunity.) She got to see Hillary four times in person, including this event. Even her hybrid got in the act: Prius Owners for Hillary!

BossKitty at TruthHugger is angry that Sarah Palin's nasty rhetoric has ignited hateful fallout; she let the white Supremacist Genie Out Of The Bottle, Thanks Sarah. There are still 'stone aged' creatures marching around calling themselves Christians, wearing NAZI paraphernalia! Woe be to anyone who would harm the first family of America! On a more personal note, BossKitty has ideas about what to do when you lose your job ... but, the most daunting agenda on our plate is that our New America Must Reduce Its Seven Deadly Sins if we want to survive as a nation.

Brains and Eggs had the good, the bad, the ugly, and some TBD in a series of election postmortems, and then a little more of each. PDiddie wrapped last week with the finger-pointing and recriminations that marked the last throes of the McCain-Palin campaign, which included a luxury undergarment update.

It's been a tumultuous week for everyone, but at McBlogger it was remarkably calm. We're chalking it up to a change in prescription medications. First up was Donna Keel attacking Austin Interfaith. Then there was an attack on Diana Maldonado by her parish priest and for us that was enough religion for all week. The funniest thing we saw was a commercial shot by former celebrities going after Al Franken that made us want to move to Minnesota and vote for him. There was also some funny about people upset that they weren't getting help from the Federal Government, even though they didn't need it. Wrapping everything up was our final farewell to those who loved them some Austin Proposition 2.

Justin at AAA-Fund Blog covered the presidential prima-caucus in Texas including Clinton’s sweep of Asian American surrogates and both candidates' Asian American outreach . Justin also scolded Hubert Vo, evaluated Rick Noriega’s immigration plan, and was amazed that both Barack Obama and Sherrie Matula were "That Ones."

Off the Kuff has some early observations about what happened on Election Day, plus a look at turnout figures and statewide trends.

At Texas Kaos, the bitter and the sweet mix together as we look back on an amazing rollercoaster of an election season. While it looked like there was a contest for the U.S. Senate nomination, Boadicea put together Rick's answers for Democracy for Texas to paint a picture of the candidate: This is Rick Noriega-Texas Progressive Leader. Covering the snark beat, our friend from the Soggy North, Fake Consultant, gave some pointers to a hockey mom thrust onto the national stage in On Dressing for Success, Part One, or How Much is Armani, Anyway? and followed up with more helpful tips in On Dressing for Success, Part Two, Or We Costume Palin… for 2/3 off! Lightseeker took a reasoned and sober look at a more serious element this election: Respecting Life, Making Hard Choices and finally makes the point that the Nov 4 vote was not an ending, but a beginning, Looking Now, Looking Forward.

Ah the memories, at The Texas Cloverleaf during the 2008 election season. The candidates would make their case on WWE Monday Night Raw. We learned that McCain would lose early on, with our own Congressman Michael Burgess advising him on healthcare. We wished Governor Palin well on her first Grandparents Day. We learned Texas Republicans can't figure out education, much less spell it correctly. But we finally came out on top with Barack Obama, and some mixed Texas results. Here's to a classic 2008!

Vince Leibowitz of Capitol Annex focused a considerable amount of energy this cycle covering Texas Democrats' attempts to retake the Texas House of Representatives. From racist mailers and decitful TV ads in Dallas and Houston area House districts to the battle to unseat Texas' most ethically compromised legislator, down to catching Republicans telling blatant lies, this was a busy cycle in Texas. In the primary, he was one of a few Texas bloggers who supported Senator Hillary Clinton, and offered her this open letter when she left the race.

Neil at Texas Liberal offers up his post on early voting in downtown Houston. The post tells which Democrats Neil enjoyed voting for and also has colorful pictures that will please the eye.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme debunks 10 Republican excuses.

In the 2008 primary and election, Jobsanger continued his penchant for supporting losing candidates by backing Bill Richardson, Rick Noriega, Sherrie Matula and Nancy Moffatt, before finally breaking through with a winner in Barack Obama.

What a long strange journey it has been for the Easter Lemming. Gary has started pushing for a poll-workers union after working the primary and then another election this Spring. He found out people read blogs about as much as newspapers! Guess who the Easter Lemming supported? And finally, he ended too tired to party but not too tired to blog with a special mention that MoveOn.Org is bigger and more important than the NRA in politics now.

Hope you caught the Texas Blue on Election Day -- we did a "heckuva job" picking out the states that would and wouldn't matter for an Obama victory on Election Day. We also ran down the biggest federal, statewide and local results in our Election Day '08 executive summary, checked out how the fight for the Democrats' 75th seat in the Texas House is looking, and did some deconstruction of why the Republicans were never going to win the presidential election, Sarah Palin or no Sarah Palin.