Voting Time In Houston

[Cheerful Charlie]

Being older than 65, I get to vote by mail. I asked for and got my early ballot. 5 pages worth. Lots of Texas Constitution change measures. Mayor and other offices to fill. Non-partison. From the ballot, no idea who is Democratic. Republican, Green, Libertarian. I have been digging all day in some websites to try to make sane decisions. It is tough. Why do so many young people not vote? First time a 19 year old voter goes to vote and looks at all this stuff they have not the slightest idea who or what to vote for, they will not be voting again. And this is why local election often have truly abysmal turnouts of like 7% of elgible voters. From what I can see so far, the best are "Meh!". There is good information to be had, but only if you know the sites to check, and not all even then are hard to navigate and read. And I have an early ballot, young voters won't have that to guide their due dilligence efforts. And between jobs, children and other duties, not everybody can spend hours digging through obscure websites for clues. All of this makes me sad.

 

[BH]

I live up north from you in Corsicana. We don't have much more people get out and vote in our local races than you do.

 

[Gospel]

If only a portion of the taxpayer funds states receive could be directed towards improving the transparency and accessibility of elections, rather than investing four billion dollars in a soon to be scarcely utilized project like the Brightline train in Florida. I bet Texas has a few less-than-ideal projects, and those funds could have been better utilized to compensate individuals for the collection and presentation of election information on county websites. something like that should be so normal that kids know about it like they know where to get their drivers license.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

What is needed is a nationwide network of progressives to set up websites where voters could get good information and recommendations. Cull out the far right candidates, kooks, people who might have good intentions but no experience.

A ballot one could print out, mark up and take to a voting booth. Republicans like dirty tricks. Last minute moving of voting sites, voter purges, voter challenges. Texas has a site one can access from a computer to find out if you are actually registered to vote. I always check here a few weeks before an election date. There is always the issue of screwing college students.

The big problem is "concerned voters". Those who vote in every, every run off. This is important for judges, city council members, justices of the peace. If the right wing GOP is well organiced, but progressives are not, we get right wingers running our lives.

 

[Elixir]

If only a portion of the taxpayer funds states receive could be directed towards improving the transparency and accessibility of elections, rather than investing four billion dollars in a soon to be scarcely utilized project like the Brightline train in Florida. I bet Texas has a few less-than-ideal projects, and those funds could have been better utilized to compensate individuals for the collection and presentation of election information on county websites. something like that should be so normal that kids know about it like they know where to get their drivers license.

Propose any of that in FL or TX and the fascists will shit a brick. They are in power now, and the LAST thing they want is an informed electorate able to vote in free and fair elections. That is total anathema to their agenda (which consists 100% of holding onto power for power’s sake).

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Strangely enough, in the Houston Metro Area, this is a bright blue spot in Red Texas.
The GOP has been all but wiped out in this area. Naturally guvner Abbott has been jacking with Houston. Election day is November here, then runoffs. Houston has a lot of Black Americans, Latinos, Asians and immigrants. Many local politicians also have strong immigrant backrounds. This is not a GOP friendly crowd. How many cities can boast three Ethiopian cuisine restaurants?

 

[Elixir]

Strangely enough, in the Houston Metro Area, this is a bright blue spot in Red Texas.
The GOP has been all but wiped out in this area. Naturally guvner Abbott has been jacking with Houston. Election day is November here, then runoffs. Houston has a lot of Black Americans, Latinos, Asians and immigrants. Many local politicians also have strong immigrant backrounds. This is not a GOP friendly crowd. How many cities can boast three Ethiopian cuisine restaurants?

Houston and Austin are cool.
In my experience that is, as a Coloradoan.

 

[Derec]

Charlie, what do you think of the mayoral candidates?
It seems to be between John Whitmire and Sheila Jackson Lee. I don't know much about Whitmire, but SJL is one of the stupidest congresscritters in office right now.

 

[southernhybrid]

Strangely enough, in the Houston Metro Area, this is a bright blue spot in Red Texas.
The GOP has been all but wiped out in this area. Naturally guvner Abbott has been jacking with Houston. Election day is November here, then runoffs. Houston has a lot of Black Americans, Latinos, Asians and immigrants. Many local politicians also have strong immigrant backrounds. This is not a GOP friendly crowd. How many cities can boast three Ethiopian cuisine restaurants?

Houston and Austin are cool.
In my experience that is, as a Coloradoan.

San Antonio is even cooler, at least when I lived there in the 70s. It was very progressive, and majority Mexican American, as were most of my nursing instructors. So, I ask those who live in Texas, is San Antonio still a cool place, despite all the sprawl? Of the many places I've lived, San Antone, was one of my favorites.

