November, 2008:

This sounds about right.

House Speaker Tom Craddick’s critics say they’ve got enough signed pledges against him to make his re-election all but impossible.

But Craddick’s opponents have yet to coalesce around a challenger seeking to replace him, ensuring that behind-the-scenes jockeying for one of the most coveted political offices in Texas could continue right up until the Legislature convenes Jan. 13.

If this were a retention election, like some states have for judges, I feel confident that Tom Craddick would be voted out. The problem is that this is basically a multi-candidate special election, and under any scenario I can think of at this time, Craddick will have more votes than any of his eight or so challengers. I don’t know if House rules require a majority or not, but even if it goes to a runoff, I have to think he’d be enough people’s second choice to hang on to his office. More simply put, as Patricia Kilday Hart noted in a nice overview of the Speaker’s race, “You can’t vote for speaker a guy named ‘Anybody But Craddick'”. I hate to say it, but until it’s Craddick versus one consensus candidate, not Tom Craddick Versus The World, he’s the favorite.

[Rep. Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton, a former Craddick ally who recently announced his own candidacy for speaker,] said he has about 15 members who are ready to emerge publicly as his “second wave” once it becomes evident he can be elected speaker.

“They just want to feel comfortable that there can be life after Tom. That’s all there is to it,” Solomons said. “It’s not as if they dislike Tom. It’s not as if they want to hang him on a tree. But they also understand where we are, here. A lot of that is sinking in now because of the reality of the numbers.”

Solomons won’t say how many of his GOP colleagues make up his first wave of support.

“I have enough to make it clear that Tom can’t win, but when they stand up, it makes it more clear,” he said. “I think we are two or three weeks away from getting this thing decided.”

That sounds a lot like the old newsgroup claim that the lurkers support me in email. I’m skeptical of Solomons’ statement because I’d bet that other Speaker hopefuls could say the same thing to some degree. I hope one of them is right, but until members put their cards on the table and make their intentions known, it’s all wishful thinking.

The Star Telegram talks about what the election of Wendy Davis to the State Senate means.

With Davis, they now have 12 members — one more than the 11 votes needed to block legislation in the 31-member Senate — and hope to expand to what they would consider a lucky 13 if Chris Bell wins a runoff for a Houston-area seat.

[…]

Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, who has led Senate Democrats since 2003, said that senators from both parties traditionally put the interests of their districts above partisanship, with Democrats and Republicans often coalescing along rural-urban lines or forming blocs based on particular issues.

Nevertheless, she said, “there are a few core what I’d call non-negotiables for Senate Democrats.” She said they will be “absolutely united” against any attempt to revive a voter identification bill, a measure Democrats blocked last year in a confrontation with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the Senate’s Republican presiding officer.

Other non-negotiables, she said, would include legislation that Democrats perceive as attempts to weaken the state’s public education system or diminish voting rights. Moreover, she said, Democrats are likely to “congeal” around other issues such as insurance, healthcare and consumer protection.

[…]

Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, who grew up in Saginaw, said that Democrats, with their strengthened bargaining position, might refuse to support certain items in the budget unless they have assurances that state children’s health programs will be fully funded to their satisfaction.

The new Senate configuration also dilutes conservative Republican control of the chamber, Watson said, and creates “a greater opportunity” for bipartisan cooperation. “It swings power back toward the center — not all the way there, but it moves it in that direction,” he said.

The Senate requires a two-thirds vote to bring up legislation, meaning 11 senators can stop a bill from coming to the floor. Davis’ added vote makes it easier for Democrats to forge a bill-stopping bloc.

In particular, it makes the caucus less dependent on the health of Sen. Mario Gallegos and the transitory goodwill of Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst; you may recall Dewhurst’s attempt to pull a fast one last year when Sen. Carlos Uresti was home sick. Davis’ presence gives them some slack. It also means they’re less dependent on the whims of Sen. Eddie Lucio, who wasn’t exactly a model of dependability. All these are very good things. Given the budget battles that are likely to come up next year, having more leverage and one more voice for progressive principles will be huge.

And of course, we can still do better than that. If having twelve Democratic Senators is good, having thirteen would be super. That means doing whatever needs to be done to get Chris Bell elected on December 16. If we’re really lucky, this will be the last legislative session with Rick Perry as Governor. Wouldn’t it be great if it was with the most Democratic legislature he’s had to face since his first term? Please go visit Chris Bell.com and see what you can do to help. Thanks very much.

