Early voting in Texas started on Tuesday. The genius of early voting is that it’s convenient. You can usually vote at any polling place in your county, instead of having to make sure you’re going to the right one. Which makes it simple to vote during your lunch hour or at the grocery store on the way home from work, etc. Great idea, right? I think so. I’ve always enjoyed it.
Unfortunately, it appears that the system is rigged so that convenient polling places are only available to some people, which changes the demographics of who actually votes. Surprise surprise, one of the targets of such abuse is a historically black university outside of Houston called Prairie View A&M. Their county is only providing two voting machines, and they are located away from the university, so voting is convenient for townies, but not the students. The students, who have been victimized by this sort of disenfranchisement tactic before, decided to stage a protest.
1,000 student voters with 1,000 friends and allies walked the 7 and a half miles from the school to the voting booth and stood in line. And they will vote two at a time this way until they all vote or until the county gives them more machines.
My country is becoming a better place overnight it seems to me sometimes. Excuse me while I go get this dust out of my eyes.
78 Responses to “Then democracy asserted itself, just like that”
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Rock the hell on Prairie View A&M.
Rock on indeed.
It’s beyond shameful that these students should have to do this, and wonderful beyond words that they did.
This is fantastic!
That is so fucking awesome. I am so proud looking at those pictures.
Wow. Truly a sight for sore eyes.
That’s…that’s….fucking awesome! Thanks for posting it.
Some shameful shit right there. Students having to march to vote in 2008.
I seriously think this electioncould mark a turning point in America, it may just be my youth (I’m 25) but this is the most hopeful I’ve felt for my country since the supreme court gave Bush the presidency, hell maybe in my entire life. I just feel like were on the verge of something great.
Socraticsilence, I know exactly what you mean. I haven’t felt that way before either, and it scares me a bit. Half of me is ready to jump on the next plane to Australia or New Zealand the second we invade Iran (at which point I’ll stop referring to the United States as ‘we’), and half of me is cautiously preparing to be somewhat proud of my country, which is an utterly unfamiliar feeling.
Maybe this is what it was like when the Boomers got inspired by politics in their age.
It took me about 3 minutes to vote. Assuming the same rate for the students, (1000/2)x3=1500 minutes, which is 25 hours, for voting a thousand students with two machines. Townies to the end of the line.
I’ve had a soft spot for Prairie View A&M after watching their basketball team get whomped by Kansas at regionals one year while their pep band handed Kansas’ pep band their asses on a platter. This is so awesome. There should be MORE of this. Everywhere. Everyday.
Wow, I’m in tears. Good for them!
I think I’ve got a little dust in my eyes, too.
Damn.
(Fist in air) Good on them!!
Thanks for posting this, Amanda.
Bush’s legacy maybe that he was such an ass that he inspired people to do stuff like this. History will be a bitch George!
Considering that number of delegates per district are determined by turnout, people doing stuff like this is no small thing. It not only determines who your delegates vote for, but how many you have.
I’m at a loss for words. This is the most hopeful thing I’ve seen in a long time. Prairie View A&M - Thanks.
This just made my day, so thanks for posting. And thanks, Prairie View A&M, for being so awesome, and for calling our attention to this shameful disgrace.
Damn. Those kids rock.
I’ve been forwarding the BurntOrange.com report around to everyone I know. I get goosebumps every time I see a report on this. These college kids are inspirational!
What baffles me is that the Democrats don’t seize on such matters and make them a frontline issue. By way of example, Canada has independent elections bodies which govern provincial and federal elections. They are beholden to nobody, and have the well-executed mandate of making sure that anybody who wants to vote can vote: advertising campaigns, easy-to-find and easy-to-access locations before election time, websites where you can check if you are registered, and impartial conduct and monitoring of elections. At one time they even sent people door-to-door to see if people were registered.
Given that almost all voter suppression efforts help the GOP and are anti-Donkey, why on earth aren’t the Dems making this a signature issue? (Probably because the DNC dreams of a day down the road where they will also screw over the electorate some day.) Think about the potential vote gain for the Democrats if every disenfranchised or blocked or caged voter were on the rolls. They could make “voter fraud” synonymous with the GOP in the way that “tax and spend” has been hung on the Dems.
How long before some Freeper wanna be declares that this is actually some way of blocking the votes of the white townies? The arguement being something like the marchers are going to clog up the machines, preventing the (rightful) white voters from using them. And just so Osama Husein can become president.
