(Dear Austin Statesman: In case you hadn't noticed, other "news" agencies have become aware of actual "issues" in the TAC race, like yet another batch of thousands of active voters that seem to have been deleted by the Tax Office. Check it out, here's a link! - promoted by Mark Duncan)
I've been researching wrongly purged voters since November 2006 and calling for better handling of voter documents and training of election judges/clerks.
Just recently, we broke a story about active voters who were suspected of having moved and purged. Many of them have not moved from their address on record. Many of those that had moved completed all required procedures and were nonetheless removed from the voter rolls.
I've seen sloppy data entry, and the removal of a voter simply based on his first and last name (not middle, not birthdate, etc)
The story has already gained the attention of two voting rights organizations outside of Travis County. The story has gained traction on local television, and local papers, but not at the Austin American Statesman.
This past week, the Austin American Statesman reported the possible cancellation of the voter registrations of many people on the voter database. Fingers are pointed from the incumbent Travis County voter registrar, Nelda Spears, to the Secretary of State and from the SOS to Nelda Spears.
But the pressing and real issue is the right to vote for the voters involved, while the bureaucracy reprograms computers and make their systems work.
This problem occurred when a statewide computer system developed by the Secretary of State matched the registrations of voters among the 254 counties in Texas. Until recently, there was no state database, voter registration was done in each county, and no reconciliation was ever done.
If a voter moved from one county to a new county of residence, they simply register in the new county. There was never a requirement to "cancel" your earlier registration.
Now, these old registrations are causing people to be purged from the voter rolls even when they've been actively registered in Travis County for years. Ms. Spears office currently does not know how many of the purged voters are really people who should still be on the rolls.
These voters are legally and accurately registered and should be eligible and allowed to vote in the 2008 primary elections. But because of a computer glitch and/or faulty data entry dates, they have been cancelled and deleted from the rolls.
Ms. Spears office's response to this is to hope people know if they have been deleted and to re-register before the February 4 deadline.
When it comes to our sacred right to vote, tossing your hands up and blaming the computer doesn't cut it.
Nelda Spears office knows exactly who was deleted. She can print a list of them, with their history in the other county, and simply determine which should be reinstated.
Failing that, it is a simple solution to create an addendum list of "undetermined" cancellations. If the voter appears at their polling location, finds they are not on the voter rolls, the election judge could check the addendum, allow the voter to vote a provisional ballot, and the ballot board could determine validity of the voter's registration after the election.
No voter in Travis County should be denied the right to vote due to a failed bureaucracy in the voter registration system.
I'm running for Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar because I have the experience, vision, and nuts-and-bolts know how to solve problems like this in the office. I will lead the effort to create a model Voter Registration division that we can export to counties across our great state.
(While the Travis County District Attorney's race has become hot, this race is equally important for Travis Democrats as it could have statewide implications (given the Voter Registration component of the office). - promoted by Mark Duncan)
With the Central Labor Council preparing to make endorsements in the Democratic Primary, I’ve taken a moment to reflect on my long history of work with and in support of the organized labor movement.
I grew up in a union family. While working for the State, I was a member of TSEU/CWA and AFSCME. I am now a member of the AFSCME Retiree Group and TSEU.
The first bill I worked as an aide to State Senator Kent Caperton was the due process employment bill for teachers. I’m proud of our work passing that bill to give job security and continuing contracts to public education employees
I was taught about the legislative process by Sen. Oscar Mauzy, one of the strongest labor movement leaders. While working for Mauzy, my proudest moment was working to bring worker’s compensation to farm workers.
During 12 years in the Texas House, I can point to a 100% labor record, 100% on consumer and environmental protection, and 100% on civil and worker’s rights.
You’ll not find a better friend of labor.
I want to bring my committment to the cause of organized labor to the second largest office in county government.
For the past 16 years, the incumbent has operated an at-will employment office. It’s unconscionable in 2007 for an elected official in Travis County to have an at-will employment policy.
That will change immediately when I take office. On my first day in office, I’ll impose a just-cause employment policy for employees of the Tax Office.
I pledge to do a case-by-case review of employees’ compensation in relation to their pay grades, and inequities caused by market study adjustments shall be remedied. I’ll be an advocate for my employees in the budget process.
In addition, I opposed privatization of state services as a legislator, and I oppose the privatization of our delinquent tax collection efforts at the Tax Office. Decisions of filing lawsuits and taking people’s property are serious decisions, and I’ll work to see that this is done fairly and only after all other remedies have been tried to help struggling families.
