OpenSourceDem on a Harris County elections administrator

Occasional contributor OpenSourceDem is responding to this post of mine.

When you realize that Sir Thomas More was pretty much a creep (before becoming a Saint on a legal technicality), you may not be in favor of a “utopian ... non-partisan, unelected official” running elections.

Um, that would be like the county jails, toll roads, sports stadiums, and drainage ditches.  Think about it!

Here is a practical alternative to an Elections Administrator who would be accountable to ... nobody:

Diane Trautman is Tax Assessor-Collector and focuses on tax matters, countering the endless, high-pitched whine from Dan Patrick and Paul Bettencourt, who are both still on the air. Here’s a clue: “Uniform taxation of real property ad valorem” is progressive, popular, and very, very constitutional. And here’s another clue: To do that the Tax Office needs to manage the property records efficiently and impose a “stamp tax”, not to raise revenue so much as to force disclosure of transaction prices.

Ann Harris Bennett is County Clerk and manages elections, including voter registration and history records, responsibly.

Loren Jackson manages the Jury Wheel and provides for the security of personal identity and integrity of property data across all county and state database systems that now, by design, expose Harris County citizens to criminal identity theft, discriminatory pricing, disenfranchisement, and official oppression.

All of the government data and meta-data -- save for keys and valuable or derogatory personal information that is not necessarily or legitimately in the public domain -- should be open and well documented publicly and professionally. To assure this, database and tabulation technology should fall under the routine auspices of a non-partisan and technically proficient county Testing and Audit Board, as well as subject to periodic involvement of non-partisan election officials and workers.

This is not utopian. It is very practical and basically how things worked when Houston was a “bi-racial city in which the rule of white, male (lawyers) was taken for granted”.  That is a quotation from Steven Klineberg from Tuesday night's Brown Bag ... well, except for the lawyer part.  What has happened since then is that as Houston and Harris County have become more “diverse” racially, the white, male (lawyers) have retreated behind legalism, bureaucracy, and police-powers to maintain their control and privileges by replacing pervasively crude, racial discrimination throughout local government and commerce with even more pervasively sophisticated, computer-mediated, economic discrimination throughout local government and commerce.

The result is right-wing and left-wing intellectuals arguing over the literary heritage of Ayn Rand while white, male (lawyers) extract more monopoly rent from government concessions and share it among themselves. What we have here today is one political establishment (bi-partisan!) and a criminal financial superstructure together with a criminal underground economy made palatable by bread, circuses, cute puppies, and mumbo jumbo for a majority-minority middle-class of working families.

Net, net: this gets us a lot of elections and not many voters -- the highest incarceration and lowest political participation rates of cities in our league. It does not get us to republican democracy by any stretch of definitions or imagination.

You can stay in Utopia, but I’m going to Texas!

An elections administrator for Harris County (?)

Harris County should consider appointing a bureaucrat to take over election duties from two elected officials who currently split the job, County Judge Ed Emmett said.

Emmett said he plans to ask Commissioners Court next month or in July to authorize a study of the costs and consequences of such a change.

Harris County's tax assessor-collector registers voters, a job that accompanied its duty to collect poll taxes. The county clerk runs elections. Both are elected.

Thus, taking voter registration out of the tax assessor/collector's office and elections management out of the county clerk's office and combining them into an elections administration department, under the supervision of an appointed county official, is the idea. And I like it.

Proponents of an elections czar say an appointee would be insulated from accusations and lawsuits alleging partisanship in carrying out the duties of the office.

In late 2008, the state Democratic Party said in a lawsuit that then-Tax Assessor Paul Bettencourt, a Republican, had illegally blocked thousands of people from registering to vote. The lawsuit was settled last fall. Bettencourt resigned in December 2008 to work in the private sector, just weeks after being elected to a third four-year term.

“The Democrats' lawsuit against the tax office and Paul Bettencourt's abrupt departure were game changers,” Emmett said. “It brought to everybody's attention that any time you have partisan offices running elections, you're just sort of leaving yourself open to lawsuits.”

