Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, June 21, 2011 (Agenda)
Item 1
Item number 1 a public hearing to receive comments related to the adoption of a vote center program for use in the November 8, 2011, constitutional amendment election in Travis County.
I move the public hearing be open.
>> second.
>> all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
we have circulated a sign-in sheet for this public hearing.
you do not need to complete the citizen communication form for this public hearing, just to sign it in, and do you have that list.
>> of the people who signed in for the public hearing?
>> right.
>> it's right outside.
we'll bring it in in just a minute.
there are people signing in.
>> you have introductory remarks?
>> brief.
dana debouvier, Travis County clerk.
good morning, judge annual judgd Commissioners.
we're here for the idea to implement countywide vote centers for Travis County for the November 2011 constitutional amendment election.
it is a trial program for Travis County and assuming that the voters of Travis County like this program, we could implement it for future elections.
however, let me advise you all right now that this program is not eligible for primary elections.
so whatever happens, we will not be using it for the republican and democratic primary elections.
it's not legally permitted to use it for that.
okay?
all right.
the -- the benefit, why would we go after a program that offers Travis County vote centers.
what it represents is the ability of a voter on election day to have the same carolina of convenience and the same kind of ability to -- to vote in more -- have a choice of voting in more than one location in the same way that they do for early voting.
the way the law is right now, you can only vote in your neighborhood polling place and it has to be exactly the right one that's drawn within the boundaries.
your precinct.
so there might be two or three polling places that are in your neighborhood, but there's only one legal polling place for you.
that has resulted in some confusion over time for our voters, and what we want to do is see if we can try to eliminate that source of confusion.
let's try to make it easier.
so what we would like to try for November 2011 is a soft program, we're not going to introduce any big changes here.
we are going to keep virtually all of our polling places in Travis County, the existing neighborhood polling places, but we're going to turn them into vote centers.
so that all we have to do is tell our voters go vote in your neighborhood.
and wherever they show up at a polling place in their neighborhood, even if previously they had been in the wrong polling place, this time around it will not matter.
if they happen to be in the wrong polling place, it won't matter.
they can still vote and their vote will count.
now, this becomes critically important when we get in the future and if we decide we like this program in dealing with some of the consequences of redistricting, but right now just the plain old confusion of the boundary lines of some of our precincts, we lose voters every election who show up late in the day, folks have waited until the last minute to vote, it's a very human nature kind of thing to do.
they show up at the last minute at a polling place in their neighborhood that they think is their correct polling place, it turns out they are wrong.
their correct polling place is perhaps on the other edge of their precinct.
they may be 15 or 20 minutes away and because of traffic and because of the hour of the day, we cannot get to their correct polling place and they lose their chance to vote.
we see it every time.
we're talking about tears in the polling place.
so let's stop that problem.
I mean we've got the voter right there.
they have gotten up, they have traveled in, thereat to vote the ready to vote and the last thing we want to do is turn them away.
assuming they are qualified, we want them to be able to vote.
the idea of this program comes from a pilot program that has already had success around the state that is being offered through the Texas secretary of state's office.
there have been trial programs started in 2005 and in the packet that you have before you you have a history of how this program has tracked through the secretary of state's office.
there have been a number of opportunities for counties in Texas to apply for this program.
Travis County was not one of the first to undertake this because we wanted to wait until we were ready with the proper infrastructure before we attempted this.
what's important for election day is that we have proper security in place.
it's very important that when we show up on election day, just like in early voting when people sign up to vote, that we have a real-time connection with the voter rental registratn database so it's not possible for a person to vote at their neighborhood polling place and then later in the day travel to another location and try to vote a second time.
we want to make sure that that does not happen, that that cannot happen just like it's not possible now to double vote during the early voting time or to spill over into election day.
we now have over the last four years purchased enough laptop voter registration, not voting, voter registration database laptops that connect us realtime to the voter registration database so that when we sign in a voter, when they come in and sign in that they are a qualified voter to vote, that at that moment in time they are connected to the database and from that moment on the database shows that they have voted in that election and when they show up to vote anyplace else, it will automatically show to anyone else that they have already voted.
so very important.
and an important financial consideration for the county because we did not try to do this all in one year.
we've been saving up over the last four years to make us ready and available to do this project.
here's another thing that was a good reason why we waited.
we listened and learned from the other counties who did this project first.
there were important lessons to learn about conducting this.
and one of the most important things has a big influence on the fact that Travis County is going to be doing our version of vote centers a little bit differently from the other counties who tried this program.
I mentioned to you that we are not going to be getting rid of a lot of our neighborhood polling places and contracting down to a big box vote center.
and I think a lot of people when you say let's have vote centers, they think of a big target or a wal-mart or a big box large vote center and there would be a few of them around town.
that is not at all what Travis County is proposing.
what we are proposing is a neighborhood concept so that people who are accustomed to walking to their polling place or because they like the camaraderie of voting in their neighborhood on election day will still be able to take advantage of that.
but for commuters who perhaps can't make it, make the drive all the way home on election day before the polls close, they will have the advantage of being able to stop off at any election day polling place and exercise their right to vote.
what we're going to tell our voters is vote in your neighborhood polling place on election day unless you can't.
and if you can't, then pick whatever location is most convenient for you.
in addition to that, we are also going to be keeping some of our early voting locations open, and this is a new proposal for us too.
we have had lots of people say to us, well, gosh, that early voting location has been open for two weeks, how come I can't vote there.
under the vote center's proposal, you will be able to exercise the use of early voting locations on election day.
part of the proposal in front of you includes a list of all of the polling places that we want to use including some extra locations that are currently used for early voting.
the plan will include the distributed list of polling places, but for today what the public hearing is to consider is only whether or not the Commissioners court wants to approve the county clerk proceeding with the application with the secretary of state'ss office to grant Travis County permission to conduct a vote centers election for the November 2011 election.
as we ask for the court's permission to proceed with application to the secretary of state's office, we also want to be clear that there are several ways to ask for this application, as you can see by your history of the voter center's program throughout the state.
but we would like to proceed under the newest.
the bill that opens up the program even further and allows Travis County more opportunity to qualify for the program is under hb 2194, the house bill that just passed this legislature, the regular session of the legislature, and it allows three counties with a population of 100,000 or more to apply.
