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January 25th, 2022:

Interview with Molly Cook

Molly Cook

Sen. John Whitmire hasn’t had a lot of serious challengers in recent years, but he has one this year and her name is Molly Cook. Cook is an emergency room nurse, which would give her more experience in health care policy than at least 90% of the current legislature. She’s also a community organizer and advocate for equitable, sustainable transportation and development in the region. If her name sounds familiar it’s because she has been quoted multiple times in stories about the I-45 project on behalf of the Stop I-45 Coalition. All that gave us a lot to talk about, and you can listen to it all here:

As with the judicial Q&A’s, more information about Democratic primary candidates, including links to the interviews and judicial Q&As, can be found on Erik Manning’s spreadsheet. I will periodically round up the links to these posts as well.

Judicial Q&A: Angela Lancelin

(Note: As I have done in past elections, I am running a series of Q&As for judicial candidates in contested Democratic primaries. This is intended to help introduce the candidates and their experiences to those who plan to vote in March. I am running these responses in the order that I receive them from the candidates. Much more information about Democratic primary candidates, including links to the interviews and judicial Q&As, can be found on Erik Manning’s spreadsheet.

1. Who are you and what are you running for?

I am Angela Lancelin, a Family law practitioner with extensive litigation experience throughout Harris and contiguous counties. My main practice area has been Family law. I have handled establishment and enforcement of child support orders in Texas, under the UIFSA, collection and enforcement of unpaid child support, asset forfeiture (foreclosure suits) probate, tax lien disputes, cps litigation and contested Bankruptcy issues. I am licensed in the Southern, Northern and Eastern Bankruptcy Districts. My duties also include complex litigation on behalf of the Office of the Attorney General that has been comprised of complex post judgment litigation. I am running for the 245th District Court.

2. What kind of cases does this court hear?

The 245th is a Family Court where matter concerning or related to Divorce, Sapcr, Cps, Adoptions, modification, enforcement related proceedings regarding post judgment property and child support matters. Family Courts also have to rule on matters related to Bankruptcy Stays/proceedings, Probate and civil asset forfeiture matters related to collection proceedings.

3. Why are you running for this particular bench?

I believe being able to have a voice from the bench will allow my diverse work/ life experience and knowledge of Harris county’s underrepresented communities to further broaden my passion for public service. More specifically the current practice and policy for self-calendaring results in a lack of access to participate in the legal system. This system negatively impacts the underrepresented, low-income litigants who cannot afford or have access to internet service or a computer.

4. What are your qualifications for this job?

I have 28 years of Family law experience including 26 years as an Assistant Attorney General assigned to region 6, Harris County. Designated as the Special Litigator for Regions 6, 5 and 10 (contiguous counties), to manage Bankruptcy claims and participate in adversarial hearings from date of filing to dismissal.

I have served as the IV- E (CPS) liaison in Harris and contiguous counties.

Prosecute contested hearings to establish parentage, enforce child support obligations, including child support collections in Tax, Probate, Criminal and Civil litigation matters.

Manage high volume and handle the complex litigation IV-D caseload in Harris and contiguous counties from intake to disposition.

5. Why is this race important?

This midterm election is crucial to determining if the underrepresented, low income, pro se, and private bar attorneys will be allowed meaningful access to the court.

6. Why should people vote for you in March?

I have devoted my legal career to public service. I have learned the art of active listening providing a safe place for each party to express their concerns without judgment. My distinct ability to relate and adapt to different fact patterns, combined with my compassion and knowledge of the law will provide a balanced and impartial setting.

SD10 lawsuit gets its hearing

The last possible obstacle to a March primary, and the first redistricting lawsuit to get a merits hearing.

Sen. Beverly Powell

A federal district judge in El Paso on Tuesday will preside over one of several challenges against the state of Texas and Gov. Greg Abbott after the Republican-led Texas Legislature redrew political maps following the 2020 U.S. Census.