The legacy of Quittencourt. He now runs a company that negotiates with the Harris County Appraisal District to get property taxes lowered for homeowners, marking time for his next electoral opportunity.  Continuing with Chris Moran at the Chron ...

There was talk of tinkering with the county's elections machinery at the time. County Clerk Beverly Kaufman and newly appointed Tax Assessor-Collector Leo Vasquez opposed it. No formal proposal emerged.

“I was glad because I didn't want to lose a lot of my people,” Kaufman said.

But Kaufman is retiring, and her endorsed successor lost the March primary election for the nomination to succeed her. Vasquez lost his Republican primary.

That opens a window for proponents in which they can largely avoid the turf war over taking money, people and power from the tax assessor and clerk. Kaufman herself restarted talk of an administrator when she sent Emmett information about it a month ago. Now that she is leaving office she supports an elections administrator, she said.

“This is the ideal time, when you're not pulling the rug out from somebody that's already doing it,” she said.

No incumbent owns any turf to lose, but the challengers bidding to replace them are howling:

Democrat Ann Harris Bennett and Republican Stan Stanart, the November candidates to succeed Kaufman, both said they oppose an elections administrator.

“The voters don't have any way of removing (an appointee) when they're not happy with the performance,” Stanart said.

Democratic tax-assessor candidate Diane Trautman agreed with Stanart, though her released statement had a more partisan bent.

“Now that his hand-picked appointee for tax assessor and Beverly Kaufman's chosen successor for county clerk have been rejected by voters, Ed Emmett wants to change the rules,” Trautman said. “He wants to make sure that the next time he appoints someone to oversee elections processes in Harris County, that person cannot be removed by the voters.”

Republican tax-assessor candidate Don Sumners said, “It's not broken. We don't need to fix it.” He said he suspects the plan is retaliation for his past public criticism of Commissioners Court.

The partisan PDiddie would love for this crucial bit of democracy to fall under the control of Diane Trautman and Ann Harris Bennett. But the (perhaps utopian) idea of a non-partisan, unelected official has great appeal -- assuming it could actually happen.

Statewide, an administrator is used in 77 of the 254 counties, including Bexar, Dallas, El Paso and Tarrant. By state law, an election commission consisting of the county judge, the tax assessor, the county clerk and the heads of the local political parties hires and fires an elections administrator.

The leaders of the county's Republican and Democratic parties condemned the idea.

GOP Chairman Jared Woodfill said the party took a stand against an administrator two years ago. “It's another level of bureaucracy that we didn't need,” Woodfill said.

Democratic Chairman Gerry Birnberg said there is no party position on the matter but that he may take it up if the idea gets traction at Commissioners Court.

Charles Kuffner has more, including these questions:

Does this person have to be periodically re-appointed, or re-confirmed? Under what conditions can he or she be fired? How can you isolate this person from political pressure, yet ensure they are accountable?

All important considerations. I think my condition would be someone with prior metro county experience outside of Texas -- thus somewhat removed from the Republican Party of Texas' unique view on what constitutes free and fair elections. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Greg Abbott. Update: ... and so is Kuffner.

Green Party submits petitions to qualify for Texas ballot

*As a Democratic precinct chair I cannot -- and do not -- endorse or support any of the Green Party candidates.

There were no TV cameras Monday in front of the Texas Secretary of State's office building south of the Capitol. No crowd of cheering supporters. But statewide coordinator Kat Swift with the Green Party of Texas says the dozen or so boxes filled with signed petitions spoke louder than a roaring crowd.

Swift: "And we have with us 93,000 petitions roughly of Texas voters, who did not vote in the primary, who want to see the Green Party on the ballot."

That's more than double the 44,000 signatures needed to get a political party on the Texas ballot.

[...]

Beyond that, it costs real money -- from $100,000 to $500,000 to pay a company to collect the signatures. That's where the Free and Equal Elections Foundation stepped in. Christina Tobin is founder and chair of the non-partisan foundation.