Travis County is in a very, very good position to, a very good position to claim one of those positions to apply for vote centers.
so we would be pursuing the newest application process.
all right.
when we talked about this proposal before on may 3rd before Commissioners court, we talked about the process about how we would conduct the public hearing.
there are people here today that want to address the court with their ideas for their concerns about the program as well as the things that they particularly like and want to see the county clerk pursue with the vote centers proposal.
but the things that we have done since may 3rd when we first brought this up to you is that we have distributed information to local media.
we have emailed all of the information that you see before you today to all of our elected officials representing Travis County, and we've provided information to all of the local jurisdictions that participate in elections with Travis County.
cities, school districts, m.u.d.s, emergency services districts, all of those special districts that -- that participate in elections.
we've contacted both -- or I should say all four county political party representatives and especially the democratic and republican political party representatives are here today and will want to make comments to you.
we contacted poll workers, both the term appointments and the election judges and clerks who work in the field to ask them about their neighborhood polling places to get their feedback, and that has been incredibly important to us.
we've met with representatives of multiple disability rights organizations, and we've gotten a lot of feedback from facebook from our own elections division website, from yahoo neighborhood groups.
in other words, this has been a fascinating discussion that has been ongoing with the county clerk's office since may 3rd.
so we're happy today to bring all of that communication to you for this public hearing today.
let's see.
we have community feedback overall that vote centers -- the concept of voter centers has received a very positive feedback from the public.
in fact, it's overwhelmingly positive.
we have a resolution in support from the city of Lakeway.
we have a resolution in support from the Travis County democratic party.
it has received coverage in the Austin american-statesman, the Austin chronicle.
we've been covered on kut, kxan, most of your news now, a lot of the news networks have covered this -- this concept.
a -- questions have been raised about the recommendation of individual precincts and where community input has suggested to us that it was perhaps not a good idea to either add a polling place to one of the other polling places, a combination because perhaps one of the locations was too small, we have taken what the community has told us and backed off of our own proposal and used their suggestions.
I also had been asked by the school districts that if given the opportunity to move out of an elementary school, especially some of the older elementary schools, that given that opportunity would we please try.
well, we did that.
we asked several of the community members around some of these elementary schools would they like to take this opportunity to move away from the elementary schools.
I did not find support in the community for several of the proposals to move away from elementary schools.
in those cases we backed off and we are in fact using some of those elementary schools and we will simply continue to work with the schools asking for their cooperation to continue.
they were perceived as being too much a part of the interest of the community to discontinue and so we're -- we work for the voters and so we want to do what the best for them, and this program is to try to make voting easier for them, not necessarily to try to solve other problems. We gave it a shot, but we're going to do what's best for the voters with this program.
okay.
I mentioned to you about voting security.
we have over the last four years acquired the technology that we're going the need to maintain real-time contact with our voter registration database.
the most important thing about our security, the same verification of the voter registration rolls and voter i.d.
are in effect for election day as for early voting so we believe our security will be just as secure for early voting as it is for election day.
we believe those will be sufficient to operate the program and we will certainly look for opportunities to improve just as we do with early voting.
voters will be qualified instantly on election day and that will be a new piece in order to make this program work.
now, as I mentioned earlier, it does not apply to primary elections, so there will be only this program, this test for November, and we will ask the voters and we will ask the general public what they think about this idea of vote centers after the November 2011 constitutional amendment election did voters like this, you know, did it seem to work well, were there places where we could make improvements.
and after we receive that feedback, we will come back to Commissioners court with those criticisms, updates, suggestions for improvement and decide if we want to go forward with this program for the future.
we are also going to explore for the future the use of social media because one of the things that we think we could be helpful with for voters is to advise them about which locations perhaps have no lines, perhaps they are underutilized polling places as opposed to polls that might be more popular.
we want to get the word out so we have smooth implementation, nobody gets overloaded.
and with no further questions --
>> let's see if there are further questions.
court members, any questions?
>> I have a question.
one of my constituents who is also a precinct judge, voting judge, elections judge, that's the appropriate term, right?
one concern he had which hadn't occurred to me before, he's supportive of the proposal particularly since it doesn't reduce in a meaningful way the number of overall polling locations, but one concern he raised which hadn't occurred to me before is that for far down ballot races, that currently a campaign for a far down ballot race only has to target those precinct locations that are applicable.
and his concern was they would now have to target those -- those voting precinct locations as well as the vote centers, increasing the cost of those far down ballot campaigns.
I don't think that there's any answer for that, but I did want to raise the issue that from a practical standpoint for very small localized races that are included this the ballot, they will now have to -- they are e-day activities will include both the precincts that they -- that their campaigns are -- is targeting as well as the vote centers.
>> we appreciate what the campaigns are going to need to be aware of just like 20 years ago when early voting came in, campaigns had to rethink everything and had to go to a two-pronged effort, the effort for early voting and the election for election day.
