Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, August 2, 2011 (Agenda)
Item 25
25, consider and take appropriate action regarding the submission of an application to the Texas secretary of state for the November 8, 2011 constitutional amendment election.
>> dana debouvier, Travis County clerk.
our application to the secretary of state for the proposal for this coming November election is ready and so we just want to make sure that we have a final touch base with you.
the concept is we want to take our neighborhood polling places and turn them into vote center.
and the concept is that under Texas law and with approval from the secretary of state's office, every polling place on election day would look very similar to the way our early voting locations look right now.
for early voting, you can go to any of the early voting locations and cast your vote during the -- during the early voting period and you don't have to worry about boundary lines, about which precinct you are in.
so what we want to do is try this for election day and see if our voters like it.
the concept is that they can go to not just their neighborhood polling places, although we encourage that this first time out, go to the neighborhood -- go to the polling place that you think is your neighborhood polling place, but you can also go to another polling place if that's more convenient for you.
and you will not lose your right to vote, it will not matter if you are outside a technical boundary.
you can vote anywhere on election day just like early voting and your vote will count and the name of the program is called vote centers.
it's been used in a few other places around the state, in other counties in Texas.
it's been mostly very well received.
and the problems in the past with it have been that it's shrunk too small and that's a mistake that we do not want to make here.
so that's the concept is that we're going to try to leave all of our regular polling places intact, in place, keep as many of them as is absolutely possible and simply turn those into vote centers.
I think the -- people who have called in and given us advice and asked questions about various polling places, the program we're turning in, our final draft allows us 190 polling places to turn into vote centers in the neighborhoods and that's within ten polling places of our standard way we operate elections.
so you can see we're not trying to knock out a whole bunch of polling places, we're trying to keep everything we can and simply turn them into vote centers.
we will also be using a few of our early voting locations.
in the past voters have said to us, gee, that early voting location was open for two weeks and I go on election day, how come I can't vote there?
grocery stores especially people have asked that question and it seems like a common sense kind of question.
well, with this program we can provide that kind of service to our voters.
so you will be able to go to some of our early voting locations during the November election on election day.
so we're trying to offer that to our voters as well.
we will want to have a very careful public information program so that everybody understands and knows where they can go.
we are trying this for the first time for the November election, the November constitutional amendment election to get people used to the idea.
we'll get feedback from the community to see if they like it.
we will not be allowed by law to use a vote center approach during the primary elections.
so we'll have the chance to use it in November, then we won't be able to use it for the primary elections, which will give us time to talk to our community and see how they liked it.
and even they like it, and we think they might if things go well, then what that allows us to do is get ourselves ready and prepared for a return to vote centers for the presidential election, which we think might be very, very helpful considering during the presidential election we typically have very high turnouts, and if redistricting looks like it's going to go the way it is we could have very confused voters.
a vote center approach could be helpful in any situation where we have confused voters who don't know where to go, and especially for our commuter voters who are trying to make it all the way home on election day, vote centers is going to be ideal for them.
we're here today to take the next step.
this is the proposal that we're going to turn in to the secretary of state's office today if you approve it, both electronically and in hard copy and it gives them all the information they've asked for, who we've talked to, all of the media and local citizens groups and disability groups and just everybody in the community that we touched base with about this idea, all of the local input that we've received.
>> court members any questions for comments?
>> no, I think we ought to approve it.
>> Commissioner Davis.
>> dana, I failed to ask this question when this came before the court before, and that is the signage as far as the voting centers.
how will that be designated as far as signage is concerned because it is a new concept, it's something you haven't tried before and it is coming up in a November -- in the November election of this year, and, of course, the sign is to say this is a voting center, how will that be -- how would that be displayed to the community?
>> yes, sir, that's a very good question.
and it works in two ways.
first of all, there will be signs at every polling place that say this is a vote center, so it's more than -- it's like polling place plus.
it's more than a polling place.
anybody can vote at the vote center and there will be a sign on the entrance door that says welcome all, anybody can vote here.
for polling places, and there aren't that many now, but for polling places that are being discontinued not just or our reason but because the
>> [indiscernible] said they can't be there or construction or any other reasons.
by law on the old polling places we put up a sign that says sorry, this polling place is temporarily closed.
please go to this nearest and we usually put a couple of locations, nearest polling place near you which is a vote center and anybody can vote there, so there's signage at the new place and any previous locations that are closed.
we do that by law.
we'll make darn sure we do it this time.
we'll also be sending out postcards to neighborhoods telling them here's within your zip code a couple of locations that will fit your neighborhood.
because now we're not constrained to just one that fits a technical boundary.
now we can use the loser definition of a neighborhood and there might be a couple of polling places, the church and the school that people can go to to vote.
>> okay.
thank you.
thank you very much.
>> you're welcome.
thank you for asking.
>> questions, comments?
if you have questions or comments regarding item 25, please come forth.
mr. Reeferseed.
>> thank you.
I'm kind of concerned by the whole idea, I think we all know that advertisers create a need.
as dana was saying, voters need, they just can't seem to find where they vote or we need to be dumbed down yet again.
the point I'm trying to make is the only thing they are really doing, this is what it's all about, think about this, this is to end paper ballots.
that's the whole thing here.
it's not for the convenience for us, it's like fluoride in the water, it not to make our teeth whiter, it's not why the nazis put the fluoride in the water, it's to dumb you down.
this is what's happening right now.
we need to not do this, stick with paper ballots, get rid of this hog wash.
>> anyone else?
>> move approval.
>> discussion on the motion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