Tobin: "What we do is we gather signatures for candidates nationwide across the political spectrum. From Greens to Libertarians to Constitution to disenfranchised Democrats and Republicans."

And in Texas, the group also helped the Green Party raise the money needed to pay for the signature collection. Richard Winger edits the website Ballot Access News, a clearing house for information from across the country. He says Texas is considered one of the five hardest states to get on the ballot, basing his claim on the 2008 presidential election.

[...]

Meanwhile, the Secretary of State's office says it will validate the signatures and have an official ruling of whether the Green party made the statewide ballot sometime in the middle of June.

More from the Independent Political Report:

Assuming they get on the ballot, the list of candidates who will qualify for the ballot is as follows:

Bart Boyce Governor
Deb Shafto Governor
Herb Gonzales, Jr Lieutenant Governor
Edward Lindsay Comptroller of Public Accounts
Art Browning Railroad Commissioner
Jim Howe US Congress, District 11
Ed Scharf US Congress, District 23
Paul Cardwell State Board of Education, District 9
Ryan Seward State Representative, District 94
Joel West State Representative, District 144
Don Cook County Clerk, Harris County
Roger Baker County Clerk, Travis County
Earl Lyons County Clerk, Bexar County
kat swift County Commissioner, Pct 2, Bexar County
Chuck Robinson Justice of the Peace, Precinct 1, Place 1, Bexar County
Joy Vidheecharoen-Glatz Justice of the Peace, Pct 3, Dallas County
Jeffrey Dale Glatz County Surveyor, Dallas County
Esther Choi County Clerk, Dallas County

Don't miss the comments at that link. Shafto and Cook, you may recall, ran as Houston city council candidates under the Progressive Coalition banner in last November's municipal elections.

Here's a bit from the afore-mentioned Ballot Access News:

This is only the second time that the Texas Green Party has submitted enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. The first time was in 2000, and the party polled enough votes in 2000 so that it was automatically on the ballot as well in 2002. Parties in Texas must poll either 5% for any statewide race, or 2% for Governor. Parties that get 2% for Governor enjoy qualified status for the next four years, but parties that get 5% for any statewide race only gets qualified status for the next two years.

Lastly, our freaky TeaBagger buddy at the Ellis County Observer:

I don’t think the Dallas County surveyor position will hold up, unless the Greens have a hidden secret that the surveyor position was never abolished. And, state law requires that in order for a minor party to be automatically given ballot access after this year, they must score 5 percent in a statewide race. So, the Green Party candidate for Comptroller should easily get that, since Republican Susan Combs only faces Libertarian Mary Ruwart in November. A three-way race for Comptroller should get that coveted 5 percent.

And the worst is yet to come

Laurence Lewis:

Fifty miles of Louisiana's coastline already have been hit, including a major pelican rookery. The Louisiana marshes served as nurseries for shrimp, crab and oysters. Will the local fishing industry survive? Even if it does, how long will it take for even moderate recovery, and how many jobs will be lost, both temporarily and permanently? Those marshes also served as a buffer for New Orleans, when hurricanes hit. This just keeps getting worse. And it will take many years for nature to break this mess down.

Among other ominous developments, BP is responding to the EPA's order that it seek an alternative to the dangerous chemical dispersant it had been using by saying it intends to continue with the one it has. Who is in charge, here? Gulf Islands National Seashore is imminently threatened not only by the oil, but by those chemicals. And the government official leading the response to the disaster says only BP has the expertise to plug the leak, and he trusts they are doing their best. Which raises the question of why we entrust entire ecosystems to the expertise of a corporation whose best is a continuing catastrophe.

The magnitude of this disaster is so overwhelmingly large that it's easy to overlook the ways in which it is very small. As in the human scale. The people on Grand Isle who will lose their businesses and their jobs. Those employed in the Louisiana fishing industry. Those employed in the industries that depend on the catch. Those living and working on the coast of Florida, and beyond. The people for whom this disaster could not be much larger. And all the fragile ecosystems that will be destroyed.

