Travis County Commissioners Court
August 30, 2005
Item 33
Number 33, dana is to discuss and take appropriate action on the following: a. Report on proposed election precinct realignments pursuant to section 42.031(b)(3) of the election code; and b. Setting a public hearing on September 13, 2005 regarding proposed precinct realignments.
>> yes, thank you, judge. Dana debeauvoir, Travis County clerk. We are here today to present to the court the information that will be subject of the public hearing on September 13th. The -- the sheet that you have before you and -- I知 sorry that I知 being remiss, I知 also joined at the table by our colleagues from voter registration and two of my staff members, let me make quick introductions. Melinda abee and dee lopez with voter registration to my left. To my right gale fisher the head of the county clerk's office and kim dilling or expert in polling places especially a.d.a. Compliance in those polling places. Now, what -- I will let voter registration go over the numbers and the -- the -- the sent to which they have been able to make our plan better in light of the new law that we have available to us. A new law passed that says that our cap on the number of registered voters per precinct has now gone up to 5,000. To the extent that we were able to include those changes under our requirements to have a.d.a. Accessible polling places, we were able to make sufficient number of changes and I知 going to let them describe those to you. But the ones that you have before you are explained in terms of a.d.a., problems that we've had at a previous facility and we want to move to a facility where the a.d.a. Concerns are either already addressed or would take only minor changes to correct instead of some of the more major actions that we would take if we had to stay in the old polling place.
>> dana, before you head in that direction, I need to ask a couple of questions. We have all looked at this, we have looked at the basic impacts that we have leaving old polling places, going to new ones or combining them. And -- and I -- in polling places, have there been any impact as far as the voter turnout in those particular situations where you moving? Let me give you an example. [indiscernible] 128. He's been voting there for years. I understand the a.d.a. Compliance concern, but in tradition polling places such as david chapa, precinct 128, having to go over to 126 over at gibbins park, which used to be saint james episcopalian, I guess, that switch and change from tradition of where persons have voted in the past, what kind of impact, has there been any measure on what kind of impact that has? Is there such an impact that exists as far as --
>> Commissioner Davis, we agree with you, we have a personal affection for david chapel. The change that we need to make is because Travis County has been formally questioned about our ability to provide a.d.a. Polling places as well as the transportation and pathway to these buildings. They are problematic. A lot of our older churches have these issues. The newer buildings like recreation centers are on problem transportation, they have already fallen under the new guidelines for a.d.a. Accessibility, we know that we are safer going with that kind of a public building which is why we have to do this. Certainly in your area, rosewood zaragosa, but asking people to be from david chapel to precinct 128, one of the things that voter registration and county clerk elections are working together on is to accepted notice to all of the individuals affected by these changes, so that they know, they get a card in the mail that says your old polling place was this, because of a.d.a. Accommodation issues we've had to move you to this new polling place, it will tell them the new address of the polling place.
>> I was just wondering has there been any notable information available that when these changes have occurred, how is it actually impacted the voter turnout. That's what I am kind of learning toward, 128, 126, dividing line. People live in -- on the -- on the other side, the west side of airport, those living on the east side of airport, there may be challenges, I understand that we have to do a.d.a. Compliances, but my concern is what -- what would the impact be on voter turnout. Because I know that those are some pretty heavy voter turnout, 128 and 126 is, just wondering, throwing it on for debate. Not for debate, but for conversation.
>> can I interject for just a minute, we did a survey for some of these precincts, as you remember here in April, we looked at some of the precincts in terms of their turnout early versus on election day. We found that the majority of these precincts have almost a 60% turnout for early voting. So that to me significantly, I think will not reduce turnout at all. In fact 60% of these precinct folks go vote early. So I think a lot of these combinations do make sense in that record, because a smaller percentage of people are actually turning out for election day.
>> Commissioner, precinct 131, one of my precincts is affected. I feel it personally.
>> maplewood.
>> yes, sir.
>> stuff like that, yeah, I saw that.
>> fortunately, most of these locations are -- are pretty close to each other. We tried to keep it as simple as we could for the voter. Of course we do have to preserve Commissioner and congressional boundary lines, some of the precincts are land locked and didn't give us an opportunity. Some of the precincts we were able to just sorts of go across the street or down the block to provide these folks with a better polling place. In other words as close as we could get to their original.