County employees deserve no less, and they’ll have my support from day one, not just when election time rolls around.
(Here's another candidate diary for discussion. - promoted by BOR)
Why hasn't Nelda Spears Filed her Personal Financial Statements?
On Tuesday, my campaign manager, Elliott McFadden, filed a complaint with the County Attorney against Nelda Spears for failing to file her Personal Financial Statements with the County Clerk in the years 2001, 2002, and 2003.
These reports include information about all sources of income, debt, and boards elected officials serve on. They are required to be filed every year by elected officials to ensure there are no conflicts of interest. Failure to file is a Class B misdemeanor. The Spears campaign response in the Austin Chronicle has been to hide behind the statute of limitations on these offenses.
This is absurd! Elected officials should be held to a higher standard than being able to get away with breaking the law because time has run out. Instead of arguing over which law Ms. Spear broke, she should just file the missing information.
As a leader on ethics reform in the State Legislature, I believe in full discloure to ensure there are no secret deals and no hidden conflicts of interest. I filed my Personal Financial Statements each year as a legislator which are available to view at the Texas Ethics Commission.
Though I am not required by law to do so, I am disclosing on my website my client list since I retired from the Legislature. I encourage Ms. Spears to file these missing reports prompting so that public can be assured there is no conflict of interest.
I'm Glen Maxey and I'm running as a Democrat for Travis County Tax Assessor Collector.
Glen Maxey is running for tax assessor-collector and voter registrar for Travis and we haven't even mentioned it here on BOR. I can see Glen not starting the thread, but no reason someone else can't. I think it's great news!
Austin Chronicle Campaign Buzz: June 29, 2007
In declaring for the race, Maxey is taking on 16-year incumbent Nelda Wells Spears, who had been rumored to be considering retirement. Asked Monday whether she's running for re-election for another four-year term, Wells Spears responded simply, "Yes, I am." She said she has "several projects in the works" that she wants to see to completion, citing specifically a computer-imaging system for records retrieval still in development that will "smooth the work flow," as well as additional training programs for employees. "We don't get many complaints about our public service," she adds, "but one is too many."
We are sad to announce the passing of Mary "Shorty" Maxey, mother to Representative Glen Maxey. Mary passed away at the youthful age of 87 this past Sunday. Burnt Orange Report would like to extend our deepest condolences to our friend and fellow writer Glen.
As I am prone to do, I've left this to the last minute (even after getting my diploma and officially graduating from the University of Texas, Hook 'Em).
By the time you read this, I will be in transit to the Austin airport from Fredericksburg, where I will then board a JetBlue plane with my mother and my cat bound for Boston, Massachusetts.
Yes, I'm moving to Cambridge to work for ActBlue, the clearinghouse for Democratic online fundraising, through at least 2008. I'm excited as all get out to return to an area I first experienced as Texas' Youngest Delegate to the 2004 National Convention. At the same time, it's a huge shift from my beloved Texas to which I do hope to return one day. There are too many things left undone, fights not yet fought, reforms not yet made, and victories not yet won.
But for now, I'm going to pour my energies into something I've always loved- building the infrastructure to allow Democrats wherever they may be to build the party, the brand, and the candidates that win elections. Money can be a dirty business, but ActBlue is reforming that system- equalizing the playing field for the small donor and bringing the progressive movement transparency.
As such, like Byron before me, this means big changes to Burnt Orange Report. Because I will be working in a netroots oriented trade, I'm able to retain ownership of BOR for the time being and my new role will be that of Publisher- taking care of finances, technical issues, data, and staffing with some irregular writing of my own from time to time.
Matt Glazer is taking over the Editorial Guidance of the blog for me. Phillip Martin would be joining him in that effort but both he and Ryan Goodland due to unique job conflicts working at the Legislature are going on hiatus for the remainder of the session. Phillip may write some irregular pieces like myself as his time allows.
But with every closing door there is a window opened and the timing couldn't have been more perfect. Three new writers are coming on board adding more diverse voices to BOR while keeping in line with our tradition of the youngest blogging staff in the state and our history of fighting for progressive reform in policy and the party.
Sam Jones recently graduated from the University of North Texas and is part of the leadership committee for Denton County. Inspired into Democratic politics by Chris Bell, he was deputy North Texas Field Director under Josh Berthume who just launched The Texas Blue project. That team helped found a Young Democrats chapter and then raise $10,000 for Bell. With the addition of Sam and Todd, BOR will finally be able to fill the gaping hole that has been the Metroplex in our staff.
