Travis County Commissioners Court
January 24, 2006
Item A2
A 2 is to discuss and approve the order for election day polling locations, for the March 7, 2006 joint primary election.
>> the list before you shows the locations, this one, shows the locations for each of the -- each of the four Commissioner precincts in Travis County for the March election. And we presume that if there is a runoff election, that this would then also qualify to that as well. Okay? My staff, I thank my staff for making sure that I have all of the detail correct for the court.
>> dana, I have got two that I want to run through for the record we can just state what's going on. I got an e-mail that I had forwarded on to you from mr. Mcdonald who is out in the old 264, which is now new 211. Which is using walnut creek elementary. They were bringing up some issues related to co-locating with the school and just if you can kind of run through that, they actually were happier next door at the church than where they wound up being. Can you just run us through the concerns that mr. Mcdonald raised in his e-mail.
>> I sure can. The -- the holy word lutheran church is the one that they were using out there. Wonderful place. Nice people. And it was a very quiet polling location, compared to the boisterous school atmosphere. Nevertheless, when we went through once again the required federal a.d.a. Checklist, holy lutheran church, holy word lutheran church, had numerous problems. The -- once again the slope of their driveway is out of compliance, the number of parking places that they had that were, you know, properly placed and that were wide enough was insufficient and one of the main problems that that particular church had is that they had an inch and a half threshold, which is really high, that's one of the highest that we have seen. And that there didn't seem to be a -- a financially feasible way to correct that. So for all of those reasons, holy lutheran church was no longer a.d.a. Compliant and rather than place the county and the voters in the position of being in a non-compliant place, we moved them to the closest place that was a.d.a. Compliant, that is the school.
>> could you walk through though the concerns related to the school that they are making -- making us aware of the fact that during school loading of buses, that they saw a tremendous dropoff, if not completely shut down of anybody being able to get in there to park and that it really showed in terms of turnout during that 45 minute period when the buses were loading.
>> right. The election judge in that area, who is also the republican precinct chair, let us know about these problems. The schools we have found are very willing to work with us to try to solve any problems. So we are grateful to the republican judge for telling us exactly what they noticed on the ground, on that day. I think that we can make some arrangements that will solve most of these problems. I certainly want to solve them because any time that you see any kind of drop in your voter turnout, that's a clue that you have got something wrong, I do think it was the buses that caused the problem. We are just going to work with them to see if we can put out -- typically the way we solve this, we put out cones, traffic cones, we put a sign in them that says voter parking so that it's clear that it's --
>> voter parking only. So that it's clear that it's not meant to be taken up. Typically the voters will retake it those. -- rotate those. We are usually able to get enough of those to satisfy the high traffic areas. Schools have their challenges. There are lots of people who are trying to use those facilities. If our election days were not on Tuesdays, then it would be a lot easier on everybody. But once again, our compunction under federal law is to make sure that we offer a polling place that is accessible to all of our citizens. That includes solving parking problems though at any new location that we find as well as identifying some of the old ones who no longer comply.
>> can you make sure that a written response goes back to mr. Mcdonald as opposed to it being funneled and channeled through me, that would be very helpful. Just cc me.
>> we will absolutely send it to you. I know that it's under draft right now. We will be happy to explain --
>> a million people are watching us out there in cable land.
>> Commissioner, one of the things that we did hear, not just in this, but in several of the polling places that were forced to change because of a.d.a. Issues, is that the election judges and other people who worked there could see folks who were in walkers or using wheelchairs seem to be able to navigate them, you know, adequately. And what the a.d.a. Checklist tells you is that you can't really trust your eyes, that you have to follow what the law says about the amount of the slope and the number of inches and it may be bureaucratic, but just seeing somebody manage something doesn't mean that it is legally handicapped accessible. And we are required to follow the law. So that's one of the other things that we will be explaining to this judge, too, is that while he may have seen someone who could navigate it, it doesn't mean that it meets the test.
>> it will be so much more perfect coming from you, but go ahead and cc me. The second one is a follow-up of a situation we had last November related to a multiple combining and everybody wound up at anderson high school because one of our polling places was katrina use. The placement, signage at anderson high, can you walk us through, a repeat of what happened in November? I know even you were disappointed --
>> I was, once again normally the schools are so good to us. We didn't get quite the reception at anderson that we normally get. -- the church housing katrina, was that grace -- the press beattorney general -- thepresbyterian church thats housing katrina. It turned out and caught everybody a little by surprise. The statesman not publish in this the newspaper the list of those polling places did everyone a great disservice and I’m in conversations with them to make sure that that will not happen again. The election judge attempted to expand the voting area when she realized that the boost she had initially set up during the day were not -- the booths she had initially set up during the day were not going to be enough to -- accommodate late arrivals for voting. We think -- we don't think that will happen in the future. We think when we have a rush of people that will happen, I’m going to give my staff member a chance to make a comment here, too. The -- the statistics that we ran this time, though, about -- about our propensity for Travis County voters to -- to vote at the end of the day, is -- decision that we are going to have to grapple with. Because we think because we are so much of a commuter county now, that there are many folks who don't vote on their way out to work in the morning and they work all day. Literally it's their last hour of the day. We found when we did our statistics last time, that more than 50% of our voters voted after the 3:30 in the afternoon on election day. More than had ever voted that late in the day before. And the -- the statistics only get worse the later if the day you go. Of course we post every couple of hours. The ones that showed up after 5:30 or even higher percentage. It was a big surprise to everybody and the only thing that we could tell our voters is, you know, please try to come earlier and if you must vote at, you know, at the last hour of the day, keep in mind that we really don't, Travis County does not have the money to be able to gear up for that kind of rush hour. We ask for everyone's patience and cooperation. Kim would like to in a comment about anderson high school because while we dashed out there and we opened up a second location because it was that much traffic, that there were some people who were there earlier who didn't see the benefit of our extra effort and we have certainly want them to know that we are wanting to take care of them and we recognize what we went on and we have an issue that we are all going to have to work to address together. Kim, would you like to make a comment?