>> I suppose what he is bringing up which is of interest to me and to us all is that there are some -- there are some -- some off-line consequences.
they are not costs to the county and they don't play into your charge of making voting easier for the individual, but I think that from a larger policy perspective, just as early voting did significantly increase the cost of campaigns, this will increase at least the cost for the very small campaigns.
>> right.
two quick points though.
the first is we're doing a soft sell for this program for its first foray into the community and campaigns particularly focus on home addresses for people for mailing, for phone calling.
none of that is going to change at all.
and we are telling people that, you know, vote in your neighborhood unless you can't because we do want to avoid the risk of overloading some locations.
all right.
so number one, it doesn't change their targeting that much, and we believe the actual experience of voting will be more neighborhood experienced especially the first time around, especially the first time around is going to be a constitutional amendment election and we do not know at this point for sure if we're going to continue this further.
second point I would like to make is we plan, if we decided to this for the future when we will have people campaigns running in this light, that we would like to work with social media to contact people about where they might go, and we would encourage the campaigns to use something that is very inexpensive to be able to contact folks.
I think this is a new outlet for them and for us to try to reach.
we've got an opportunity here to do things a little differently.
so I sympathize with them.
I also think that there are answers that will be helpful for them in the future.
>> and to reiterate, this person is supportive of this proposal and this is in full recognition that the only ajustment campaigns will have to make is on election day.
>> court members any questions or comments?
>> judge, just one.
dana, how are you doing?
>> I'm doing great.
I love elections.
this is my pleasure.
>> you love elections.
okay.
good.
I just have one question.
I'm really -- and I did hear an exhaustive amount of time that he have vested in making sure that the outreach of notification to this new process is -- everyone seems to be on board, at least the notification part.
my question is those particular individuals that are not in the computer world who struggle and maybe can't afford computers, affordability, and I heard you mention social network, a lot of things mentioned, how can we ensure that those persons not in the computer world will have maximum notification of what is going on just as the persons that are within the computer world?
>> Commissioner, that's a great question.
I'm so glad you asked me that.
because here's why it's of direct benefit to those folks especially.
what we are able to offer those folks is they get to go wherever they want.
it doesn't matter.
for those folks especially there is no wrong answer.
they vote wherever they see a "vote here" sign.
if they are walking in the neighborhood, perhaps they are using public transportation, along public transportation lines, perhaps they are walking, with wherever they are walking in their neighborhood, if they see a voting plays with a "vote here" sign, a "vote aqui" sign in their neighborhood, that is the place they are eligible to vote.
it's no longer a guessing game what's their polling place.
they get to vote anywhere.
it will be even better for folks who don't have the list that tells them the legal boundary lines.
this is going to be terrific for those folks.
>> okay.
thank you.
>> thank you.
I would like to open, if it please the judge, to some of our guests.
>> my first question is my backup is dated April 18, 2011.
is that the most recent backup I should have?
>> yes, sir.
that may be when we started working on it.
>> is there more recent backup?
>> he got my packet that I have and he got this.
>> okay, I don't have that.
maybe my office does.
all I have is --
>> okay, you would have gotten this --
>> that's fine.
>> do y'all want to check to make sure he's got the right thing.
>> when do you expect the court to take action?
>> I would like for you to consider taking action today.
I would hope for approval for the county clerk to make application to the secretary of state's office to apply for permission to do the vote center program.
further action about the actual conduct of the election itself --
>> the answer is today.
>> yes, today.
just for application to the secretary of state.
>> okay.
>> approval of polling places is something else.
sorry.
>> the old application process required you to summarize comments.
>> yes, sir.
>> and submit that with the application.
>> yes, sir.
>> will the court get a copy of comments that you received that you summarized earlier today?
>> yes, sir.
>> we do have nine individuals who have signed in to speak during this public hearing.
I will call three names and then if we could get you to sit at either end of that collection of tables there, I will call three names and as a speaker finishes, I will call another one.
and we do it that way so we can expedite this public hearing as much as possible.
bryson smith, gus pena, rosemary edwards.
if those three individuals would please come forward.
select the chair of your choice.
we would be happy to get your comments.
smith, pena, edwards.
>> thank you very much.
I'm bryson mccall smith with the coalition of texans with disabilities.
we are in favor of the vote centers.
we think this will really improve voter turnout over allal in the city.
one question we have which is we -- an information session was on consolidation of some of the polling, some of the small neighborhood areas.
we wanted to make sure that accessibility both in the location and transportation to the location were taken into consideration when choosing which ones to consolidate.
the info sessions really helped that and some of the pathways from one of the -- the proposed poll place to the one that was closing was we even walked off to see if that was accessible, so we're very in favor.
thank you.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
mr. Pena is next with ronnie reeferseed please come forward.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners, gus pena proud united states marine corps veteran.
we are in support of this item from dana's office.
one of the concerns that we had and had constantly heard about horror stories is about the homeless population.
the homeless population are migratory and county travel wide.
the issue is we're in support of this vote center because it would allow any homeless individual to vote anywhere they are at.
you have a lot of people in camps.
so this is very -- a very good issue.
and I will keep it short and sweet.
we veterans, even back in the history when this country started, fought for the right and the privilege and honor to be able to vote so I urge everybody to vote, vote, vote every time there is an election.
judge, Commissioners, we in the community, and I don't speak for everybody else, just the people I know, heartily support this and ask and urge you to support and approve this item, move the process forward with the application to the secretary of state.
it's a good item.
people appreciate that.
it accommodates the voters.
that's all have I to say and thank you very much.