Despite all the nonsense from the MAGA crowd, Georgia is still the easiest place to vote, compared to the other states where I've lived. We have 3 full weeks of early voting and anyone can request an absentee ballot. The only thing the MAGAs got passed is limiting drop boxes and of course handing our water or snacks. We have a race for mayor too, and I think early voting starts next week. Since most of the conservative white people in my area have signs out for the incumbent, I probably should vote for the alternative. The only other thing I know I will support is the penny sales tax that is used for schools, parks, roads, sidewalks as well as our amazing senior center. Of course, lots of conservatives are up in arms about this penny sales tax. All taxation is evil, even a penny sales tax that is used for things that benefit everyone one way or another. Dumbasses.

Thanks for starting this thread Charlie. I need to see what I can find out about our local election. I can usually find info online, or on the city's Facebook site, but I haven't tried yet.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Oh yeah. Water for thirsty voters. Citizens United. Handing out vast sums of money to candidates is free speech. But handing a voter in a long line at a voting site is not. If I was a Georgia Democrat, I would form an organization, "Water For Thirsty Voters".
Dedicated to that. Registered as an official organization. Now that I had legal standing, I would sue. Giving Georgia two choices. Never again playing such voter harassment games. Or possibly challenging Citizens United and the legal concept action is free speech.

 

[Swammerdami]

Being older than 65, I get to vote by mail. I asked for and got my early ballot. 5 pages worth. Lots of Texas Constitution change measures. Mayor and other offices to fill. Non-partison. ... First time a 19 year old voter goes to vote and looks at all this stuff they have not the slightest idea who or what to vote for, they will not be voting again. And this is why local election often have truly abysmal turnouts of like 7% of elgible voters. ... And I have an early ballot, young voters won't have that to guide their due dilligence efforts. And between jobs, children and other duties, not everybody can spend hours digging through obscure websites for clues. All of this makes me sad.

In California a pamphlet was mailed to each voter, independent of any mail-in ballot. The pamphlet contained objective summary, pro-Yes argument and pro-No argument for each proposition; and IIRC minibios for each candidate on the ballot. (I use past tense because I've not been a California voter for many years.) IIRC, it is permitted to take a sample ballot into the voting-place.

But anyway, it's hard to admire a "democracy" featuring such elections where turnout is extremely low and voters may be unable to form useful opinions. Sometimes I think Americans are overly infatuated with the mechanics of "democratic elections" even when the system is flawed.

I'm afraid it's off-topic but I am reminded of the failed attempt to establish a democracy in Afghanistan. Rather than strengthening the community councils which had been the basis of Afghan politics for centuries, the U.S. staged a "purple finger" national election.

Some factions ... asked for a more decentralized system to accommodate Afghanistan’s diverse ethnic makeup. But ... interim-president, Hamid Karzai, and those around him preferred a system of strong control because it allowed Karzai to concentrate his power vis-à-vis potential rivals. Similarly, the United States preferred such a system because it cultivated unity of command, making it easier to monitor its investments in Afghanistan and to coordinate with the new government.

Thailand's democracy has serious flaws but rural Thai villages and subdistricts hold local elections where voters are quite familiar with the candidates. Instead of a bureaucracy determining eligibility for some welfare programs, benefits may be conferred by show of hands at a village meeting. This bottom-up democracy was so effective that the hypocrite criminal Thaksin Shinawatra declared that "democracy doesn't work at the local level" when he was PM twenty years ago.

Spoiler: Off-topic mini-bio of Thaksin

(Thaksin, leader of the red-shirt terrorists, recently allied with the military junta that deposed his sister and returned just a few weeks ago from his exile in Dubai. During his decades as a billionaire fugitive he bounced around from country to country, traveling with six passports, none of them Thai.)

While PM he posed for a photo with another Head of Government.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Being older than 65, I get to vote by mail. I asked for and got my early ballot. 5 pages worth. Lots of Texas Constitution change measures. Mayor and other offices to fill. Non-partison. From the ballot, no idea who is Democratic. Republican, Green, Libertarian. I have been digging all day in some websites to try to make sane decisions. It is tough. Why do so many young people not vote? First time a 19 year old voter goes to vote and looks at all this stuff they have not the slightest idea who or what to vote for, they will not be voting again. And this is why local election often have truly abysmal turnouts of like 7% of elgible voters. From what I can see so far, the best are "Meh!". There is good information to be had, but only if you know the sites to check, and not all even then are hard to navigate and read. And I have an early ballot, young voters won't have that to guide their due dilligence efforts. And between jobs, children and other duties, not everybody can spend hours digging through obscure websites for clues. All of this makes me sad.