>> yes. During the district 48 election we did use anderson again for the super combination precinct, but we recognize given all of the issues from November what the concerns were so we approached anderson and asked for a different space which they allowed us in their library, which was much bigger, much more accommodating. The additional space allowed us to set up even extra booths than we had set up before. Before they had opened the books as separate precincts and some people were confused as to what precinct they were in, so this time we actually rearranged the voter registration books to be in alphabetical order so you had to go where your last name was represented, it was much easier for people to process, in a much more quick manner. So we were already able in this district 40 election to put some of those solutions into place and anderson worked very well in the past election. We will again use that for the -- for the runoff. At this time that church has asked to be out of service as a polling place for a year, so we really don't have a lot in that area. We have even asked the republican party, county chair, for assistance because that is his resident precinct. If he cannot -- if he can help us identify places. He was not able to come up with anything. At this time we are just stuck with that. But anderson ah-ha allowed to us come in and use a different space to allow for the crowd, so far that has worked very well.
>> we thank our schools for cooperating with us. They juggle many obligations and serve students and parents and voters.
>> great. Thank you for those explanations.
>> so where we combine two locations, the voters at both had on their registration cards the single number of new location?
>> they are separate precinct, but for the old cards. When the new cards went out, the legitimates that the court voted on were able to be formally and finally combined so that the polling place instead of being two precincts is now relabeled one precinct with one precinct polling book that then has everybody's name alphabetically listed. If there are two or even three or four precincts that are -- at a particular combined location, now they don't have to figure out which precinct book they are in, look through two or more books, now there's one poll book. Makes it easier. Typically if we have a heavy turnout in areas in some of those precincts, we will split that book in half, it will be a through m, e through z, so folks can go through two different lines, that speeds up the processing, too. That's a standard practice of ours, more complicated when you have more than one poll book. Now that we are past this time frame, we are able to simplify that for people.
>> were we able to get to the voters the number of the combined, of the new combined election --
>> yes, sir. We worked with voter registration to ask them to add on to their standard mailing of their voter registration cards, so that when you got your card in the mail, if you were living in one of those areas that were newly aligned for a population of 5,000 in your precinct, then you were told your polling place is no longer at this place, your new polling place is this and it gave the name and address of the polling place and those started hitting the first week or so in January.
>> judge, I was one of those. 245 doesn't exist anymore. Crestview baptist, but we are right across the street at crestview methodist. Yes, my card when it came had a special thing on the outside warning me your thing has changed, you go inside there was an explanation as well.
>> we thank voter registration for allowing us the cost effective way of adding on to a mailing that was already going to go out.
>> dana, given that we are signing off on this today with the polling locations, in the event that we would need to go in and alter something for the council or the general election, we would be able to do that?
>> yes, there are a couple of provisions under which you can change a polling place. Not the least of which is an emergency provision that allows you to in a last minute change. We have had emergency conditions, a flood or a fire or something like that that caused to us change polling places. You have the authority to do that. That is why we so rely on our local newspapers, also I want to mention about our new approach, too, local newspaper to get the final last word out. They are so critical to us and we are in conversation with them that they will continue that public service in listing polling places. Just for this primary, I was going to mention one of the things that we have noticed, too, many of our neighborhood associations are now e-mail connected in their areas. And we have found that this is a new feature, we can take advantage of for communicating with our citizens, we can contact one of the people in the neighborhood association, they can send the word out to everybody else around, hey, we've had construction, we've been denied access, we have to make a change and they can help us get the word out, too. Those neighborhood associations are going to be a great help to us. Something where he hadn't thought of before.
>> we hadn't thought of before.
>> roughly how much time do we need in the event we needed to change something for may.
>> 670 days is ideal, but you -- 60 days is ideal, but you can change it after that.
>> 60 days meet with the department of justice requirements.
>> we are not on the ballot as a county in may. We are conducting the election but we do not have to approve the sites. Those would then go back to the entities to approve. So we are actually in the process of getting those together right now.
>> come up to the mic.
>> gale fisher, the director of the elections division of the county clerk.
>> this list that you are seeing is only for the primary election. We will come back for runoff and every election. The may is a special situation since we are going to be contracting elections for we estimate up to 50 elections for 50 entities. And so we are going to be working with them to -- to find which polling places are going to work best for them. So you will see the basic list here, but probably in the outlying areas is where you are going to see the change.
>> okay.
>> we asked as parts of our contract with them that they work together to come up with a consensus on what the polling place should be. But we also encourage them for the sake of consistency, if at all possible, to use the flays people are accustomed -- the place that people are accustomed to going to. Which is typically the county place. Sometimes that works well, sometimes there are exceptions. I would also like to thank the county attorney's office, this is the very first time Travis County in a may election has taken on all of our fellow cities and schools and jurisdictions and our -- in our area to conduct the elections for them, so that they will be in compliance with the new federal law that says that you have to be fully accessible. And they, you know, it's a big job for us, it the very first time that we have ever done it. We are inventing the wheel and we thank them for cooperating with us, we think that it's going to be better for citizens, we certainly appreciate the help of the county attorney's office.
>> move approval of the recommended election day polling locations for the March 7th, 2006 joint primary election.
>> second.
>> any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you all very much.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, January 25, 2006 9:19 AM