>> thank you, mr. Pena.
miss edwards is next.
Margaret wilson.
>> I'm rosemary edwards.
I have my comments in writing.
>> okay.
>> judge Biscoe, members of the Travis County Commissioners court, I'm rosemary edwards, chairman of the Travis County republican party and I appear before you concerning the proposal to conduct a pilot project for the Travis County voting centers during the constitutional election November 2011.
while several counties have piloted the voter centers and have success stories to share, I believe that Travis County is unique in that we will be the largest urban city that will be -- or county that will be at this point piloting the voter centers.
and our experience will influence certainly other larger urban centers too.
therefore your decision to allow this pilot will be the gateway trial to other counties as well.
republicans in Travis County are very concerned about the possible unintended consequences of using vote centers.
convenience is a term that is used repeatedly to defend or to justify the vote centers.
the continued convenience that voters have become accustomed to for 10 days, that's 120 hours of possible voting opportunities before election day, is said to benefit busy citizens who might not be able to drive home to their neighborhood from work on election day.
but onckq election day by gradually eliminating our neighborhood polling places and creating those impersonal mega voting places we are disenfranchising some(d our older less mobile voters who may not have transportation to the polling place.
the convenience is only for ones who already have the mobility and they have ample time to vote in early voting.
I remember the day when you had to justify that early voting you had to have a reason to be out of town.
we have certainly -- those are long in the past.
there's no reason that you have to express to anybody early voting and we do that for 10, 10 days.
we hear that cutting down on the number of regional ballots is a goal in having the vote centers.
the number of provisional ballots can be cut down by having well trained and helpful judges who live in their precinct direct voters to their proper locations to vote in a system to find where their correct precinct is located.
I know of many examples of judges who will walk through the line, checking the voter registration cards as people are standing in line, and then making call for someone who happens to not be in the right location and show them on a map where to go vote.
of course, a provisional ballot is an option, but a well trained and helpful judge with the judge and alternate judge will anticipate these questions and be proactive in helping their neighbors to vote in the right location.
there is no provision that I'm aware of in the election code to require that workers from both parties serve in the vote centers.
this concerns me a great deal.
I understand that there will be a deputy, a registrar clerk in charge of the early voting like they are in early voting locations, and this is not a preferable arrangement since at least on election day the judge and alternate judge are from both parties.
this arrangement is specifically to keep the representation equal and to assure that both parties have at least one representative at the polling place.
no such provision exists in the elections code for early voting workers and if vote centers are staffed in the same way, there will be no equal representation for republicans and democrats at the vote centers as required by law.
from evaluating vote patterns since 2004, the year that we started actually using the e-slate, we have increased the percentage of voters taking advantage of the convenience of early voting.
now we have approximately 60% of voters choose to go vote early.
when examining the voter polls closely, even more closely, actually voter by voter, there is still 25 to 30% of individual voters who consistently vote only on election day.
now these voters know they have a choice and certainly the convenience of voting on all the dozens of early voting locations that are available including the many mobile units that are around town that are placed across the county.
I believe that we are disinfranchising voters such as judy and frank bowmar who have worked their precinct for many years.
they enjoy the ebb and flow of voters.
they worked this their precinct over 35 years.
will it be more convenient for them to drive to the vote center to go to potentially a large kind of loud, possibly noisy place to vote?
as one of my fellow county chairman in lubbock county, I discussed this with him in detail.
he described from their experience and they have had successful vote centers, he said rosemary, if you can compare the convenience of going through a fast-food line to get your food or going and sitting down in a neighborhood restaurant, that's really the difference in vote centers.
not one necessarily better than the other but a very different experience.
the ones who prefer to walk, to stroll their baby in a stroller and to ride their bicycle and to just walk a few blocks down, those will be greatly inconvenienced on election day.
and another example of unintended consequences, one of our election workers that was working on the may city council election at ridgetop elementary commend that they had a very nice flow of people all day long coming in on bicycles.
it was a Saturday.
the parking lot was full of bicycles and strollers with moms coming in to, you know, strolling your baby in and coming in to vote.
and there was a great turnout that day.
with vote centers that experience would be in the past.
they would not vote at the school right across the street from the Travis County elections division office.
voters would not consider riding their bikes or walking across a busy section of lamar to the vote center.
it's too dangerous.
there is sometimes that we gain in efficiency but we lose in our community.
in Austin we are proud of our special community and encourage walking and bike riding.
vote centers will eventually make our elderly who can walk or moms who want to push their stroller down the street or young voters who ride their bicycles as main mode of transportation, they will be inconvenienced.
the proposed location of vote centers cater to our mobile voter, not the elderly and not the mom pushing the stroller or bike riders.
I believe the timing of this project leaves a lot to be desired.
with the implementation of the new precinct boundaries as a result of our redistricting and implementation of photo voter i.d.
there will be changes workers will be adapting two in the next election cycles.
putting other systematic changes on top of these seems to unnecessarily complicate the situation.
and do we even know how much it's going to cost.
I haven't heard any mention about that.
in this critical budgetary time for our state, county and city, I'm very surprised that you are seriously considering any pilot program that's going to take on more resources.
our county clerk tells us there will be additional workers hired.
how much will that cost?
any additional equipment?
what is this cost to the taxpayers?
at the very least, I believe the timing is bad and should be delayed until the 2013 constitutional election when some of the factors of budget and significant statutorily changes have been mitigated by that time.
let us not forget that elections do not belong to any party or office, they belong to the people and keeping the polling location in neighborhoods is keeping not only the letter of the law but the spirit of law.