This is a teaching moment, for us all. It should be a learning moment. If someone would take this moment to teach. So that enough people would learn. So that we could, collectively, do what needs be done. On the large scale. On the small.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is enjoying the last week of school before summer vacation as it brings you this week's blog roundup.

WhosPlayin notes that the Dallas-Fort Worth area has once again failed to meet its 8 hour ozone attainment, forcing TCEQ to implement contingency measures. Have you had your two teaspoons of ozone today?

Rand Paul explains why Texas Republicans don't mind pollution, notes CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme.

Off the Kuff kicks off the official countdown to KBH's 2012 re-election announcement.

Gas and greed divide neighbors in Argyle, TX. A tale of avarice, lies and corruption and civil disobedience in the Barnett Shale brought to you by TXsharon at Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

Bay Area Houston will be attending the Sunset Commission review of the Texas Department of Insurance on Tuesday.

There's a common thread of arrogant ignorance that runs between Rand Paul and the Texas SBOE, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs pulls the string.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson shows that the "big 3" get skittish on certain budget cuts. That won't be the case after the election: Perry, Dewhurst, Straus playing politics with budget cuts.

Libby Shaw says Thank You Rand Paul. The brash-talking ideologue has broken the right wing's first rule: don't tell me what you really think. See more at TexasKaos.

Neil at Texas Liberal reflected on how glad he is that we have a well-armed federal government from freedom-snatching folks like Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Jose Lima 1972 - 2010

For Jose Lima, it was time. And to those who knew and played along side him, it came way too soon.

Lima, the former Astros pitcher who became a fan favorite almost overnight for his flamboyant personality and fledgling musical career as much as his meteoric rise – and equally fast fall – on the mound, died Sunday of an apparent heart attack at his home in Los Angeles. He was 37.

Known affectionately as “Lima Time,” the veteran of 13 major league seasons and six teams joined the Astros in 1997 in a multiplayer trade from Detroit to begin a 4½ -season stint with the team.

His best year came in 1999, when he went 21-10 with a 3.58 ERA in a career-high 35 starts en route to earning All-Star honors and helping the Astros to a third consecutive National League Central title.

News of the righthander’s death reached the Astros as they prepared to take on the Tampa Bay Rays in Sunday's series finale at Minute Maid Park.

Without question one of the brightest talents -- and personalities -- to grace the locals.

At his best, Lima won a combined 37 games in 1998-1999 and looked primed to become one of the most successful pitchers in franchise history.

But Lima could never replicate the effort once the team moved from the cavernous Astrodome to then-Enron Field, where the field dimensions played mind games on the pitcher.

He went 7-16 in 2000 and 1-2 in 2001 before being traded back to Detroit. He finished 46-42 as an Astro with a 4.77 ERA. For his career, he went 89-102 with a 5.26 ERA.

Lima’s last major league stint came in 2006 with New York Mets, with whom he lasted just four starts. He also had a stint in the Korean league in 2008 and the independent Golden Baseball League last year.

He had recently rejoined the Los Angeles Dodgers, for whom he pitched in 2004, as a member of the Dodgers Alumni Association.

He used to own a home on a golf course south of Houston where I played occasionally and sometimes that meringue music was blasting so loud you could have heard it inside the Dome.

He lived a full life in a short time. RIP.

Black underpinnings

That's not a reference to any subjectified opinions about her future Supreme Court decisions, either.

U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill, doing the customary meet-and-greet with the senators who will decide her fate as a Supreme Court nominee. Whether Kagan leans left or right in her judicial demeanor is for court observers to debate. But in matters of style, she is unabashedly conservative.

... Kagan took the anti-style offensive several steps further. She put on rouge and lipstick for the formal White House announcement of her nomination, but mostly she embraced dowdy as a mark of brainpower. She walked with authority and stood up straight during her visits to the Hill, but once seated and settled during audiences with senators, she didn't bother maintaining an image of poised perfection. She sat hunched over. She sat with her legs ajar.