Maybe that’s too low even for them.
UNICORN ALERT!! UNICORN ALERT!!
Damn, that is inspiring! Certainly shameful that the students are forced to do this, but it’s awesome that they are doing it. The next time someone tells me that youth aren’t politically engaged or willing to do the hard work of actual organization, I’m going to show them this.
The other really messed up thing about the Texas primary/caucus system is how little information is available about the caucusing side of things.
Roughly it works like this:
The caucus happens on the evening of March 4, right after the primary voting ends. To caucus you have to show up at your official polling place (during early voting you can vote at any polling place, but you have to caucus at the one in the precinct where you’re registered). You can only caucus if you have voted in the primary, whether day-of or early. These caucuses then choose about a third (67) of the state’s total pledged delegates.
There’s virtually no information publicly available about the caucuses here in Texas (except via some blogs) even though they amount to a second, secret vote that’s worth more delegates than many entire states.
Only in Texas. Woo-fucking-hoo.
Fuck it, that made me snivel. Damned kids, being all idealistic and stuff, making the old folks hopeful.
By way of example, Canada has independent elections bodies which govern provincial and federal elections.
I’ve heard this before and often wondered how, exactly, it’s possible to get an independent election body that is beholden to no one. Who appoints the commission members? Where does their money come from?
There are all sorts of ways to subtly undercut the independence of a group like that. How do the Canadians guard against it? Or do they even bother?
I guess I have to stop complaining about “these kids today” now, don’t I?
spencer, I guess that the key is making it a part of the background fabric that nobody messes with politically. Their existence and staffing are banal parts of the civil services, like health or police or fire departments or forestry. Like any other democratic institution it survives so well because there is general desire to have it that way and general consensus to leave it that way. Further, attempts to mess with fair elections usually receive huge coverage here; it’s not like the USA where mentioning even the most egregious fraud is considered to be in bad taste for the CMSM. For example, a small effort by sovereigntiste polling officials to be excessively vigilant about federalist votes (not counting them if the tick mark was too long, and that sort of nonsense) got coast-to-coast coverage some years back.
It’s not perfect. People do, on occasion, complain about appointees of the other party but those are mostly small potatoes cases. I personally don’t trust the current Conservative government because they are picking up some bad American habits (tagging neutral officials who do their jobs as “partisan Liberal Appointees! and such like), but for the most part things stay clean because people want it that way. And here the courts are genuinely neutral; a joint effort by all the major parties to hamper smaller parties was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada at the suit of — wait for it — the Communist Party!
No kidding, mnemosyne- those kids can be on my lawn any time they like!
‘Course this time of year, they’d be hard-pressed to find it under 2-3 ft of snow and ice…
Again, good on these kids and big for shame on the county.
Wait a minute! I just followed the links, and noticed that most of the kids at that school aren’t white! I’m sure that had nothing to do with it, though.
(But I will bet that Texas A&M doesn’t have that problem.)
Ignore the facts, Seeker. Don’t draw conclusions! Your imagination is just too active.
[Faint voice]:
Have … heard …. ginmar ….
Struggling …. desperately … against … empiricism ……
dark … forces … of … rationality …………….. weakening
Nope. Didn’t take. I can still see long lines of freshly scrubbed white Aggies in front of sufficient polling booths.
I gave it a good shot, though.
This fills me with both anger and hope. Anger that things have not changed enough that this kind of blatant discrimination is still occurring? And at the same time, I’m so filled with excitement for what is possible. Because this demonstration shows that we CAN (and WILL) not just sit back. More power to them (and all of us to follow their lead)!
In all honesty, seeker, I half-expected while first reading the story for it to conclude with some/all of these kids being arrested and charged with unlawful protesting, demonstrating or gathering. Thank goodness that wasn’t the case!
But it says something about the pessimistic views I’ve developed over the past 20+ years of voting, huh?
Way to go, Men and Women, way to go!
I find it hard to use the word “kid” here …
YOu mean the ‘Free Speech Zones’ didn’t fool you? Dammit.
Seeker, reality has a well-known bias. It’s so disappointing to see you surrender to the dark side.
Good for them. Also, how frightening that they had to do that in the 21st century.
Yeah, well, Dad told me all about it.Wow, a group of people who remember what America is supposed to be about. It warms my cynical heart.
Yeah, that was what it was like when Baby Boomers got political back in the day.
It’s good to see it again.