I believe that there are many unintended consequences to the voter centers and we should keep the voter system as we have it with polling locations in current locations on election day.
I have my name and address and phone number there.
if you have any other questions, I'm more than happy to discuss this individually or at this time.
thank you.
>> thank you.
>> thank you, miss edwards.
mr. Reeferseed is next.
is Margaret wilson still here?
>> right here.
>> if we would get to you have a seat, get comfortable.
carol echolcamp.
mr. Reeferseed.
>> thank you, sir.
freedom to vote and miss Eckhardt is right.
she has this great question.
why punish the down ballot little guy.
it's a key factor.
and fair and easy accessible voting to all should be a given in our so-called free society.
instead we're asked to tolerate these so-called cost saving solutions, which are actually very costly, to pseudo problems and look, with electronic voting machines, ballot integrity is already lost, people.
paying for various voting locations is a cost we should all be willing to bear and that's why many of us here in Austin are actively demanding honest balloting.
thereby canceling the easily programable untraceable so-called voting machine scams. Paper ballots is the answer.
ancient answer.
practiced all over the world.
new democracy especially.
for security and convenience.
but somehow we're supposed to give away -- we're supposed to gain from this particular scheme, costly scheme, and it represents more than one place to vote.
to thus eliminate confusion.
huh?
quote, we need security in place.
security, gosh, I mean voter fraud is not a problem.
I mean voting should be cherished, not strip malled.
this is both unaffordable and unneeded.
let's keep some early voting locations.
that's a great idea, but my question is, is not the end game to this scheme to make the so-called vote centers eventually like big wall marts.
either way, it's kind of cheapening the neighborhood feel to it all and we should cherish the process of participation in our government, and Travis County is a really, really good place to be in the front line for this privilege of having some scheme shoved down our throats.
no, I apologize for not communicating more often with miss dane dan and her competent staff, but -- dana debouvier and her competent staff and this is not good for anybody.
throw in my two cents.
>> miss wilson is next.
>> Margaret wilson, rent of Travis County, voter and precinct chair.
I've looked over the proposal for voting centers and I must raise some of my concerns with it.
I do think that this is an example of an unpredictable solution in search of a nonexistent problem.
in her April 18th, 2011, letter to you, the Commissioners court, she addresses several issues.
in one of those issues she discusses whether or not this process would save money.
I don't really want to talk about whether or not it saves money, but instead one of the statements that is made in that paragraph, which I think is quite telling.
and in that section, ms. Dana debouvier says, and I quote, fewer polling sites may not mean fewer poll workers.
since the number of voters voting will have to be processed more quickly.
now, that must produce a visceral reaction in most of us that county government will be processing voters.
government should not act upon people and people are not cattle, they are not commodities, and they should not be herded along while they exercise one of those most fundamental sacred rights in our republic.
and this will lead, in my humble opinion, to many more mistakes by both voters and poll workers because there is not time to slow down, ask questions, get answers and have everyone see what is actually going on in the process.
to have them hurried along is not only offensive but will result in more mistakes.
those mistakes may lead to the expenditure of more county resources later as people raise questions about those possible mistakes.
why invite them?
if it's only going to cause more questions later and more inquiries into the process.
one thing I would like Commissioners court to think about is the steps that this court is required to take by law in order to establish these voting centers.
they are kind of complicated.
they are onerous, hard to following.
and Commissioners court is going to have to be very careful to dot its is or cross its t's or Commissioners court will be criticized for not following the process correctly.
I would not want to be one of the ones that had to follow those and not be criticized later.
I want to summarize by saying that miss dana debouvier said today that we work for the voters in the county, works for the voters.
I think by the language of this proposal it is obviously the other way around.
this is for the county's convenience, not for the voters.
it will cause confusion by the voters and I don't think there's any benefit to it.
finally, as a personal note, I am a precinct chair.
my precinct is very, very heavily democrat.
it is one of the hugest turnouts in Travis County on a regular basis, and the flow through our precinct at voting time whether it's general election or primary, and it is at an elementary school, goes without a hitch.
people come through even at the end of the day.
during the day, at the end of the day, there is not a problem.
people aren't herded.
people in the community say hello to one another.
they say hello to the poll workers.
and it is -- it's a nice -- it's a nice time.
I would hate to see that broken up.
I've never heard of anyone being confused about where to vote.
and it -- it is a -- it is a solution in search of a problem, in my opinion.
and so I urge the court not to take on this pilot project.
thank you.
>> thank you.
>> thank you, miss wilson.
ms. Echolcamp is next.
and would fidel us a us a vader today come forward.
>> I'm an election poll worker, translator and alternate judge for a number of years.
and I've had the opportunity to go through the presidential election and work the parking lot of an early polling location in an h.e.b.
and go up and down the line dodging cars to see that we could get the right people in the right situation they needed to be at.
I've worked -- I've never worked in my precinct.
I'm an east Austin girl and vote in 78703.
I think they have to die before I can go work in my own precinct.
I'm sorry, dana.
I work in a precinct off 360 and in the west Austin area in jester estates area.
so I have seen -- I'd like to just contradict, have I seen in the polling places confusion.
I have seen extreme anger because I don't want to walk across -- excuse me, to drive across 2222 because there was something happening in the rec center so I had to come over to this church and I had to drive so far.
I've heard that and I've already heard why are there so many early voting days.
I've heard a lot of things from the polling places and the reason I'm here before you today I think there's a lot of waste of dollars spent.
I have had the opportunity to work in some very boring early voting locations.