Finally, you have to wonder if the Democratic establishment up in North Texas isn’t kicking itself over a couple of missed opportunities to make even bigger inroads in the Senate. Sen. Chris Harris, whose district covers parts of Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant counties, won with an unimpressive 54% of the vote against a complete non-entity named Melvin Willms. One can only imagine what might have happened had he faced a challenger of Wendy Davis’ qualities and resources. I can’t wait to get statewide precinct data to see what might have been there. And in Dallas County, Sen. John Carona was re-elected with 56.3% against Rain Minns, who I thought was smart and ambitious, but also young and way underfunded. Given how much more Democratic Dallas is these days, you’d think Carona (and for that matter, US Rep. Pete Sessions) would have had a bigger target on his back, but it wasn’t to be. 2012, anyone?

Have I mentioned lately how glad I am that Sheriff-elect Adrian Garcia administered such a thorough butt-kicking to Tommy Thomas? Apparently, Thomas has not been particularly gracious or professional in defeat.

Garcia soundly beat Tommy Thomas by 12 points on election night after a bitter campaign. As we first reported, Thomas never called Garcia afterwards. And while Garcia calls his one meeting since with Thomas cordial, it hasn’t exactly been easy for Garcia to get vital information out of him. Last week he asked Sheriff Thomas for key documents about spending and the jail investigation.

“I have not received them,” Garcia said. “It concerns me, but we’re moving forward.”

Stay classy, Tommy. In the end, this won’t matter much – unlike, say, the Presidential transition, the things that need to be dealt with in the Sheriff’s office can wait a couple of weeks. What’s important is that the change is coming, and everyone knows it. Even if Tommy Thomas doesn’t want to do anything about it.

The recount in HD105 can now begin, according to a Dallas district court judge, who ruled he did not have the jurisdiction to act on the Democratic lawsuit over “emphasis votes”.

State District Judge Jim Jordan on Tuesday said legal questions over how best to conduct a recount in the House District 105 race should be addressed. But, he said, his court wasn’t the correct venue for it.

“I was looking forward to this case,” Judge Jordan said in ruling that only an appellate court or the state Supreme Court has jurisdiction. “It has some interesting issues I would have enjoyed working with. And it has issues that need dealing with.”

Judge Jordan issued his jurisdictional ruling after hearing all the evidence and testimony in the case that centers on two hot-button election issues – straight-party voting and electronic voting machines.

Democratic Party attorneys, who filed the suit Friday, said they had not decided whether they would appeal the ruling.

Unless another court gets involved, Dallas County elections officials will begin the recount Monday in the District 105 race using the most recent instructions issued directly to them by the Texas secretary of state’s office. Those say that “deselected” or “emphasis” votes from electronic machines should not be counted.

[…]

Among the arguments presented during two days of testimony were whether the secretary of state should be a party to the suit, whether any “emphasis” or “deselected” votes existed and what orders Judge Jordan would have been able to hand down if he did have jurisdiction.

Judge Jordan said Tuesday that if a higher court rules that he does have jurisdiction, he has already weighed testimony, evidence and arguments about the case itself.

“I’m ready to rule if they kick it back,” he said.

I’d like to see someone address these issues, too, though ideally it would be the Legislature. In the meantime, let’s get this recount going.

I’m going to take a holiday break from the precinct data, but don’t worry, I’ve got more stuff in the works. And yes, Peter Wang, I promise to do an analysis of the Steve Radack-Dexter Handy race. In the meantime, here are a few other views of the data:

Marc Campos has some pie charts that show voting behavior in Harris County in precincts that are 70% or more Anglo, black, and Hispanic. As someone who’s been digging through precinct data for days and days now, I don’t think it told me much that I didn’t already know, but it’s interesting to look at anyway. If you prefer pictures to all the numbers I’ve been throwing at you, you’ll appreciate these charts, so check them out.

Meanwhile, new BOR front-pager Katherine Haenschen takes a look at the counties that had the greatest increase in Democratic votes over 2004. I covered some of this earlier, but she goes into some more depth, and sees some new things. I’m glad the idea that Democrats made gains in places you wouldn’t have expected is being more widely recognized. She’s got more number-crunching in the works, so keep an eye on it.

And finally, Greg breaks down the Harris County vote into City of Houston/non-City of Houston components. A bigger share of the vote inside city limits like we saw this year would be a very nice thing to continue to have.