Glen Maxey is someone that most all of you are already familiar with, be you Establishment types or more grassrootsy. I've been proud to be mentored by Glen, work with him on probably a dozen campaigns in 3 years, and serve with him on the Democracy for Texas steering committee. I've personally asked Glen to come on board BOR to write when the inspiration strikes as he's the most knowledgeable technocrat/rules/history/legislation guy around with a story behind just about every thing you can imagine in Texas politics.
I want to thank all of you- the readers, the writers, fellow bloggers, and individually Al Gore, John Courage, and Howard Dean who collectively got me into politics and kept me there. One doesn't just happen to fall into the addiction of blogging 40 hours a week (literally) without some pure driven hope behind it all.
I may be moving into the land of Blue Bloods, but I'll always bleed Burnt Orange and be reading the Report.
Seeing as we've got nothing else much going on today, I thought I'd take this as an opportunity to point out some comments made as part of the discussions that have spawned yet another 100+ comment thread.
Make no mistake, the lion's share of the credit for the Democrats' win in CD 23 goes to Ciro Rodriguez, his campaign team and volunteers, and the outstanding support provided by the combined effort of the DCCC, TX Democratic Party and the DNC. Enormous credit also goes to the hard and effective work by organized labor, Hispanic advocacy groups and the progressive community overall.
I am of course very proud of the work the Lone Star Project played to raise funds, conduct research, and help coordinate the tenacious fight against Tom DeLay's mid decade redistricting scheme. The final stages of the Court battle alone cost well over $250,000. At a time when spirits were down, and DeLay was riding high, it was important that we fought back.
I founded the Lone Star Project with the strong belief that facts, presented clearly and forcefully, are one of the best ways to promote Democratic views, values and candidates to both the media and the voters. I am continually grateful to those who support the Lone Star Project's goals.
I also strongly believe that when mistakes are made, they should be acknowledged and corrected. When rereading the Lone Star Project release, written quickly following Ciro's victory, it has an unintended, but clearly immodest tone. I apologize and will work hard to do better.
Matt Angle
Director - Lone Star Project
Kudos to Matt! In the post related to that, Glen Maxey made another comment in regards to preparing for 2008 and John Cornyn (which you can read here) that I wanted to clip out an interesting section.
I'm ready to saddle up, circle the wagons, get on the same team or any other slogan anyone wants to put on it to move forward.
We have exactly one year to put in place infrastructure, tools, leaders, candidates, plans and finances to do all of things folks in these posts are wanting to do.
Here's some of my to-do list for 2007 (in no particular order):
1) I'm ready to assist with the critical piece of recruiting candidates to run in races all over the state. We all have been kicking ourselves for not having candidates running for local offices where we could have won in 2006. I'm accepting a large amount of blame and kicking myself that we (I) didn't find a candidate to run for JP in Pct 2 in Travis. It's obvious just a DEM on the ballot would have been enough to take back that seat from the Republicans.
If we want statewide candidates to win, we have to have folks running for all these local countywide, Constable, JP, and judicial seats. EVERY. DAMN. ONE.
2) I think we should deregulate the Party's affairs from statute so we can make some of our conventions and other Party rules more productive and workable. Takes a statutory change and we should do that. Then the Party can make its delegate selection and convention processes more workable. (Ex. It is asinine to have precinct conventions at 7:15 on election night. If the statute didn't mandate it, the Party (SDEC) could adopt rules to perhaps have the first phase on our delegate selection on a Saturday. (Current way that this happens now in about 200 counties is that the same people who are at precinct caucuses are the folks at the county convention. We might think of letting these counties just have a county meeting and caucus by precinct as the first step at the county convention , for example. [Not proposing anything here, just giving an example]).
3) We're going to make the True Blue Action lists a organizing tool for the presidential candidates in Texas. Mario Champion is working on the programming now, and we'll roll it out early in 2007. One of the biggest challenges for presidential campaigns is how to organize in 8500 precincts in Texas for conventions. Making this available to the volunteers and supporters of ANY and ALL candidates will give these campaigns an important tool to allow these campaigns to play in Texas.
5) Lots of folks around Texas have expressed an interest in using online tools to clean up and prepare voter lists for 2008 in critical areas of the state. We should create the tools for that to happen to update both True Blue Action site and the VAN database of TDP. (True Blue Action PAC's policy from our inception has been to share data with TDP.)