I don't work early voting very often.
my mom and dad, I have the opportunity to work with them in some polling.
they work early voting.
a lot of times there isn't this deluge of people that come into early voting locations.
I think it's a great concept.
I was very excited when we were able to vote early voting.
but the fact that so many are open and then we have all the precincts that are there during election day.
and I had dana confirm for me before I got up here when I heard my fellow republican discuss these mega voting centers is that this is not the goal of -- it's my understanding that this is not the goal of Travis County is to make mega voting centers.
it is the goal is to make it more accessible on election day for all Travis County voters.
and I see this as opening up the benefit of early voting to the election day process.
so I see -- I see a cost saving if we can decrease some of the early voting and some of that nonparticipation that happens in some of those days of early voting.
shrink the time down a little bit to where you actually can have people come through any polling location.
they know it's going to be easy.
they are not worried about where they are going to be voting on election day.
I actually have counted only on my precinct how much it costs per vote.
on Saturday, and I'm not going to go into that, but we had 4,000 eligible voters in two precincts and 400 people showed up.
okay, that's a lot of money to be expended for 400 people.
and that's typical and we look at even in the presidential election.
so I think that you all should put this proposal forward.
let's put this application in.
let's try this.
I read over the comments that dana said to you guys in one of these previous hearings, and I think a soft opening, how she called it, and you guys called it nibbling, I wish we could quit nibbling and stop spending so much money on these things and put something in place that could be a good thing for all voters.
you've heard from a number of people through emails this is a good thing.
I'm going to ask that you vote for it.
and if you've never worked a 12-hour shift in a polling location, I suggest you do that because it's amazing what people will do in a polling place on a given day.
I would like kudos for her staff for training me.
my husband is a 25-year attorney in Travis County and he had the opportunity to work a 12-hour shift.
he doesn't have the opportunity to be here, but he had an earful after having sat there on 12 hours on two different occasions.
thank you very much for hearing me and dana does a good job of training us and thank you.
>> thank you.
mr. Fernandez is ernesto.
andy brown.
>> fernandez.
thank you, judge.
gavino fernandez.
I'll be testifying to you as lulac district 12 director and shine in my role of coordinator of con sill yes which is an association of mexican-american neighborhoods.
to endorse this proposition and vote that you will vote so that dana can proceed with the application.
I think that any action to improve and enhance voters, the time to vote is good for the community in general.
and I can speak to experiences voting as worker in voting polls.
for example, we have a voter that comes to pan am at 6:45.
well, you are not registered, you need to go to lavaya.
and through that frustration the voter decides I'm not going to vote anyway.
I'm not going to vote because I will have to go all the way to del valle or montopolis, and this would allow this voter to exercise their vote on e-day.
and he think that this is a community effort and all the burden of success should not be laid just on the district -- on the voters clerk's office.
this is something we as the voters also need to take a role in educating the community, which we will do through lulac and the neighborhood associations.
and also specifically the ones that Commissioner Davis mentioned that are not, you know, in the computer world, and that is by going to senior citizens activity centers, to neighborhood associations meetings and convey this great opportunity that I see for election day because it will increase the voter registration and it will increase the -- or minimize the distasteful experience of when a voter gets frustrated because he or she cannot vote because they ended up at the wrong precinct or voter box.
again, dana's office does a tremendous job in training the clerks and the judges and the alternates, and this is something that is ownership of the entire community, and because of that, again, I just want to strongly encourage you to vote in support of this proposal and it is a trial period, and as we go through this process, we will be able to detect both experiences that do not work and be able to refine and cure those issues that do arise if any do arise.
and I just also want to commend dana for her continued experience and trail blazing in the issue of voting.
she is not only recognized locally but internationally, and we as Travis County I believe are fortunate to have someone like dana over our voting process in Travis County.
thank you, judge, for your time.
>> thank you.
>> thank you, mr. Fernandez.
mr. Aucevedo followed by andy brown.
mike conwell still here?
>> he just went to feed the meter.
>> thank you, judge, Commissioners.
I'm glad to be here this morning after a long travel from goliad, Texas.
basically being that this is going to be a pilot program and I hope I understood that right from the -- that this is going to be a pilot program, I have no problems with anything that's a pilot program.
I'm representing the progressive hispanic delegation.
I'm co-chair for the progressive hispanic delegation and I want to reiterate that as long as it's a pilot program, have I no problems with it.
I know there's always glitches in there.
I am definitely very proud of what we have accomplished here over the last decade.
however, my main concern, and I testified to this to the Commissioners court earlier that I have testified at the state capitol with the committee with the concerns of the voters.
the majority of the testimony that was given by some of the elected officials that came down to testify was convenience.
if little convenient, then let's proceed to make it convenient for every precinct.
okay?
this was my main concern as a democrat, as a progressive hispanic democrat is the fact that -- that we -- if we continue down this path, we will change the concept of precinct by precinct voting in the state of Texas and in america if this continues.
we will lose that concept of neighborhood.
we will lose that.
because we are gearing up to send everybody down this chute to go to a super center.
so where we're at with the 200 years plus history of us in america to have this concept of precincts.
that would radically change in the 21st century if we continue this route.
am I in favor of reforming the elections?
absolutely.
but the way things are going right now, at our Texas legislature, we're going just the opposite.
ist people who are going to suffer is the minorities.
the people who can't travel for this so-called convenience.
we want to make it convenient and perhaps cost effective.
maybe we ought to try to mail ballots to everybody that's 18 years old and see if they will -- see if they will vote and increase the voting election per election.
we don't have that increase going on.
that, my friends, they say yes, we have and yes we're having more and more people voting early voting than we have ever before.
not county by county.
there's some counties that still don't have early voting perhaps.
and if they do, they are so inconvenient, the times are so inconvenient they can't get there before 5:00 or 6:00 because some counties have it that way.
so my take through this whole thing is as long as it's a pilot program and we are able to iron out the differences of where the glitches are, but we cannot lose sight of the concept of voting precinct by precinct.
thank you very much.
and appreciate the time.
