LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Dear Editor, Back when I was still in high school – a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away – one of my buddies used to bounce around the hallways singing songs from Broadway musicals. One year, the song that captured him (and after one too many renditions, became an unwelcome ear worm for the rest of us) contained the lyrics, “Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles.” It was from “Fiddler on the Roof,” a huge Broadway hit at the time.
The song, sung by the character Motel, a poor tailor, expressed awe, gratitude and pure joy at the fact that his future father-in-law, a milkman named Tevye, had given his daughter permission to marry Motel. Tevye’s plan was for her to marry rich, but she chose to marry for love, much to Motel’s delight Just a few days ago, after all these years, I heard that song bouncing around wildly in my brain – nonstop. No, I wasn’t getting married, so that wasn’t it — not that I could ever explain it to my wife. And I don’t have a daughter who was about to help me welcome a new son- County Republican Party had taken a giant leap out of the past. Not that it necessarily wanted to, but because it had no choice.
While the Party had tried to follow William F. Buckley’s famous ambition to “stand athwart” history, in essence, working to stop the flow of the world’s progress, reality, as it often does, got in the way.
You may have heard about it. But if you haven’t, I’ll share a little background.
Primary elections are coming up on March 3. That’s when the Democratic and Republican voters choose their respective candidates to compete head-to-head in November’s General Election. The parties’ ballots include hopefuls for the United States Senate and House of Representatives, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Members of the Judiciary, State Representatives, State Senators, County Judge, County Commissioners, Justices of the Peace, and other county races.
For the last decade or so, the parties and County have participated in what’s called Joint Primary Elections. They’re just like the November General Elections, except voters only get to cast ballots for the one party or the other — of their choosing. The winners of the two primaries (or, if necessary, the winners of any subsequent Primary runoff elections) move on to the General Election.
With the exception of recruiting and certifying candidates, which is done by the parties, most of the administrative work is performed by the Hays County Elections Office in accordance with the terms of its contracts with the parties. This includes machine testing, preparing ballots, managing the mail ballot program, selecting voting locations, recruiting, training, and assigning poll workers and election judges, providing voting equipment and supplies and delivering them to the polling locations, security, live streaming of any premises containing live ballots, and tallying and certifying the vote.
It’s a great deal of work – very specialized work. It takes expertise, staff experience, training, precision, skill at resolving unexpected problems and, particularly during a busy election, a great deal of patience, flexibility, skill at keeping lines moving, and making sure voters understand that they, themselves, are the most important part of the process.
The local Democratic Party was prepared to go into this Primary Election cycle as it always has – working with both the Republican Party and the Elections Office to make sure voters took part in an election marked by security, integrity, convenience, and absolute accuracy. They kicked off the process during the summer when they signed an agreement with the Hays County Elections Office for its services.
The Republicans seemed to be in no hurry to do this. And months later announced that they were looking at doing their own thing — stiff arming both the Democrats and the Elections Office. (And, truth be told, their own voters.) They were cautioned more than once that without the necessary skills, resources, and experience, this would be easier said than done.
Even if they could pull it off, they’d be inconveniencing their own voters – not to mention Democrats. It would mean outright rejection of the use of secure and accurate. modern voting equipment with a verifiable paper trail, and hitching a ride back a century in a jerry-rigged, unreliable time machine of their own design.
It would mean dismantling the network of countywide vote centers that lets voters cast ballots at any polling place in the county. It would mean added expense and, perhaps more disturbing than anything else, it could mean that voters are turned away because they show up at the wrong polling location. For some, that could mean throwing up their hands in frustration and not voting at all. Could that be what they want?
It comes down to one simple question. Is a hand-marked paper ballot, in an election administered by inexperienced amateurs, more secure than a ballot cast on an electronic voting machine that has gone through rigorous testing, meeting or exceeding standards defined by state and federal law and regulations, more secure than a hand-marked paper ballot that can be compromised by a simple stray pencil mark?
Moving ahead with the Republican proposal would mean dismantling the network of countywide vote centers that let voters cast ballots at any polling place in the county – and not just for Republicans: Democrats, too, would be caught in the crossfire. Through no fault of their own, and due to a half-baked Republican scheme and a nonsensical element of the Texas Election Code, an element that cries out for repeal, Democrats voters would be denied access to countywide vote centers.
But as the clock ticked closer and closer to the Primary Election – mail ballots start going out in less than a week – the Hays County Republicans finally came to the realization that, without the time and without the tools to shore up its crumbling sand castle, they had no choice but to thumb a ride back to the reality of the 21st Century and sign on to a joint Primary.
We welcome their return.
And if Motel Kemzoil was here with us today, I’m sure that, accompanied by Tevye’s fiddling, he’d be singing “Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles!”
Sincerely, Jon Leonard San Marcos