No early ballot? Around here we always have gotten a sample ballot in the mail a few weeks before the election. Even with in-person voting I've never actually voted in the voting booth, I mark up the sample ballot and then just copy that into the machine on voting day.

The ones that give me trouble are the very minor offices where there's simply little information out there. I find being registered Republican quite helpful as they'll send out stuff telling me who to vote for and barring more detailed information I just the vote the opposite of what they say.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In California a pamphlet was mailed to each voter, independent of any mail-in ballot. The pamphlet contained objective summary, pro-Yes argument and pro-No argument for each proposition; and IIRC minibios for each candidate on the ballot. (I use past tense because I've not been a California voter for many years.) IIRC, it is permitted to take a sample ballot into the voting-place.

Here in Nevada we don't get the mini bios. And I find the summaries sometimes less than informative--typically a quick search will usually turn up more useful information. I have yet to see one of the summaries mention the gotchas that might be in a measure. So far there's only been one time a measure passed and exposed something that I didn't learn in 5 minutes with Google and that was the flawed universal background check measure--I saw no mention of the fatal flaw that the FBI was going to tell us to pound sand. (Quite legitimately, the measure was actually inferior to the status quo--they didn't realize that the state already checked the federal database, implementing the measure would actually have the net effect of more work for the FBI while removing the state level check for no gain.)

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Being older than 65, I get to vote by mail. I asked for and got my early ballot. 5 pages worth. Lots of Texas Constitution change measures. Mayor and other offices to fill. Non-partison. From the ballot, no idea who is Democratic. Republican, Green, Libertarian. I have been digging all day in some websites to try to make sane decisions. It is tough. Why do so many young people not vote? First time a 19 year old voter goes to vote and looks at all this stuff they have not the slightest idea who or what to vote for, they will not be voting again. And this is why local election often have truly abysmal turnouts of like 7% of elgible voters. From what I can see so far, the best are "Meh!". There is good information to be had, but only if you know the sites to check, and not all even then are hard to navigate and read. And I have an early ballot, young voters won't have that to guide their due dilligence efforts. And between jobs, children and other duties, not everybody can spend hours digging through obscure websites for clues. All of this makes me sad.

No early ballot? Around here we always have gotten a sample ballot in the mail a few weeks before the election. Even with in-person voting I've never actually voted in the voting booth, I mark up the sample ballot and then just copy that into the machine on voting day.

The ones that give me trouble are the very minor offices where there's simply little information out there. I find being registered Republican quite helpful as they'll send out stuff telling me who to vote for and barring more detailed information I just the vote the opposite of what they say.

We have one website with a spread sheet to list candidates and their party affiliations. Who is Democratic, Republican, or Libertarian. Some may run as Democrats, then skip a few elections, then run as Republican. This site clues me in as to who may be a perennial kook candidate. Not serious candidates who raise no money and are not going to win, so don't waste time with themBallotpedia is sometimes useful. We have one good site, Off The Kuff, that is very useful and tries to interview candidates. Not all respond. And we have sites like the Gay And Lesbian council that tells who is gay friendly, or hostile. They cull out the right wing culture warriors. Sometimes, we get an embarressment of riches. Sometimes we choose good hearts vs good hearts and experience. Sometimes, it is the lessor of evils.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We have one website with a spread sheet to list candidates and their party affiliations. Who is Democratic, Republican, or Libertarian. Some may run as Democrats, then skip a few elections, then run as Republican. This site clues me in as to who may be a perennial kook candidate. Not serious candidates who raise no money and are not going to win, so don't waste time with themBallotpedia is sometimes useful. We have one good site, Off The Kuff, that is very useful and tries to interview candidates. Not all respond. And we have sites like the Gay And Lesbian council that tells who is gay friendly, or hostile. They cull out the right wing culture warriors. Sometimes, we get an embarressment of riches. Sometimes we choose good hearts vs good hearts and experience. Sometimes, it is the lessor of evils.

Yeah, I use the alternative sexuality people as weed-out, also.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

My ballot is in the mail tomorrow. I did the best I can do as careful as I can do.

 

[southernhybrid]

Oh yeah. Water for thirsty voters. Citizens United. Handing out vast sums of money to candidates is free speech. But handing a voter in a long line at a voting site is not. If I was a Georgia Democrat, I would form an organization, "Water For Thirsty Voters".
Dedicated to that. Registered as an official organization. Now that I had legal standing, I would sue. Giving Georgia two choices. Never again playing such voter harassment games. Or possibly challenging Citizens United and the legal concept action is free speech.