>> thank you,.
>> thank you.
andy brown is next.
is mike conwell back?
and Karen rennick.
those are the last three speakers today.
mr. Brown.
>> thank you, judge and Commissioners.
thanks for letting us testify today.
my name is andy brown, chair of the Travis County democratic party.
and we passed a resolution in favor of this plan.
I just wanted to reiterate that today to y'all.
I believe you have a copy of the actual resolution that we passed.
overall our goal this next election cycle is to combat some of the things that the legislature passed this past time that are going to disenfranchise voters.
the biggest one being the voter i.d.
bill that passed.
we're looking at any way that we can to increase the ease of voters for especially minority populations, elderly populations and student populations in Travis County.
and we feel that this is a step in the right direction and would support the trial period on November 2011.
a couple of things that we just wanted to reiterate is that we are not in favor of reducing any sort of neighborhood access to voting locations.
in fact, we are in favor of keeping those.
and I believe this plan does that.
this is actually a very neighborhood friendly plan in that it eliminates any confusion that local voters have on election day and they know that they can vote near their polling place, near their precinct on election day, they can vote early any day they want.
it seems like a good, a very good step in the direction of combating what the republican legislature did this last session to disinfranchise many of our voters.
so with that, I believe you all have a copy of what we passed there.
if you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them.
otherwise I just wanted to say we are in support of this plan.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> mr. Conwell.
>> mike conwell, election judge since 1998.
first step rosedale school which was one of the two highest turnouts polling locations for many years.
and now I'm on the county line at 207, which is mcneal parmer.
lost voters is a big part of my day.
I have encountered the tearful voter who at the end of the day doesn't have enough time to cross town or somebody who has managed to talk her boss into letting her go from work to vote but then realizing she has to cross town to vote.
even though it's her legal right, she doesn't have the ammunition to go back to her boss and say I need more time.
the 25% figure of lost voters at polling locations, I can easily attest to that.
and while I believe that -- well, long and short, it takes less time to process a voter successfully than it does to work with them to find a new polling place to go.
so as far as added workload on the election staff, I actually believe things will run smoother.
in addition to that during the crucial last hour I will call I alwayswind up doing additional provisional ballots for people in the wrong location and it's too late to cross town.
so it puts a lot of strain on the polling location.
it makes it difficult for us to process the line at the polling location to get folks going to a neighboring precinct.
and so I think this would -- this would be a great idea.
I'd like to echo andy and many others, I'm not for the super centers, but I am for if somebody appears at a Travis County polling place, they can vote anywhere there.
that's it.
>> thank you, mr. Conwell.
Karen rennick.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners.
my name is Karen rennick.
I'm the founder of a group called vote rescue.
we are for fully transparent publicly observable elections of every step in the process of voting.
I also am part of a coalition of 15 groups called the hand count coalition.
as I brought to the court's attention on may 10th when I testified a week following the introduction of this new idea by the county clerk, I explained that the vote centers destroy the essence of our neighborhood precincts, and this has been said in numerous testimony today already and I wholeheartedly agree.
I think that the -- that the vote centers, that the sense of community with our immediate neighbors will be shattered.
and bringing in vote centers is a slippery slope that will bring the wal-martization to our elections.
human oversight and accountability at the precinct level is -- will be swept away by introducing vote centers on election day.
they in fact will become super precincts.
maybe not immediately, but I think this is the trend, this is where we are heading.
in fact, in the future we could see as many as 10,000 votes concentrated at one location making it easier to commit fraud on a large scale in one fell swoop.
a smaller neighborhood polling places offer a buffer against election fraud by keeping the number of votes in one location down to an average of, say, about 3,000 ballots or fewer.
voting machine malfunction or rogue election worker can affect far fewer votes in a neighborhood precinct than in a consolidated vote center.
with that said, I've also reviewed a lot of the documents that the county clerk's office has put out about this and I just wanted to make some additional comments about those.
first of all, dana has stated in her previous testimony in letters to the court that -- and I believe in some of the documents handed out today, that she has contacted numerous people about her plans for vote centers.
however, I was never contacted about any of this and I find this a little questionable because I was on the election study group that was held in 2009.
along with 45 other people.
and she did say that in her report that the election study group embraced wholeheartedly the concept of voting centers, but I would invite the court to review the minutes to the meeting in which the idea of voting centers was brought up.
it was brought up at the very last meeting very hurriedly, very little discussion about voting centers so I would beg to differ in her assessment of the study group supporting the idea of vote centers.
I also wanted to bring to the court's attention that I think the county clerk's math might be a little fuzzy in communicating the changes that are really going to be occurring here.
what seems to be discussed and I don't know if this has changed since the information that was presented on may 3rd, but as of yesterday the documents that are on the website reflect that previously there were 189 polling places and now there will be 175.
making it seem as if the change is only about 14 polling places.
I went through the documents that are online and actually came up with a fact -- with what I see on this -- it's called the proposed federal locations for November elections, it's a spread sheet that looks like this.
there are actually 66 precincts that have been -- that will be changed if this is current.