And although this week’s hearing is limited in scope — it pertains to one state senate district in North Texas — attorneys said testimony could foretell what is to come later this year when a slew of other redistricting challenges are heard in a consolidated redistricting lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama will hear a challenge to the redrawn political boundaries for Fort Worth’s state Senate District 10, currently represented by Democrat Beverly Powell. Powell and six Tarrant County residents filed the lawsuit in early November, alleging the new map purposely dilutes the voting strength of minorities.

“In each decennial redistricting cycle in modern history, Texas has enacted plans that federal courts have ruled to be racially discriminatory in intent and/or effect. Like clockwork, Texas has done so again,” the lawsuit asserts. “Remarkably, Texas has enacted the same racially discriminatory scheme to dismantle Senate District 10.”

[…]

Attorney Mark P. Gaber, who represents Powell and the other plaintiffs, said their case is scheduled ahead of the others this fall because they asked the judge to make a decision in time for the November 2022 General Election.

“The claims are that the drawing of the senate district was intentionally discriminatory by cracking apart Black and Latino voters. What we are asking the court to do is enter relief in time to affect the November 22 election,” he said. “So, we would put the district that exists now back in place and that would require some changes to the surrounding districts as well.”

Graber said this week’s hearing could foreshadow what to expect later this year.

“I imagine for one thing there is going to be testimony and that doesn’t go away. And that could be relevant to other claims as well,” he said. “We’ll probably get some legal ruling from the court that will affect issues beyond Senate District 10 in terms of what the court determines are the facts of law.”

See here for the background. The DMN has more details.

Of the federal redistricting complaints, Powell’s alone seeks an injunction and changes to the maps ahead of the March 1 primary elections. A panel of three federal judges set a September trial start date in the consolidated redistricting case. There’s also a challenge in Texas state court.

“A crucial fight is underway to preserve District 10 as a Tarrant County-based diverse district where minority voters and Anglos unite to elect their candidate of choice,” said Powell, who is suing as a private citizen and not in her official capacity, when she filed for reelection last month.

The previously Fort Worth-centric seat that had been contained inside Tarrant County grew at least tenfold in geographic size and added part of Parker County and all of Johnson, Palo Pinto, Stephens, Shackelford, Callahan and Brown counties.

It previously favored President Joe Biden by eight points, according to election returns. But the redrawn district would have gone for Donald Trump by 16 points, a 24-point swing that likely dooms Powell’s hopes for reelection.

Republicans say the maps are legal and fair. Lawyers for the state argued the Legislature acted according to partisan motivations, not racial ones, and warned that blocking the map would disrupt the 2022 elections already in motion.

“This case is about politics, not race,” state lawyers responded in a filing that was blunt about the GOP majority’s approach. “Their goal, as always, was to design to elect a Republican. And they succeeded, at least on paper.”

Texas argued the Tarrant County citizens’ claims fail because “the Legislature simply did not consider race for purposes of redrawing” District 10 except for compliance with applicable law.

[…]

To lock things in place until the lawsuit is resolved, Powell’s legal team asked the federal court to block the map, with respect to District 10, from being used in elections and to restore the district’s previous boundaries. The plaintiffs also asked the court to delay primary elections affected by that change, noting that lawmakers already approved a back-up primary schedule.

[…]

It’s unclear, if the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs on District 10, which other primaries would be delayed. The goal is to restore the seat with as few changes as possible to the rest of the map, said Matt Angle, founder and director of the progressive Lone Star Project.

I noted this hearing in yesterday’s post about the state of the state lawsuits, as those now will be held later (if they are not tossed by SCOTx) and will not have an effect on this year’s primaries. I don’t expect there to be any delays in the primaries this year. It’s possible that the three-judge panel, which has one Trump judge, one Obama judge, and the ever-present Jerry Smith, could issue an injunction, but I doubt that the Fifth Circuit would let it stand, and if somehow that happened then SCOTUS would intervene SCOTUS would get to have a say as well. (Yes, maybe I’m being cynical, but how is that a losing proposition these days?) Whatever does happen, it will have to happen quickly – we’ve already passed the deadline for mail ballots to be sent to military and overseas voters, and early in person voting for the primaries starts in less than three weeks. I’ll be keeping a close eye on this.

