Harris County clerk blames GOP for refusing to allow joint primary

[Gothmog]

I live in a neighboring county but I know the current Harris County clerk and I am active in the Harris County Democratic Lawyers Association. Please understand that from 2010 to 2018, a tea party asshole named Stan Stannart was in charge of elections in Harris county. Stan was a teabagger and a major asshole who closed a number of voting locations in minority locations.

Link to tweet

We voted Stan out in 2018 but he left the county in a mess with fewer voting locations and not sufficient machines. Stan was pushing a voting system that he designed that had to be scrapped. Harris County adopted County wide voting on election day to try to help with the mess that Stan created (I actually testified before the Commissioners Court on this proposal).

The other problem is that Texas law allows the parties to force separate primaries. The Texas GOP has an asshole as its chair who forced separate primaries which means that the county did not have enough machines.

Link to tweet

After Harris County voters faced long wait times on Tuesday, in some cases several hours, Harris County Clerk Diane Trautman placed the blame on the Harris County Republican Party.

In a tweet, Trautman wrote that her office proposed “a joint primary election, which would have allowed voters to vote on any available machines. This was rejected by the parties, which means both parties have an equal allocation of machines for each polling location."
In a follow-up tweet, Trauman linked to a press release from the Harris County Republican Party and wrote, “Correction - there wasn’t an agreement between parties. One party agreed while the other did not.”

Link to tweet

Fort Bend County had a joint primary in part because the election administrator told the parties that there were not sufficient machines to do separate primaries.

Harris County had a meltdown but the issue goes back to the prior GOP/tea party election administrator (stan Stannart) and the GOP county party

[irisblue]

1. Please consider posting this in Primaries. The voter suppression needs wide exposure

[Gothmog]

2. Done

[Gothmog]

3. Had to Wait in a Long Line to Vote? Thank a Republican

This is from El Jeffe (a Biden supporter who I met at a Biden fundraiser) https://juanitajean.com/had-to-wait-in-a-long-line-to-vote-thank-a-republican/

In Harris County yesterday, lines of voters were long and the wait was up to 5 hours. Why? There are two primary reasons:

Since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act Texas has closed 542 polling places, most in historically black and Latino areas. If you include 2012 closings, that number rises to 750.

In Harris County at least, the Republican party refused to allow a joint primary with Dems. What that meant was that the voting machines were divided in 2, half for Repubs, half for Dems. Since Trump essentially had no opponent, turnout in the GOP primary was very low so HALF of voting machines remained essentially unused.

Both of these moves by Republicans made it harder for Texans to vote, which has been their goal for over 20 years as demographics started moving against them. I got to experience their strategy yesterday since my polling place was one of those closed. It took me three attempts at two different polling places to finally cast my vote, and I had to drive 15 minutes from one polling place to another to accomplish that. After discovering my polling place was closed, I drove to my old polling place only to find the line out the door and down the block. I went to have some lunch and returned about an hour later to find the line almost as long. A nice young poll worker for Ben Rose had information on other polling places, so I drove all the way out to Buffalo Speedway to vote at a church there. The line there was about half an hour (and it was air-conditioned) so I waited it out. When I got into the polling place, HALF of the voting machines were being unused while Republican poll workers twiddled their thumbs. On the other side, Dems were forced to wait in multiple lines to access the other half. Total time not including lunch was about two hours of waiting and a lot of driving just to vote in a goddam primary.

It’s shameful that the Republican party has been allowed to continuously and increasingly restrict access to the Constitutional right to vote. Their rationale, of course, is based on lies since their actual goal is voter suppression not “election integrity” which is one of their standard lies. Texas Republicans are perfectly happy to make the lives of their fellow Texans miserable simply for political gain. This reason alone should be enough to vote the bastards out.

[Gothmog]

4. The GOP pulled this stunt in Tarrant County also

Link to tweet

[Gothmog]

5. Here is an apology from Diane

Link to tweet

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