To tell you the truth, not once have I ever seen anyone even trying to give out water bottles to people standing in line to vote, and it's insane to think that someone's vote is going to be influenced by receiving a bottle of water. You can bring your own bottle of water or snacks if you're not able to go without it for long. And, the people who work at the polls can have water and snacks available for voters too. That shows you how stupid the Republicans are, but most of us already knew that.

Plus, I've never had to wait more than 20 minutes when I've voted early and it's usually more like 5 minutes. I know it's longer if places like Atlanta, but there are probably times when the lines are shorter and anyone can ask for an absentee ballot, which I've done before, but I don't mind early voting in person, so that's what I usually do. If I vote on Election Day, I vote in the big Methodist church on the corner of my street. I voted there once and they had coffee, water and snacks for voters, which is still okay. I just can't hand out water within so many feet of the polls. Until recently, my state of origin, New Jersey, didn't even have any early voting, so I can't complain about voting in Georgia, even if the Republican MAGA nuts have attempted to make it harder for minorities who they assume are Democrats, to vote. None of my Black friends have had any problems voting.

I did find out what we are voting for in my city, mayor, a penny sales tax for education, and a city council member. I might vote for the Black female who identifies as a socialist and an activist. I couldn't find any more background info on her, but the thought of someone like her being mayor of my small conservative city is so amusing that I can at least give her one vote from an old white woman. It's a three way race, and the old, white guy who is the incumbent seems to be pretty popular, so the woman doesn't have a chance. I always vote for the penny sales tax. This year it all goes to schools and educational related things. I think that's a great idea.

We never get information on who is running. I actually found out about who's running on Facebook, of all places. And they wonder why so few people vote in these small elections.

 

[bilby]

We routinely get turnouts in the 90 percent range here due to compulsory voting; I have never waited more than twenty minutes to vote, and at the most recent ballot (last week's referendum) I didn't have to wait at all.

I have worked at a polling place at several elections (unfortunately I wasn't able to this year due to other work commitments), and I don't recall ever seeing long queues apart from first thing in the morning, when people were lining up before the start of voting, so obviously they had to wait until the polls officially opened before we could let them cast their ballots.

Turnout rarely changes radically from one election to the next, and turnout at particular polling sites is highly predictable. While there are occasional reasons why a given polling place might be unexpectedly popular, if voters routinely have to wait in line for long periods, this can only be a consequence of a deliberate decision to under staff that site; And if the lines are always long in some places and short in others, this is either a result of extreme incompetence by the people managing the voting, or a deliberate voter suppression tactic - and both should be unlawful in any sensibly designed constitutional arrangement.

Long lines at one election should lead to election officials being asked to explain what went wrong, and what they will do to prevent a recurrence. Long lines at several elections in a row should result in election officials being fired and replaced by competent managers.

 

[southernhybrid]

I do wish we had mandatory voting here, but we don't. Voter apathy, imo, is a bigger problem than voter suppression. As far as lines goes, at least in Georgia, anyone can ask for an absentee ballot without a reason, if they don't want to wait in line. I've done that before. It's very easy to vote that way. Republicans didn't like it because they thought that only Democrats vote absentee, but now they are encouraging their own supporters to vote absentee, as they have finally realized the mistake they made by criticizing absentee voting. The only reason I don't vote absentee all of the time is because it's easy to vote during the 3 weeks of early voting, and I enjoy voting in person. I've even had interesting conversations with other voters, when I've had to wait in line. I've lived in 7 different states and it's easier to vote in Georgia, compared to any of the others, assuming they haven't changed things a lot since I lived in those states.

My county threw out one of the Democrats who helped run voting and replaced her with a Republican. That was wrong, but it's still easy to vote here. So, that's what we're stuck with for now.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Plus, I've never had to wait more than 20 minutes when I've voted early and it's usually more like 5 minutes. I know it's longer if places like Atlanta, but there are probably times when the lines are shorter and anyone can ask for an absentee ballot, which I've done before, but I don't mind early voting in person, so that's what I usually do. If I vote on Election Day, I vote in the big Methodist church on the corner of my street. I voted there once and they had coffee, water and snacks for voters, which is still okay. I just can't hand out water within so many feet of the polls. Until recently, my state of origin, New Jersey, didn't even have any early voting, so I can't complain about voting in Georgia, even if the Republican MAGA nuts have attempted to make it harder for minorities who they assume are Democrats, to vote. None of my Black friends have had any problems voting.

You're not black. The lines are not remotely evenly distributed.

(Although one year we didn't vote because the line was horrendous--that was the time we switched to electronic voting and they really messed things up, nowhere near the needed capacity. News said 90 minutes.)