>> okay. You mentioned notification. You mentioned notification, I just wants to make sure that notification is way in advance of people who are being impacted --
>> yes, sir the voter renewal certificates will be going out later this year. As we normally do, because the court asked to us do this in the past, we send out renewal certificates to everybody under just plain cover, they go out at four by six post cards, but whoever was a polling place change, we have sent those notices out in an northwest. The certificate and a notice included in that envelope is telling you, your polling place changed from david chapel, for instance, to givens rec center, we will give them the name and who to contact. Since I have been here in '91 we have done this religiously, so people do get informed. They do have that notice, and we have tried our best to get the information out to them.
>> the election judges and precinct chairs are also notified in time to make comments before the court in that public hearing. People who are very tied to their communities will also have an early opportunity. There are we have tried to -- tried to balance the communities, sort of consistency in those polling places with a benefit to our budget of not having to have polling places where we don't necessarily have to have them and not further disrupt our voters. My people in voter registration have been able to reduce 49 precincts, which costs us an average on election day of $1,900 apiece. We have a $93,000 savings that this plan offers us, that I really think will be of minimal impact to our voters.
>> there's also the one going the other way, every time we had to -- splitting them, the minimum amount of voting machines, the -- not the tabulator, but the controller thing, but election focus as where will. There's a positive in terms of us not having to create new precincts which was the whole no brainer thing. I知 precinct 245 I have been at crestview baptist for 23 years, we now get to walk across the street. I think we can handle that.
>> it's the same with my precinct, we walk across the street.
>> walk across the street.
>> if I may interject with a quick explanation what was we are doing, what we did in April. In April we came before you, asked you to allow us to split some precincts, create w precincts as a result. We were required to look at those prnts that had over 3,000 registered voters, today it's still law to do that. We are required to do that. Also required to have -- review these recommendations that we made, you approve them, I believe it was April maids April, those changes are not in effect until January 1. We cannot just change that order. We can only modify if in fact there are polling places within those changes that we pull, we can cull out of that and talk to you today. From those orders we stand, we can't change them unless there are polling place concerns. Also dana mentioned the house bill, capped to go up to 5,000, we can't go out and arbitrarily combine a lot of precincts. The only route that we could do that is if there were polling place concerns. They did an excellent job. What we have before you is in a long legal size document is those precincts we could combine when there were problems. The precincts on the left are the ones with the problem, the precincts on the right are the ones where we will be going to go vote. The solution is on the right-hand side. What we have before you is a combination of about 95 precincts, what happens is 49 of them, the ones on the left side, go to the ones on the right side, the resulting of the 95 is 46 precincts. There is a savings of 49 precinct locations. Again, these are effective January 1, 2006. Very short line to get this to the department of justice. Because of the voting rights after send off a preclearance. D.o.j. Takes approximately two months to get to a decision and give us a preclearance. We are a really fast time line. Got the precincts together, a map in front of you, kind of to illustrate what the color combinations are, who are going together. We will be quickly working very hard today to send out notices as dana mentioned. To all of the precinct judges. Precinct chairs, neighborhood associations, all of the same groups we notified in April, we want to get notice to them again. We would like to have a public hearing notice today, we would like to present it again to you final adoption on that day. We have the end of the month, but we have got to send everything to d.o.j. To be precleared so that I can have enough time to send certificates and notices to all of our voters in December. That's pretty much our fast, fast time.
>> the first election for these new precincts would be March primary, not November.
>> when we look at these to be combined, elimination or recommended for elimination or a merger with the receiving precincts.
>> how do we deal with the personnel affected by these changes? Like election judges, most of them have three or four people who in the past have conducted elections for us, right?
>> we do try to work with the community so anybody who wants to conduct elections with us, gets the opportunity to work. We may ask them to go to a new or adjacent precinct if they are the group that was affected at the old polling place. But we always have a challenge in recruiting enough people to work. I think we will have plenty of jobs not within the same building.
>> we will deal with that in the future.
>> jess, by the prime -- yes, sir, by the primary.
>> will there be written guidelines that we follow. I知 anticipating phone calls. I would like to be able to say here are the guidelines that are being followed to make these decisions.
>> okay.
>> guidelines in terms of decisions to hire workers or to -- this process?
>> if you eliminate 49 polling places, with an average of maybe 3 or four each, there's a whole lot of folk that will be impacted. So the question is how do we decide which one hundred or 150 end up not doing the election and -- in March and November of '06.
>> it's certainly an issue that we have to think about. There will be a few folks who will what we call roll off, decide not to do it, but anybody who wants to work, we want to find a place for them. In terms of a guide line, we want to take advantage of that experience that we have already place understand the community, all of that good training that's already taken place and put them to work someplace where they can still serve. There's still many precincts where we don't have appointed judges, we will have to analyze which precincts will have --
>> there are four or five fair, completely objective criteria that could be used. I知 anticipating phone calls from those who are excluded.