Dirty damn democracy, thought we had you stuffed down in fear and loathing. Get back in your box! Now! Now!
~GWB
That fills me with so much joy first thing this morning I too feel dust in my eyes. Damn, that makes me proud.
As Seeker said, they’re part of the civil service. IIRC, when Canadians vote a new government in, there’s a lot less change in staffing in general than there is in the States.
The committees that draw up riding (voting district) boundaries are also non-partisan.
Elections Canada website
Elections Canada is independent but government funded. The main “guard” against subversion is really the civil service mentality, which is very strong in the Canadian civil service, and civil servants being partisan on anything is a big deal. There’s also a paper trail of votes and returning officers for each polling station are supposed to be representing each party. It works fairly well at the federal level. Of course, this is only for real elections. Party nominations are done however the parties decide, much like in the US, and some parties have conventions, some have votes. It’s not really true to say that the elections are entirely run by elections Canada, though, they’re governed by the eletions act, which the government could change at will since it is not part of the constitution.
At the provincial level, each province has a miniature version of elections Canada which is a lot easier to mess with. For example, in the upcoming Alberta provincial elections, my vote will be worth much less than someone in rural Alberta for the simple reason that I live in a city and the tories do better outside of the cities. There are more people in the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor than in the rest of the province combined, but the political map does not reflect that because Edmonton elects liberals and Calgary’s more inner-city ridings have started to as well.
Long story short - don’t believe people when they talk about Canada as some sort of sensible utopia as compared to the US. Things are a fair bit less fucked up here, but democratic this country is not.
“They are beholden to nobody, and have the well-executed mandate of making sure that anybody who wants to vote can vote…. At one time they even sent people door-to-door to see if people were registered.”
During the last Provincial elections in my area, two well dressed, well identified persons came to my door to ensure that I knew when the election was being held, that I was registered correctly on the rolls and that I knew my polling place. They also double checked the rolls to verify that the two other persons they have listed as living in my apartment aren’t there anymore. That was just last year, so they still do it at a provincial level. I’m not sure if it’s still done at a federal level, or how often it’s mandated if it is done.
That being said, it’s great to see kids taing the initiative to keep themselves involved in the voting process. Nothing bothers me more than people who refuse to vote and then complain about the results. These kids are heroic for realizing the injustice that their [sarcasm] elders and betters [/sarcasm] thought would go over their heads and insure a dirty, unseen, uncomplicated victory for their side on the backs of those who they are beholden to.
I hate to chime in with a “It’s not just the South” remark (although it’s debatable whether Texas really is “the South”–they’re kind of a law unto themselves), but I live in Ohio, and we see similar shit going on here. District with a lot of black people in it = fewer machines. I hope the end result of Texas A&M bringing this to national attention does NOT end with the rest of the country going, “Oh well, that’s the South” and ignoring the problems in their own communities, but rather with some serious soul-searching on the part of the rest of the United States and some honesty: “OK, do we have this going on here? Well then, let’s do something about it.” Otherwise these kids will have protested for just about nothing.
Another aspect of fair elections in Canada are the scrutineers. Volunteers from every party can show up at any polling booth armed with a list of voters for that polling area and mark them off as they vote.
This information is fed back to the parties (so they can call people who haven’t voted and encourage them to come out) but most importantly, there are multiple audit trails - there are lists of who has voted and who hasn’t voted, so if the number of votes from a polling station has some discrepancies compared to the scrutineers’ numbers, there can be recounts.
Labyrus, I hear you on the democracy thing, although I don’t live in Alberta. However, at least the riding issue and appointed election officials issue are getting press across Canada. People are noticing.
In BC, we have a similar rural riding problem - probably not as exacerbated, but there. Elections BC has been proposing redrawing the ridings here, but the government doesn’t like annoying the rural voters.
We’re also going to have another referendum on proportional representation. Hopefully it will pass this time; 58% of BC voters were for it, but of course, we needed a 60% super-majority to pass.
This post, along with the pictures, is one hell of a lot of awesome.
I disagree somewhat on the rural riding issue. I’m from Saskatchewan, and pretty much all of northern Sk is one federal riding. It’s a huge (but sparsely populated) area with different people who all have different interests, and I don’t know how one person could represent them all.