Kagan made her debut as a U.S. Supreme Court nominee dressed in a hip-length emerald-green jacket, black underpinnings, sheer black hosiery, sturdy black pumps, a strand of pearls and matching earrings. Her style was tidy and conservative but with a generous sprinkling of frumpiness of the sort that federal Washington can't resist -- at least when in front of a camera's intruding lens. 

Even for the Fashion and Style section this is a truly offensive, ridiculously sexist article. Did I just miss the media vetting of John Roberts' and Sam Alito's underwear? The scrutiny of their leg position while sitting?

Ohhhhh yeah, it's about the all important lesbian question.

Tied up in the assessment of style -- Kagan's or anyone else's -- is the awkward, fumbling attempt to suss out precisely who a person is. For Kagan, that means folks are using fashion as a limited tool for making sense of her sexual orientation (Well, she's 50, a bit plain and never married!) and then going on to the larger question of whether being gay or not matters on the high court. (Doesn't everything matter -- including whether one has a small-town background or an inner-city one -- in how one interprets the world?)

So the chatter on the Internet and in the coffee shops, turns to the lesbian archetypes: the Birkenstock-wearing, crunchy granola womyn; the short-haired, androgynous type; and the glamorous, lipstick-wearing Portia de Rossi girl. What does Kagan's short hair mean? Or the fact that she wears makeup?

I have plenty of issues with Kagan's potential views as a SCOTUS justice, but this article just should never have been written, much less published by the Washington Post. Even (especially?) in the Society section.

Update: Maybe Robin Givhan, the author of the Washington Post piece excerpted above, really is a misogynist.

Poll: Paul surges ahead of Palin among self-identified morons

MINNEAPOLIS -- In a sign of his increasing prominence in the so-called Tea Party movement, a new poll shows Kentucky senatorial candidate Rand Paul topping former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin among voters who describe themselves as morons.

In the poll, conducted by the University of Minnesota's Opinion Research Institute, 42% preferred Paul, 36% preferred Palin, and the remaining 22% were unsure what the word "prefer" meant.

According to Davis Logsdon, who supervised the poll for the University of Minnesota, Paul's surging popularity among morons is bad news for Palin, who previously had a lock on that important constituency.

"I never thought I'd say that, but if Palin is going to stay competitive with Paul, she's going to have to start dumbing down her message."

 Thanks, Andy.

Sunday Funnies (gRand Oil Party edition)

The governor's race in 3 minutes, and more postpourri

-- So if you haven't been paying attention you can catch up on the Texas governor's contest in less than three minutes, courtesy Eileen Smith at Texas Monthly.

-- What Eileen left out that developed this week: The Texas AFL-CIO offered Rick Perry a double-wide furnished with his favorite magazine for $1 a year. That's obviously a big savings over the ten grand a month for the mansion he's been squatting in. You'd think in these hard times, when every state agency had to cut its budget by 5% or more, that would be a grand gesture for the governor. He turned it down.

Let's Evict Rick instead.

-- Ta-Nehisi Coates follows up on Rachel Maddow's evisceration of Rand Paul:

That interview would have went a lot better for Rand Paul if Maddow had have just thrown her notes in the air and accused him of being a bigot, and a covert member of the Klan. That's what they want. And I don't simply mean conservatives--I mean people you disagree with. I know I've won a debate when my adversary says, "What the fuck type of name is Ta-Nuh-hah-see, anyway?" It translates to "I've got nothing." Much scarier is the opponent who takes your argument, with whatever nuances it may or may not possess, and politely disagrees with the argument as it is.

-- The SBOE finalizes its social studies standards today. Muse has been on the scene. BOR, Kuffner, the TFN and the Texas Tribune have much more.

Last week on my Vegas vacation I took time off from my intense sports booking and heavy slot action to call in and conference with Judy Jennings and Rebecca Bell-Metereau, two of the Democratic candidates for the state school board. Needless to say, electing these two women in November -- as well as Michael Soto -- goes a long way toward effectively mitigating the current board's whacked-out decisions.