The recount in HD105 has not gotten started yet, but there’s plenty of courtroom action in the meantime.

The crux of the Dallas County case involves straight-party voting on electronic voting machines. When someone votes a straight-party ticket but then also selects the name of a candidate within that party in a particular race, electronic machines “deselect” that candidate. If no other candidate is chosen, no vote is counted in that race.

On paper ballots, however, if someone votes a straight-party ticket and then selects a candidate from that party in a particular race, the vote for that candidate still counts. Democrats call this “emphasis voting” in both paper ballot and electronic machine voting.

Attorneys for the Democratic Party this week said the state’s election law instructs officials to count those votes.

A memo from the Texas Secretary of State’s Office to Dallas County elections officials last week said that deselected or emphasis votes from electronic machines should not be counted.

But an earlier memo to all Texas elections administrators and county clerks said to count emphasis votes. That October memo did not indicate whether state officials were referring to paper ballots, electronic voting machines or both.

On Monday, Republican attorneys accused Democrats of trying to use the courts to contest the election results when that can be done only in front of the state House – typically after a recount.

“It just goes to show why it’s important to have this type of discussion after the … [recount] rather than before,” said Wade Emmert, who is representing Ms. Harper-Brown.

I actually think it would have been better to have had this argument before we started voting, so that everyone understood the rules going in and so that interested parties could try to better educate voters about the procedures, but it’s too late for that now. I suspect what Mr. Emmert means is that this should be done during an election contest, when an appointed chairperson could interview the “emphasis voters” and try to ascertain their intent. We may yet endure that scenario.

Phillip and KT have been discussing the legal aspects of this. While I respect Phillip’s arguments, I don’t agree with them. I say this because for the first time in my life, I pushed the straight-ticket Democratic button this year. I then went to one specific race, and de-selected the Democratic candidate in that race. This was not an “emphasis” vote, it was a deliberate and intentional choice on my part to not cast a vote for that particular candidate. I don’t know what kind of e-voting machines they use in Dallas, but here in Harris taking this action caused a screen to pop up informing me that I was causing that vote to go away. It’s certainly possible that someone could dismiss that screen without understanding it, but it was there, and it was more than I had expected. That makes me highly skeptical of this argument. KT sees it the same way.

While I agree that this is a poor time for the Secretary of State to announce these different interpretations of the law for paper (absentee) ballots versus electronic ones, it seems to me there really is a fundamental difference in the two types of ballot. Checking the straight-ticket box on a paper ballot simply marks one box. I can totally understand how someone, seeing the vast swath of unchecked boxes that follow, could want to go to a particular race and literally or metaphorically underline a candidate they really like. With the eSlate, at least here in Harris, clicking the “straight ticket” button fills in the box of every candidate of that party on the ballot. An “emphasis vote” here, in addition to the aforementioned warning screen, blanks out the box for that candidate; the summary screen at the end also informs you that you made no selection in that race. I’m sorry, but the most charitable thing I could say about someone who did all that and walked away assuming they had voted for the person in question is that they are unobservant. I have a real hard time accepting the argument that they intended to cast a vote in the race given these conditions.

Now, this is not to say that we couldn’t do a better job with e-voting machine interfaces. Maybe when you cast a straight-party vote, it should gray everything out, inform you that you have cast a vote for every member of that party on the ballot, then ask you if 1) you want to undo any of those votes, and 2) if you want to add votes in races where there wasn’t a candidate from your party; if you answer “no” to each, it takes you straight to the finish line. That at least would clear up the intent issue once and for all. But I still don’t think that intent is in question here, at least not based on what I’ve seen so far. Maybe the courtroom arguments will sway me, I don’t know. I look forward to hearing them.

UPDATE: I mistakenly misrepresented KT’s argument, which was the opposite of Phillip’s. The post has been updated to reflect that.

If studying all the precinct data for Harris County seems too daunting, you can get a pretty good representation of the county in a smaller scale by studying HD133, where Rep.-elect Kristi Thibaut unseated freshman Rep. Jim Murphy in a rematch of 2006. With one lone exception, the result in HD133 mirrored the countywide result for every single Democrat that was on the ballot; the exceptional case was for the 333rd Civil Court, where Democrat Goodwille Pierre nipped Judge Tad Halbach in the district. No other district I’ve looked at comes anywhere near to this similarity.