Remember the term Western Alienation? There has to be a balance between giving rural areas a voice at the expense of the cities and having the interests of the cities completely overrule and ignore everyone who doesn’t live in a city (or in southern Ontario in a federal election.)
deanna, we had a proportional representation referendum in Ontario, too. I was SO SAD when it didn’t pass. Related story: My friend and her grandfather went to vote together, and outside the polling place, he said, “There’s another question on the ballot. Just vote no.” She said, “Why?” and he went, “Don’t worry about it, just vote no.” To which she replied, “But I think it’s a good idea and I want to vote for it.” He kind of rolled his eyes at her.
As a proud graduate of Prairie View A&M University(class of 1995) and the sister of a current Prairie View student.. I would just like to say that these kids ROCK!!!! I am in tears..
And yes, this has been going on for decades..when I was there, when my aunt was there in the 80s and before that. The case of students voting domicile went all the way to the Supreme Court.
Good for them. That is just heartwarming and inspirational.
Elections Canada is independent but government funded. The main “guard” against subversion is really the civil service mentality, which is very strong in the Canadian civil service, and civil servants being partisan on anything is a big deal.
Information about the NZ Elections Commission is here.
Again, it comes down to the civil service mentality - governments come and governments go, but teh service is always here and has a responsibility to serve the country neutrally. I point out that both Canada and NZ have Parliaments rather than a seperate Executive, which perhaps gives less scope for political appointees at the top.
Another interesting point is electoral boundaries - we’ve had to develop an independent commission to do this, based on avoiding teh sort of gerrymandering that you hear bad stories about coming from the States. I don’t know what Canada does.
Are the Texan students only able to vote at those machines, or is it possible for them to monopolise more of them until all their votes are processed?
prairielily,
“Remember the term Western Alienation? There has to be a balance between giving rural areas a voice at the expense of the cities and having the interests of the cities completely overrule and ignore everyone who doesn’t live in a city (or in southern Ontario in a federal election.)”
You’re talking about western alienation to people who apparently live in Alberta…. and that confuses me a little. But you’re correct that the rural areas in Canada need a stronger voice as they support the rest of the country, the problem is that it’s very difficult to re-tool a democratic system by re-weighting the votes so that some people have a stronger voice than others.
And I’ll say that for every time I heard “western alienation” when I lived in Alberta and Manitoba, I heard “we’re a *have* province supporting all the other have nots, I don’t get a stronger voice even when my tax dollars go to suport PEI or Manitoba, they want to seperate? Well I’m sure we could use those tax dollars here!” from people living in Ontario (Southern *and Northern*). It’s a Canadian problem that I think we need to discuss more often and in greater numbers, on a federal level… and since they are so tied to the process, we should shut the professional politicians out until we reach a solution… don’t see that happening though.
And I apologize for continuing a derail into Canadian politics here. I promise I’ll stop now.
This is an on-going struggle that’s been going on since the 1950s at Prarie View A & M. Twice the county has, in times past, tried to ban students from voting at all, only to be slapped down by federal authorities.
So now they just make it extra difficult.
Something the Burnt Orange Report posts talks about without going into much detail is the history of this school, this county, and voting rights. The Supreme Court ruled in the favor of PV students who brought a voting rights suit against the county in 1979. You would think that would have been the end of it, but no- PV students have had to fight this battle over and over for the last 30 years.
Something else- the student body of the school makes up 20% of the county’s population.
histrogeek:
How long before some Freeper wanna be declares that this is actually some way of blocking the votes of the white townies? The arguement being something like the marchers are going to clog up the machines, preventing the (rightful) white voters from using them. And just so Osama Husein can become president.
Maybe that’s too low even for them.
Well maybe those (rightful) white voters will take this as a lesson for future elections. If they want to argue then they should right there with those students asking why they had to walk several miles just to vote.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of PV students who brought a voting rights lawsuit against Waller County in…1979. You would think that would have been the end of it, but PV students have had to fight this same battle several times over the past 30 years.
labyrus, Prairielily, kodiak:
The rural / urban dynamic is an uncomfortable one. I’m an urbanite who is tuned into rural issues, so I don’t jump automatically down on one side or another. On the one hand, rural issues are under-represented and understood. On the other hand, rural votes have traditionally counted for more in Canada due to allocation of seats and I dislike the notion that a rapidly urbanizing Canada should be giving extra value to votes merely because they live in a rural area. Proximity to a cow doesn’t make you any better a citizen than proximity to a Starbuck’s.
It grates me, though, when that old S. Ontario canard is hauled out. S.Ontario is where most of the voters are, so it’s hardly surprising that most of the seats are from there. Furthermore, the new allocation of ridings based on the census will bring Alberta and BC to a seat number level commensurate with their population but the Harper government has decided that Ontario’s extra seats will lag behind its population growth.
