LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Dear Editor, A funny thing happened on the way to the election—and I’m still scratching my head about it. It’s a tale of hubris. It’s a tale of fantasy. And it will become the stuff of legend. Not the election taking place right now, but the primary elections coming up in March. That’s when voters of the two parties go to the polls to select their candidates to run in next November’s general election.
It’s round one of a tworound endurance battle— and after the primary, the general election campaign will last the better part of the year. Pretty often, one or both rounds go into overtime if no candidate for an office gets a majority.
And depending on the candidates, the issues, the polls, the debates, the charges, and the countercharges, it can seem a lot longer than that. Or it can go by in a flash. Still, it was unusual to get caught up in the next election with the current one still underway.
It all started long before weigh-in.
For the better part of a decade now, the Hays County Democratic and Republican Parties have contracted with the Hays County Election Office to administer joint primary elections. The simple fact is that neither the Democratic, Republican, or any other local political parties have the training, expertise, experience, staffing, equipment or other resources necessary to conduct an election that meets state or federal standards.
Contracting with the Election Office streamlined an otherwise bumpy process by eliminating duplication of effort, duplication of polling locations, duplication of election workers and judges, and duplication of equipment, resulting in cost savings both for the county and the political parties who pay for the primary elections.
Perhaps the most visible improvement was the inauguration of countywide vote centers in 2019. This extremely popular change increased convenience for voters who could now cast their ballots at any polling place in the county. They were no longer tied to what, previously, had been their precinct voting location. This was a significant and welcome change for commuters, busy parents, shift workers, students, and folks whose schedules took them out of the house early and back home late.
Along with vote centers, Hays County also acquired new, state-of-theart voting machines. In one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation, with the number of registered voters increasing by more than 50 percent in the 10-year period from 2010 to 2020, secure, accurate, reliable voting equipment—equipment that tallied results quickly and met all state and federal standards—was a must. And looking at voter turnout rates over the same period, there has been a steady increase in comparable races, Gubernatorial, Senate, and Presidential.
And for the bipartisan citizens committee that researched, tested, and recommended the new voting equipment, two other security benchmarks were critical: the machines could not connect to the internet, and they had to produce a paper trail that was both readable by the voter and could be used to verify the electronic tallies on each machine. The equipment currently in service and selected by the members of Commissioners Court in a regular, open meeting met all of these stringent requirements.
A post-election security and accuracy procedure is also used to validate the machine results after every election. This is called a Partial Manual Count and is required under Texas law. The partial manual count is a postelection hand count of ballots cast in the election that were electronically tabulated. It is conducted to ensure the accuracy of the tabulation of the electronic voting system results. The races, precincts, and locations to be handcounted through this process are selected by the Office of the Texas Secretary of State, not by local election officials, political parties, or candidates. It is a time-consuming and meticulous procedure that took three days following the November election.
SEE LETTER TO THE EDITOR PAGE 8A But none of this is good enough for the Hays County Republican Party, a group that seems to live in an alternate, Bizarro world. With this group, what’s up is down, what’s good is bad, and fiction passes as fact. They just passed a resolution that amounts to having their passport stamped at the border of an alternate universe. They’ve announced that they’re looking at a plan to go solo in the March Primary election.
And going solo would mean no voting machines. Like Ebenezer Scrooge said to everyone who wished him a “Merry Christmas,” the Republicans are saying, “Bah, Humbug!” to modern technology, preferring, instead to use the voting technology of Scrooge’s day: hand-marked, handcounted paper ballots only, thank you! The Ghost of Elections Past will come a-haunting on Election Day.
Then there’s this: the law requires that all ballots be counted within 24 hours after an election. Based on turnout in the 2022 primary, the Republicans could be looking at up to 20,000 ballots. And if they don’t make that deadline, uncounted ballots remain uncounted. As a point of comparison, there were far fewer than 20,000 ballots counted in last year’s partial manual count.
Some other highlights? The Hays County Elections Office would have no role in their primary. The Republicans are throwing years of experience under the bus because, somehow, they think they know better.
Their plan pulls the plug on vote centers and turn the clock back to precinct-based voting. This means voters can only vote at the one location that serves their precinct— whether or not it fits into their schedule or other obligations.
Tell that to a busy, young parent.
Try explaining that to Texas State University students who, for years, have voted at the LBJ Student Center. The Republican plan would end that. The Student Center would serve only students from one precinct. The rest? They’re on their own.
And here’s the rub: if one political party in a primary election puts the kibosh on a joint election contract, voters of the other party—in this case, the Democrats—cannot utilize vote centers. It’s a crazy law, that somehow seems to exemplify the Republican approach to the upcoming primary.
Now here’s where it gets really wild: the Republican plan stiff-arms the Elections Office when it comes to polling places. “We’ll find our own,” they said. “We don’t need you.”
But that isn’t quite working out. Within days of passing their “Amateur Hour Election Resolution,” the Republicans were knocking at the Democrats’ door, hoping to use their polling places on Election Day. But there are a couple of problems with that.
First, the Hays County Democrats have an election contract with the Hays County Elections Office. It doesn’t include the Hays County Republicans who chose not to go that route. And even if the Democrats wanted to say “Yes!” to the Republicans, they can’t unilaterally alter the terms of that contract. Nor can the county. But beyond that, the Hays County Democratic Party doesn’t believe that they should be hosting the Hays County Republican Primary. I strongly suspect voters of both parties would agree.
Like the Democrats, the Hays County Republican Party had every opportunity to act and plan responsibly for the March primary. They still have a chance to do that. If they don’t, they’re failing their voters and they’re failing democracy. Let’s hope a strong dose of reality enters into their deliberations.
Sincerely, Jon Leonard