There’s another aspect in which HD133 offers a good lesson on Harris County as a whole, and that’s in the matter of turnout, especially when compared to 2006. To illustrate, let’s look at how Thibaut did in each year. There’s not that many precincts in HD133, so we can look at them individually. Unlike some other districts, HD133 is basically split between CDs 07 and 09, with Westheimer being a dividing line through the district separating the 7th to the north and the 9th to the south. Here’s a look at the precincts in each CD from 2006:

CD07 - 2006

Pcnct  Votes  Turnout  Murphy Thibaut  T Pct  T Margin
======================================================
130     1295    54.09     918     320  25.85      -598
356     1249    39.51     786     386  32.94      -400
395      901    49.32     608     246  28.81      -362
437     1100    50.39     766     255  24.98      -511
438     1023    54.71     737     246  25.03      -491
483     1576    34.58     884     598  40.35      -286
492     1029    36.55     652     328  33.47      -324
493      862    45.46     581     242  29.40      -339
499     1267    54.15     896     321  26.38      -575
504     1176    51.47     777     348  30.93      -429
625      856    44.75     501     303  37.69      -198
626     1102    36.83     598     428  41.72      -170
706      182    33.09     103      65  38.69       -38
727      513    19.96     193     280  59.20        87

Total 14,131    41.93    9000    4366  32.66     -4634


CD09 - 2006

Pcnct  Votes  Turnout  Murphy Thibaut  T Pct  T Margin
======================================================
96       209    16.76      40     153  79.27       113
338     1067    23.96     355     636  64.18       281
429      823    20.64     230     536  69.97       306
487      653    19.87     216     393  64.53       177
503      349    24.15     105     215  67.19       110
508      846    26.81     261     518  66.50       257
559      707    20.75     238     410  63.27       172
565      517    14.14     101     391  79.47       290
620     1500    28.45     741     660  47.11       -81
765      950    26.55     399     467  53.93        68

Total   7621    22.76    2686    4379  61.98      1693

You wouldn’t realize it if you just looked at the number of votes cast, but there were actually a few more registered voters in the CD09 half of the district as there were in the CD07 half – 33,490 in CD09 and 33,353 in CD07. But in 2006, the voters in the precincts that largely favored Thibaut stayed home in droves, and she lost by what looked like a large margin, 57.2% to 42.8% using two party numbers. That was close to the average countywide performance, which was 58.0% for the GOP and 42.0% in HD133 for the Dems. It was clear that this wasn’t really representative of the district (or the county), and that Thibaut would get a boost from the fact that 2008 was a Presidential year. I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation by applying 2004 turnout numbers to each precinct, and assigning it the same percentage of the vote for each candidate, and estimated Thibaut would net between 46 and 47 percent of the vote under those conditions. Given that everyone expected more robust Democratic turnout this year compared to 2004, it was fair to assume the race would be close to even, before anyone did any campaigning.

Well, it was that and then some. Compare to 2008:

CD07 - 2008

Pcnct  Votes  Turnout  Murphy Thibaut  T Pct  T Margin
======================================================
130     1858    78.90    1383     410  22.87      -973
356     2136    71.65    1245     811  39.45      -434
395     1333    74.43     910     376  29.24      -534
437     1527    73.41    1097     371  25.27      -726
438     1379    77.70    1058     276  20.69      -782
483     2784    64.59    1381    1283  48.16       -98
492     1750    67.15     988     705  41.64      -283
493     1321    72.90     876     388  30.70      -488
499     1810    79.74    1346     410  23.35      -936
504     1688    75.42    1172     473  28.75      -699
625     1330    72.48     798     474  37.26      -324
626     1905    67.43     968     867  47.25      -101
706      342    63.10     174     155  47.11       -29
727     1430    62.83     409     964  70.21       555

Total 22,593    71.24  13,805    7963  36.58     -5842


CD09 - 2008

Pcnct  Votes  Turnout  Murphy Thibaut  T Pct  T Margin
======================================================
96       698    62.04      72     600  89.29       528
338     2463    54.86     735    1540  67.69       805
429     2164    55.20     469    1574  77.04      1105
487     1576    50.08     484     997  67.32       513
503      729    51.52     234     450  65.79       216
508     1740    56.92     594    1045  63.76       451
559     2092    64.63     491    1492  75.24      1001
565     1569    46.52     233    1274  84.54      1041
620     3913    67.71    1738    1965  53.07       227
765     2216    60.56     827    1246  60.11       419

Total 19,610    59.06    5877  12,183  67.46      6306

Now this begins to look like a district with an even partisan distribution of voters. In fact, CD09 increased its advantage in registrations to 33,402 to 31,712, but thanks to its near-tripling of turnout over 2006, it actually looks like it’s of equivalent size. The CD07 precincts jumped by 75%, but that wasn’t enough to hold the seat for Murphy. The rising Democratic tide swamped his boat. And that was reflected across the county.