Furthermore, there hasn’t been a government since Trudeau and the NEP that favoured S.Ont. interests. Every government since Mulroney has rushed to suck money out of Ontario and Toronto, especially the latter. Alberta got screwed in the 1970s, but it’s still a province with power over its own resources, and rich as Croesus. Toronto on the other hand gets robbed by both the Ontario and federal governments, has no constitutional means to defend itself and watches with depressing regularity as its MPs vote federal rather than local interests. Hell, the City has about a minimumhalf-billion dollar budgetary shortfall every year, which is, roughly, about 1/22 of what the feds and Ontario take out of Toronto more than what they put in. Albertans love to bitch about Toronto, but Alberta has no deficit and no debt; Toronto’s situation gets worse every year because both Ottawa and Queen’s Park have figured out that a “screw Toronto!” policy has no political downside.
Part of the problem is that we are asking fundamentally irreconcilable things of our electoral system. Leave aside, for the moment, that we are using a system designed for a tiny, ethnically homogenous island possessed of a landed aristocracy to govern an ethnically diverse urban society splintered into the second largest land mass on the planet. Our bigger problem is that we are trying on the one hand to have representation by population on the one hand while limiting it on the other by giving disproportionate weight to some votes or provinces. There is no democratic reason whatsoever why a voter in PEI should have a vote worth about three and a half times more than his Ontario or Alberta counterpart.
Worse, the system is designed for a rural country. Most Canadians live in cities, yet the cities have no independent constitutional existence. Ontario, for example, could fire the entire Toronto city council tomorrow and replace it with two cheese rolls, both called “Tim”, and be perfectly constitutionally bulletproof.
Sorry for the threadjack, but it does piss me right off. Toronto should be a separate province and twin up with Alberta. Everybody wants both of our wallets.
One thing that I would like to make clear: me and pretty much every Torontonian I’ve ever met thinks that Confederation shouldn’t jerk anybody around, that it should be as fair as possible for everybody and that old setups designed to favour Central Canada should be dumped. Unfortunately we are also keenly aware the most of the country does not feel the same way about us.
So, am I to believe that all is not sweetness and light in Canuckistan?…
But (to put the thread back where it belongs) at least PEI isn’t telling us to have only two fucking voting machines.
Only when we let the Albertans cook — beef to die for, and lots of it — and the Quebecers arrange the drinking and parties.There is an early voting location about a block from the Prairie View A&M campus, but it opened after the first day of early voting when the march took place. There is also a polling location on the Prairie View A&M campus on election day.
Bill K:
Neither of which would have opened without the march, correct?
A block? Or a mile? At any rate, if 1/5 of the population of the whole county resides on that campus, it makes sense to have a polling place on campus.
I love them. This brought a tear to my eye.
*refrains from commenting about Alberta*
As an old fart - i wonder if this will even make the nightly news….or even the local news.
Just a bit more info about the Canadian electoral process. I’ve been a Poll Clerk and a Poll Captain in both federal and provincial elections, and I say that there is NOTHING more important in a democracy than 1) that elections be run on a non-partisan basis, 2) that the voting process be open to observation by volunteer scrutineers, and 3) that the voting process produce a paper trail.
Now 1) and 3) have been covered at different times, but I think that 2) is equally important, and neglected.
As a Poll Clerk, I had to inspect identification documents, ask identification questions, determine whether people not on the list had a right to vote, to explain ballots (without political prejudice), and cross names off a voting list, all according to a clear set of rules.
And behind the tables, standing behind me, were volunteer scrutineers bearing labels with names and party affliations. The scrutineers could stand behind me and challenge me at any time in the process. This may sound intimidating, but it wasn’t, because for every Conservative scrutineer, there a Liberal scrutineer or a New Democrat scrutineer, or a Communist or other scrutineer. (Basically, if your party is running in the election, you can place scrutineers at polling booths.)
These people balanced each other out. If a C thought an immigrant with a strong foreign accent and poor English shouldn’t vote and expressed so, immediately a L or ND scrutineer would challenge the challenge (BTW, the scrutineers were not allowed to go in front of the table or to address voters directly. Do either of those things and the Poll Captain could throw them out.)
Now Canada is not a perfect representative democracy, but judging from our status on the livable-nation index, our health, our lack of deficit, etc., we are doing more than reasonably well.