I don't know if it's been updated, but this is as of yesterday.
and they've been changed -- okay, I've just been handed this by gale, I guess the numbers have changed, but as of yesterday the public, which I am one, was -- was going off of that information.
I don't know what the number is now, but as of yesterday there were actually 66 precincts that either have been changed to a new site or have been consolidated somewhere else.
so we're not talking about 14 precincts here, we're talking about 66, but maybe the number has changed.
I don't know.
so I think that needs to be reviewed.
another issue that I think bears more study is I'm a little confused by this push for the voting centers in light of the fact that what came out of the election study group was that the clerk made the recommendation that by 2013 we would be going to paper ballots.
albeit they would still be scanned by scanners which would still count other votes secretly, but she has -- she initiated this and said by 2013 recognizing that voters do want a paper ballot.
I do not understand how voting centers will work with this move to paper ballots and I think that definitely needs to be discussed.
I mean I understand that one way it could have been is additional and there would need to be new machinery for every single polling place purchased here in the county to achieve that.
and that does represent significant cost increases.
looking over the information from colin county which I brought up in my testimony on may 10th, colin county set up a citizens committee in which to discuss this whole move to voting centers.
and that did not happen here in Travis County about this.
the -- and it was stated in the literature that this was required by the law that was passed by the legislature.
so my question is I don't know what's in the new law that was just passed, but the same language might exist so that maybe a citizens group will have to be set up to further discuss this.
and in colin county they in fact had two public hearings for the purpose of getting people's input, and that's one of my requests today is that we have a second public hearing because I know there are a lot of people that did not know about this public hearing and it would be nice to follow in colin county's footsteps and at least give the public another public hearing.
and I guess in closing I just want to understand what might be really at the heart of introducing the voting centers.
is it really about convenience or perhaps it's about making these changes to these 66 polling places which may be upsetting to the public.
I don't know.
I agree with some of the other testimony that it just seems like it's a solution searching for a problem in this case.
so I hope I've raised some questions that the contract will eventually consider and look at and I do request that there be a second public hearing.
thank you very much.
>> thank you very much, miss rennick nick.
rennick.
>> dana, we have a couple more minutes then we need to move on.
I think there are three or four issues that need to be addressed.
issues raised by citizens.
what about the total cost, more or less.
>> thank you.
it's on my list.
we've got several things real quickly.
cost, we plan to stay within the budget that is allotted for November 2011 and I had mentioned that to the court once before.
let me reiterate we are plan to go stay within the budget so all these additional services we are offering to voters, those are within our current budget.
we had thought that voters would like the fact that we're offering them more services within our current budget.
also very quickly, chair rosemary edwards raised a good question, one that is not addressed by the law, and that is how do you deal with the parity of actually conducting the neighborhood vote centers.
and what she means by parity is the way we always do it in Travis County is when we operate a polling place, we have one democrat and one republican conducting things.
and we do that as absolutely best we can perfectly, nothing is ever perfect, but we really try.
we even try when it is not required by law in nonpartisan elections.
because that's just the right way to do it.
our policy will be for neighborhood vote centers is that whatever that polling place had been and those term appointees for that polling place, we will just consider those the appropriate appointees for the vote center.
simple enough policy.
I mean I think that's easy enough to follow.
>> but is your answer we will continue to try to provide both a republican and democrat?
>> absolutely.
both republican and democrat at the neighborhood vote centers.
polling places.
you are not voting on polling places today.
we will continue to take input from the community on polling places as is normal for this court in setting up polling places for any election.
you would typically be considering that in August or September so we have time to work out concerns about an individual polling place or vote center.
certainly gullah elementary is a neighborhood active place and we are not considering taking it away, although it might have been on some very preliminary lists.
>> but is it recommended as on vote center location.
>> it is a vote center.
it is a neighborhood vote center, yes, sir.
finally, just let me make one last comment because it's been talked about a lot.
Travis County's proposal is absolutely under no circumstances anything like colin county's.
let's just be very, very clear about that.
colin county did not have a good experience, did not run its first time out a good program at all.
it was highly criticized and we are not anything like colin county.
absolutely not.
our approach is to do neighborhood polling places that are vote centers.
it is a neighborhood program that allows people to still bike, walk and drive to their neighborhood polling places.
in fact, it is more neighborhood oriented than the polling place operation that we have today which cuts out some people who think they are in their neighborhood polling place only to find out at the last minute they are not.
judge, I thank you for your patience.
we will continue this conversation as we come back to you later at the end of the summer with polling places.
we're open to conversations with our election judges about their ideas about polling places.
>> this item is posted for an executive session discussion in item 31.
we will not go into executive session until this afternoon.
that discussion may take 5 minutes, it may take 50.
we have been asked to take action today of some sort.
we will not know what action we will take until we come back from executive session.
so unfortunately that's how that looks.
with that I move that the public hearing be closed.
>> second.
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>> all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
thank you all very much.
Commissioner Eckhardt.
>> there was a question ms. Rennick raised with how paper trail balloting with regard to voting centers.
>> the answer that is currently in standard practice in the marketplace right now for avoiding the extreme cost of pre-printing either for early voting or for vote centers for election day is a practice called ballot on demand.
it's in use all over right now. and what it does is when a voter presents themselves for voting -- typically it's for early voting -- and you have to have the entire array of ballots available for someone who shows up. you have a certified system at the polling place that prints that ballot that fits that voter's neighborhood at the time so you don't have to waste county expenditures preprinting, second guessing who is going to show up. you print the ballot for the voter as they need it when they appear.
>> okay
>> ballot on demand.
>> thank you miss debeauvoir. And we appreciate the input from residents who have come down.
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