-- Pappas Seafood Restaurants is suing BP for damages related to the Gulf oil spill. BP has tried desperately to keep a lid on photos and video of the underwater gusher, but they lost that battle too. Here's a wrap-up of the latest.  This site has also been terrific for aggregating information, and Eric Berger is good as well.

Update: Hideous.

Ayn Rand Paul, arrogant ignorance, and the Texas SBOE

Chris Good at The Atlantic:

Here's one thing that can, plainly, be said about the controversy over Rand Paul and the Civil Rights Act: this is exactly what Democrats hoped would happen.

The Democratic campaign and message apparatus has been banking, for months, on the rightward tilt of the Tea Party to damage the Republican Party in November's midterm elections. They put out a strategy memo to this effect in January.

The idea is, basically: Tea Partiers are crazy, right-wing extremists. If the Republican Party elects them to run in November, the Republican Party will lose. Democrats have been saying this for months.

Paul's statements about the Civil Rights Act, brought up last night by Rachel Maddow and discussed at length, in an interview, have dominated the news cycle today. It has not looked good for Paul, or for the Tea Party.

Joe Klein:

...Rand Paul is now saying that  he regrets the appearance with Rachel Maddow, not the ridiculous statements he made in favor of a private business's ability to discriminate according to race. I suspect that this will be the first of many such disasters for the Tea Party libertarians. They are about to find themselves faced with actual political rivals who will be more than happy to expose the utopian foolishness of their ideology. This will be a rare moment of public education for an electorate that doesn't pay sufficient attention to even the most important aspects of democracy.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, also from The Atlantic:

But what about red-lining? Does Paul know anything about blockbusting? Does he think banks should be able to have a policy of not lending to black businesses? Does he think real-estate agents should be able to discriminate? Does he think private homeowner groups should be able to band together and keep out blacks? Jews? Gays? Latinos?

I think there's this sense that it's OK to be ignorant about the Civil Rights Act because it's a "black issue." I'm not a lawyer, but my sense is that for a senator to be ignorant of the Civil Rights Act, is not simply to be ignorant of a "black issue," but to be ignorant of one of the most important pieces of legislation ever passed. This isn't like not knowing the days of Kwanzaa, this is like not knowing what caused the Civil War. It's just embarrassing--except Paul is too ignorant to be embarrassed.

This is George W. Bush-style prideful ignorance, and it's probably the worst thing about the TeaBaggers specifically and the Republican Party generally.

They don't know, they don't care and they don't like you because you do.

Muse notes among the many atrocities in the Texas SBOE hearings going on in Austin is that -- as Coates points out in the last sentence excerpted above -- the Civil War was fought not over slavery or even states' rights but because an angel fell from Heaven (and became Satan, I suppose is the lesson).

The stupidity is literally breath-taking.

Sestak retires Specter; Lincoln likely in run-off with Halter

The real news here is that Barack Obama and Joe Biden and others in the Democratic establishment supported both of these two losers. Voters are rejecting incumbents, as has been accurately reported in lots of places.

The Democrat, an asinine Blue Dog named Mark Critz, easily held on to the late Jack Murtha's seat -- the only Kerry-McCain district in the country -- despite a million Republican dollars and all manner of doom-filled predictions that the election to fill the unexpired term was a referendum on Obama.  If it is, we will certainly be happy in November.

The progressive, state Attorney General Jack Conway, defeated the Blue Dog -- Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo -- in the Kentucky Democratic Senate primary election to replace the Alzheimer's-riddled GOP retiree Jim Bunning. But all the media wants to talk about is RuPaul Ron Paul's son and the TeaBaggers again, despite the fact that Mongiardo's 2nd-place finish is more votes than Paul's first-place one.

So where's the "Mitch McConnell's boy and GOP mainstream gets thumped" headline?

Update: Blanche Lincoln may not even be the top vote-getter in AR.