All this is easy to see, and to my mind provides a quick and dirty refutation of Dave Mann’s thesis that the Democratic Party in Harris County somehow failed to turn its voters out, but a closer look reveals something else. Thibaut increased her margin in each precinct in CD09, which included flipping Precinct 620 from red to blue. She also cut into Murphy’s margin in four of the CD07 precincts – 483, 492, 626, and 706 – while building on the lead in 727. I don’t want to reduce this to one precinct, but the gain Thibaut made in 727, which remember is in CD07, is greater than her margin of victory. Obviously, she needed the huge boost she got in the CD09 precincts, which is what everyone expected to happen. The point I’m making, the recurring theme throughout this election, is that she didn’t make it on gains in Democratic districts alone. She needed the help she got in the CD07 precincts where she gained as well. At the county level, or in this microcosm of the county, that’s the story of this election.

In addition to Loren Jackson, our new District Clerk, two more Democratic candidates who won elections to fill unexpired terms will be sworn into office this week. One is Judge Kathy Stone, who was elected to replace the late Judge Russell Austin in Probate Court #1. Via email from her campaign:

I will be officially sworn in on Wednesday, November 26 at 12:00 noon in Probate Court No. 1, 201 Caroline, 6th Floor. I hope to see you there.

And from Judge Robert Hinojosa, who was elected to serve the remaining term for Family District Court 312:

I am pleased to announce that I will be sworn in as Judge of the 312th Family District Court this coming Saturday, November 29th at 3 p.m., in the Great Hall of Christ Church Cathedral, 1117 Texas Avenue, entrance on San Jacinto.

Congratulations to Judges Stone and Hinojosa!

The final cumulative and canvass reports are out. I’ve been working off of a draft canvass, which did not include provisional ballots, so if you compare those numbers to mine you’ll find a few differences here and there. Shouldn’t be off by more than a handful of votes, but just so you know.

I’ve been poring through the data and will have a few more analyses to present before I call it quits on this, but the thing that has struck me about all of this is how little variation there is in candidate performances when you drill down. Adrian Garcia leads the pack wherever you look. The countywide candidates who did better overall do better at the district and precinct level. That seems intuitive and obvious, but I expected some regional variations, and for the most part I haven’t seen them. I also expected to see Democratic downballot candidates do better against the top of the ticket, which was the norm in 2004, but for the most part the differences haven’t been very great. That too was to be expected to some extent, but beyond the fact that Democrats clearly had less reason to stray, I think it also speaks to the success of the coordinated campaign’s message, which was to vote Democratic all the way down the line. With very few exceptions, each Democrat got about as many votes as the others. That was the point of the coordinated campaign, and by and large it worked.

Of course, it wasn’t enough to win everything, but given that the standard result for Democrats in Harris County had been to win nothing for over a decade, I don’t see much point in quibbling. I think we’ll see more of the same in 2010 and beyond, and it’ll be up to the Republicans to find a way to break through, as a few of them did this year.

To me, the main question that remains is whether the pattern we saw in early voting this year is the new norm or an aberration. It’s been funny to me to see people complain about how Harris Democrats “lost” Election Day this year, even as they were winning 27 of 34 countywide races and picking up a seat in the State House. It’s true – other than Garcia (again), every countywide Democrat got fewer votes on Election Day than their Republican opponent. The same was true in absentee balloting as well. But it didn’t matter, because the cushion they’d built up in early voting was enough to carry most of them across the finish line. And not to put too fine a point on it, but Democrats lost Election Day in 2004 as well. It’s just that they also lost early voting that year, too, by a larger margin so nobody noticed or cared. I’ll take what happened this year over what happened then, if you don’t mind.

Anyway. Here’s another interesting map from Matt Stiles, and a preview of the 2010 battlegrounds in Dallas from BOR. More analysis will be forthcoming here as well.