As for how we keep things non-partison in the elections process? All I can say is that the Canadian public keeps the political parties in line. Canadians have been found to be far more cynical than Americans in terms of our politics. Relatively few of us believe that one party is the answer to all of our problems. Rather, we view politicians as a necessary evil body politic, and we take care (generally) to toss them out regularly and even (after Brian Mulroney) completely destroy national parties (i.e. the Progressive Conservatives).
As an outsider, it’s hard for me to say what came first: the lack of participative which encouraged corrupt political parties to usurp the elections process, or a corrupted elections process which encouraged apathy.
Whatever the answer, good luck to you folks down south!
That damn grit is up here in Canuckland, too.
seeker6079 makes some good points about the fundamental conflicts in Canada’s parliamentary system, both at the federal and provincial levels. I’m not sure the republican model would work, either, though.
Rock on, Prarie View A&M!
seeker: Leave aside, for the moment, that we are using a system designed for a tiny, ethnically homogenous island possessed of a landed aristocracy to govern an ethnically diverse urban society splintered into the second largest land mass on the planet.
Yeah, that’s a problem. Maybe you should have done what the tiny, not-so-homogenous island did, and reformed the system in the 19th century? *checks calendar* Or, since the 19th century is over everywhere but the US, maybe the 21st century is the time to have a reformation of the electoral system so that everybody entitled can vote and everybody’s vote is counted…
Sorry, I’m going to hijack this very interesting thread regarding Canadian elections for a minute to address Bill K’s post:
Yes, Bill, but in the ‘Houston Chronicle’ story, it clearly states that that was NOT the case until the Feds stepped in! Originally, it was going to be ONE POLLING PLACE- for all of those thousands of voters.
From the Houston Chronicle:
And there is a long documented history of problems here, disenfranchising thousands of voters:
And to answer TJ- NO. There was no mention on any of my local channels (online or broadcast), nor did it get a mention on NBC Nightly News. Small wonder, eh?
Jesurgislac, I’m going to answer your question about reform, then cease hijacking this thread.
Have you ever seen the final scene of the original “The Italian Job”, with the bus balanced on the edge of the cliff and every option sucks, so they were sticking with the safest thing of not moving? Canadian constitutional reform is like that. If you wish you can go to wiki and look up the Victoria Charter, the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord.
And no Canadian government of any political stripe will ever let Toronto be a province, should the subject come up. It’s like a big family where grandpa and nine of the ten uncles can legally and will always take whatever they want from the bank account of the fabulously successful nephew.
Say it with me now:
Young people are not apathetic. Young people are not sitting home watching YouTube. Young people are as active as they’ve ever been.
I think this specific situation is being sensationalized. The early voting place that Waller County chose does not seem particularly out of line with how early voting works in Texas. Remember, this is early voting only. Election day polling places are much more numerous and convenient.
Amanda, your post seems misleading in stating that “You can usually vote at any polling place in your county.” In Harris County (Houston), early voting takes place in a limited number of centralized locations that aren’t necessarily voting locations on the actual election day. I would guess that it’s the same all over Texas.
Given that the population of Waller County is only about 35,000 and money for elections is probably small, it does not seem out of line to have only one early voting location at the courthouse.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t disagree that students are frequently inconvenienced and even disenfranchised. And I don’t doubt that students at Prairie View probably have been wronged by the county any number of times over the years. I just think there are perfectly legitimate reasons why early voting was at the courthouse in this case.
Yup: “Because we’ve always gotten away with this before.”Given that the population of Waller County is only about 35,000 and money for elections is probably small, it does not seem out of line to have only one early voting location at the courthouse.
Even if the students of Prairie View A&M hadn’t been historically disenfranchised, the county officials had to know that this election is seeing record high turn out all over the county. In my district, so many students at San Diego State University turned out to vote that not only did they run out of regular ballots, they also ran out of *provisional* ballots - those kids were voting on scraps of yellow legal paper.
So this year of all years, yes, it does seem out of line to have only one early voting location. And the history of that school in that county shows it was no accident.
I voted yesterday at the Barbara Bush library in NW Harris Co.The NW multi-service center near the north loop and the Jersey Village City Hall are closer, but I had to be out in that part of town anyway and I liked the irony.
They were going to have just two machines for all of Waller County? There are I think at least twelve machines in most polling places in Harris, and there are many more polling places. That’s what takes when you’ve got almost two million registered voters.