Cell Phone Only Voters Making GOTV Phone Banks Obsolete

In the final weeks before Election Day, a scary statistic emerged from the databases at Barack Obama’s Chicago headquarters: more than half the campaign’s targeted swing-state voters under age 29 had no listed phone number. They have adopted a wireless cell phone only lifestyle, effectively immune to the obsolete 20th century "voice phone bank canvassing" get-out-the-vote efforts.

Collin Co. Election Day Vote Center Follow Up

by Michael Handley

Collin County had countywide "Voting Center" polling locations on Election Day, November 6th, 2012.  Election Day Vote Centers worked like Early Voting polling locations where voters living anywhere in Collin County could vote at any of the 67 Voting Centers open around the county on Election Day.

This is a follow up to our November 5th article, Collin Co. Election Day Vote "Anywhere" Centers.  A few locations had wait lines during the day and through out the entire day.  Plano's Carpenter Park Recreation Center location opened with approximately 150 people already waiting in line. The last person to join that line at 7:00 a.m. Tuesday morning, as the Judge called "the polls are open," waited about 70 minutes to vote.  The Carpenter Park Recreation Center wait line ranged from over 70 minutes to about 40 minutes through out the day. About 140 people were waiting in line at that location at 7:00 p.m. Tuesday evening, when the Judge called "the polls are closed." The last person in that closing line voted at 7:50 p.m.

Posted below the "Read more »" jump are the Vote Center ePollBook voter check-in counts. This count does not include manually processed provisional ballots or voters who surrendered their vote by mail ballot to the Election Judges, so they could cast an in-person ballot.

Observer: Texas Democrats, Make Your Move

From The Texas Observer ~ by Eileen Smith

Yes, there have been isolated [Texas Democratic] victories in the form of really good candidates — San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro, his brother Joaquin, the newly elected congressman, and Congressman-elect Pete Gallego who unseated Francesco “Quico” Canseco.  But relying on the random strong candidate instead of building a solid state party infrastructure is like playing the political lottery. You’re just wasting your time and money fantasizing about hitting the jackpot in the form of yet another rising star.

So forget about the great GOP awakening. Now is the perfect time for Texas Democrats to figure out what the hell they’re doing. The default explanation for their dismal showing was that Texas is not just red but bloody red, a stronghold of the Republican Party and ruled with an iron fist by Pharaoh, forcing the Chosen Ones to wander aimlessly in the desert looking for manna from heaven. But now the shifting demographics coupled with a rather clueless opposition party should be working in their favor. In the meantime the only thing Democrats here seem to do is nominate bumbling statewide candidates who can’t do much better than 40 percent. Is that any way to boost morale in a defeatist party so used to losing it’s forgotten how to win?

Read the full article @ The Texas Observer.

Hundreds Of Motor Voters Forced To Cast Provisional Ballots

by Michael Handley

After working the 12 days of early voting as an Election Judge at one of Collin County's busier polling centers, I wrote an article, Broken Texas Motor Voter Registration Process:

Every day during early voting, several people who tried to check-in to vote at my polling location were not listed on the Collin County poll list. The first question I asked these would-be voters was, "when did you register to vote in Collin County?"  The answer most often given by the would-be voters was, "when I changed the address on my driver's license at the DPS (or on the DPS website) after I moved to Collin County," from another Texas county.  A quick voter registration look up on the Texas Secretary of State's "Am I Registered to Vote" web page often found these new, and some not so new, Collin County residents remained registered in the county of their former residence.

The lucky voters who remained registered in their former county of residence got to listen to my short, "you can vote a limited ballot," speech...

The small number of less lucky Collin County voters, who were not registered in any Texas county, got to listen to my short "provisional ballot" speech and proceed through the provisional ballot process...

The broken Texas Motor Voter Registration process has been a top problem for voters and polling place officials for many years...