There's lots to do, and a year to do it. I think we ought to build a statewide "To Do" list and all roll up our sleeves and get to it.
The Henley campaign does its own volunteer driven poll in TX-07 as reported in this BOR journal.
That 31 percent advantage Culberson used to have is almost 2/3 cut away. That 31 percent is down to 12.
Culberson: 51 percent said they would or probably would vote for him. Henley: 39 percent said they would or probably would vote for him.
10 percent undecided.
Of course, it's an internal poll that may or may not be as scientific, but I would say that the trend of the loss of support shown by polls on Republican incumbants from Lamar Smith to Ron Paul is good to see.
The Democrats up at the North Texas Liberal blog aren't too happy after getting their application for the Texas Democratic Party credit card denied of all things.
I do owe thanks to the party for the good laugh this morning when I was denied the Democratic Party credit card. I'm debt-free, with the exception of a mortgage, have a high FICO score, and I save over half of my better-than-modest annual income. My credit history is unblemished. I'm not playing by the big money rules, though.
I don't have revolving balances and was therefore denied the opportunity to contribute to the party that supposedly opposes the assault on the middle class. I thought I'd make an exception to my disdain for the credit card industry (I do have a card which I pay off every month) and help out, but your issuing bank wouldn't let me. Hilarious.
I don't need the card and I've lost nothing without it; I just thought it would be a good way to help. You won't take money from an affluent, responsible consumer, but I'm sure you have plenty of contributors with the card who are carrying balances at usurious rates while struggling to pay for their children's healthcare, education, etc.
I don't use a credit card enough to where the few $$ the party would make off of it could exactly compete with the TDP's more well-heeled donors. But I guess NTL does have a point in regards to the party of the middle class using credit card usage as a source of revenue.
I'll be updating the True Blue Travis page related to this, but check out the new and upcoming tools as part of True Blue Action, the PAC created by Chris Bell's Field Director Glen Maxey. The best part about all of that is that it's being integrated to help candidates up and down the ticket in addition to Bell and most importantly, will live on beyond November 7, 2006.
I just learned on the coordinators conference call that Glen Maxey will be joining the Bell campaign as the Field Director. A formal press release will be issued tomorrow, June 27th. This will bring a jolt to grassroots energy to the Bell campaign and be a unifying force as we head into the fall.
I can confirm that the rumors are true having just gotten off the phone with Mr. Maxey himself. He will be coming on board the Chris Bell campaign to direct the statewide field program supporting the development of online tools (many of which got my nerdy side grin like a schoolboy when described).
And anyone who knows Glen knows that it will be a field program that turns out base voters for Democratic candidates like Chris Bell and will be a campaign that helps and aides Democrats to win at the statewide level and down the ballot. (Personally, it sure sounded like the beginnings of a field program that could serve as the core of the Texas coordinated campaign...) Speaking of coordinated campaigns, Glen will still be co-chairing the Travis effort as well as supporting in a couple other places; it's more of a natural fit as most tools are scalable and integrated with county campaigns.
While I know I'm not a "sunshine, puppies, and unicorns" type of blogger I near giddy to see another piece of the unity puzzle be put together with this e-mail going out to many Democrats today.
Dear Fellow Democrat,
As Chairman of our Party and the Democratic Nominee for Governor, we are writing you today to ask you to help our friend Glen Maxey.
Glen ran a spirited campaign for Chair of our party, and spurred a serious discussion about the future for Democrats in our state. We thank Glen for his many contributions to our state, and for all he's done to elect Democrats and make our Party stronger. We need Glen's talents and energy working for our ticket.
Today, we are asking you to contribute to Glen's campaign account to pay the final outstanding bills from his State Chair campaign. Glen would like to put this campaign debt behind him as quickly as possible so he can go full steam on some exciting new endeavors benefiting our Party and our November, 2006 ticket.
This problem occurred when a statewide computer system developed by the Secretary of State matched the registrations of voters among the 254 counties in Texas. Until recently, there was no state database, voter registration was done in each county, and no reconciliation was ever done.
The first bill I worked as an aide to State Senator Kent Caperton was the due process employment bill for teachers. I’m proud of our work passing that bill to give job security and continuing contracts to public education employees
For the past 16 years, the incumbent has operated an at-will employment office. It’s unconscionable in 2007 for an elected official in Travis County to have an at-will employment policy.