>> that may get moved.
>> I would like to say here are the written guidelines that were followed. Better yet here's the person to contact [laughter] -- -- that would be guideline number one. [laughter]
>> you are totally messing up established sign routes on -- putting signs, you have impacted in a good way -- it's a big deal in people knowing where to put up the sign.
>> I want to mention very quickly the reason these didn't come before you in April was because we were capped at 3,000. We are not capped at five. These were not options for us to look at in April. But since we are capped at 5 starting, September first, Thursday? Thursday, that's when the law takes effect. So this is very timely bringing it to you at a time when the law does allow 5,000 per precinct, but these were issue that's we have, we haven't been able to address them because our cap was at 3,000.
>> let me add to what he said. The legal term that we are looking for here is called suitability of the polling place, which is a broad definition of a.d.a.
>> will there be any -- any precincts that -- that could be -- there are 49 that are affected, I suppose. Is there potentially 70 that could, if it were possible to take it from 3,000 to 5,000 in every case, was that done or somewhere an arbitrary we really didn't do some of these? Because I think we will be asked that question. I understand if it went to 5,000, we don't have that many, somebody over here doesn't have that many, why weren't we all put together.
>> lines.
>> yes, it is lines. For the extent that the 1,000 cap also qualified as a suitability definition, then we went to 5,000. If it was purely 5,000, then we are not allowed by law to take action until later. So everything had to qualify under suitability. In addition to suitability in some cases where we did have suitability issues but still can't find a polling place has had to do with boundary lines and redistricting, that land locked them, they don't have a building, we are struggling with what we are going to do with those.
>> there's an ongoing ability to alter even more after this time. In other words since we got this map with this this is not necessarily all of the things that happened over the next number of years. If somebody came in, really wanted that done, I know that we work really hard with folks, you know, out in the Lakeway area, whatever.
>> yes, sir.
>> it's going to take time.
>> we are going to reline, unless we had a suitability issue.
>> we will still be before you April of '07 with the issues that Commissioner Daugherty just talked about. We have citizen requests come forward, the population per precinct. That's the time that we are required to do with it. The issue before us today however is that the population went up, we do have suitability problems, we can address those right now. The time to do it now is that the new number, the precinct number will be on their new certificate.
>> we just color coded them to show you that those are the ones adjoining each other, where you see pinks together, those are the ones that are adjoining yellows, greens, blues, so forth. It kind of shows you that they sort of, adjoining by their new precinct. Giving you a visual of where these precincts are.
>> so the yellow is just a color, doesn't mean anything --
>> no legend to this, other than those are the ones that are affected. That's a fairly large precinct, but where we had a.d.a. Issues.
>> polling places are directly across the street from each other, if you are looking at 373, 374.
>> I was just looking at the colors, actually.
>> I know red and blue [laughter]
>> what do we plan to do with the a.d.a. Questionnaire?
>> I just put it there as backup to show you what we went through and looked at for every single polling place. When woe r we researched e -- when we referenced e 5, every polling place, that standard.
>> based on the responses from the survey questionnaire, we determined that there were no significant a.d.a. Issues? And so the recommendations come forth.
>> you mean for polling places that did not have a suitability issue?
>> right.
>> those remained the same, they are all fine. This is only -- the only places where we had suitability issues and if there was a sort of a double, both suitability and 5,000 cap that we can take advantage of it, we did both.
>> okay. The justice department typically contacts me during the preclearance process. Is there a one pager in bullet format the four, five, six, seven, eight reasons that landed on these recommendations.
>> we could pull something together for you fairly easily, sir. We have a combination of things, we can certainly butt them altogether as a formal guideline, sort of what Travis County is following. Julie joe helped us by putting together an e-mail after a conference call, with the secretary of state's office, I think that begins to identify at least four of the big issues that we talked about.
>> I知 assuming that will be a month or so.
>> before the end of September.
>> yes, sir.
>> okay. Anything further? Move approval of the recommendations in 33.
>> second.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you all very much.
>> thank you to my election staff and to voter registration for all of their good work on this.
>> just very quickly, that does include setting a public hearing for the 14th.
>> okay.
>> thank you.
>> thank y'all, dana.
>> those who want --
>> we are going to forward everything to julie jo, the county attorney, submit them off to you.
>> okay, all right.
>> changes that you have gotten this morning, this summary of the changes.
>> okay, thank you,
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, August 31, 2005 12:10 PM