UPDATE: Made a correction to note that the appeals process from this three-judge panel goes to SCOTUS, not the Fifth Circuit.

Don’t expect the absentee ballot fiasco to improve

Things are working as planned.

Signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in September, the voting law known as Senate Bill 1 contained an array of new restrictions on the state’s voting process and narrowed local control of elections.

Among its many provisions — and the earliest to be tested — are new rules for voting by mail. Absentee voters are now required to include a state identification number like a driver’s license number or a partial Social Security number on their applications for a mail-in ballot. Those numbers must match information in a voter’s record or their application will be rejected.

Regular mail-in voters must submit new applications each year, and when counties began accepting them this year, the rejection rates were staggering. Hundreds of applications were deficient, in some cases missing an ID number. In other cases, voters had listed a number that didn’t appear to be on file with the local elections office.

The secretary of state’s office has been working to backfill its records to include both driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers for most voters, but various Texas counties — including some of the state’s largest — did not know they were supposed to check the state’s database along with their own when trying to validate an application.

Election officials across the state said they either weren’t aware the driver’s license numbers had been uploaded to the state database, known by election administrators as TEAM, or weren’t aware that the new numbers would not sync with their local databases. To them, it appeared the numbers were missing from a voter’s record.

“There were several large counties that are offline that were not aware that they’d have to go beyond their internal systems, and I’m one of them,” said Chris Davis, the Williamson County elections administrator. (Counties that use a local database are known as “offline counties.”)

The discrepancy helped drive an initial 50% rejection rate of applications in Travis County, the “vast majority” of which officials attributed to the new rules, before offline counties learned the new driver’s license numbers had not been pushed to their local databases. The rejection rate had dropped to 27% in figures Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir released Tuesday, though the total number of applications the county received had more than doubled by then.

The rejection issues led to a public spat between DeBeauvoir, a Democrat, who criticized the state for not providing counties with comprehensive guidance, and the secretary of state’s office, which zeroed in on the county’s rejection of an “unusually large” share of applications in a press release calling on officials to correct “erroneous” rejections.

But the information gap over matching ID numbers went beyond Travis County. While “waiting to get clear instructions” from the state, Vona Hudson, the election administrator in rural Tom Green County, said she was running into ID issues with 40% to 50% of the applications coming in.

Hudson didn’t get clarity on the syncing problems until a last-minute webinar held by the secretary of state’s office Tuesday morning to address “frequently asked questions” about the new ID requirements.

In a statement this week, the governor’s office put the blame for issues with the new rules on county officials “erroneously interpreting the law” instead of asking the state for assistance.

“The bottom line is that counties should not be rejecting valid mail ballot applications,” said Nan Tolson, a spokesperson for the governor. “The Secretary of State’s office will continue to work with counties across the state to combat the misinformation being spread by county election officials and ensure that all valid mail ballot applications are processed.”

But beyond the confusion over how to match numbers, early figures released by some of the state’s largest counties showed that a bigger problem was applications coming in with no ID numbers on them at all.

For example, Bexar County initially rejected 125 applications because voters provided a driver’s license number that was not in their voter record, while 200 were rejected because the ID section was not filled out. Thirty applications were rejected because the voter submitted an outdated application form that didn’t include the new ID field.

Of the 208 applications Harris County initially rejected based on the new rules, 137 were rejected because voters had not filled out the new ID requirements. As of Jan. 14, county officials said they had rejected another 172 applications that lacked ID numbers.

In its update Tuesday, Travis County said about half of the 509 applications it had rejected did not include any ID information.

County officials said they were also hamstrung in how much education they could provide voters about the new requirements. In SB 1, Republican lawmakers made it a state jail felony for an election official to “solicit the submission” of an application to vote by mail if the voter did not request it — a broad prohibition election officials said has made them fearful that once unremarkable voter outreach efforts could now be construed as criminal.

SB 1 also made it a state jail felony for local election officials to proactively send applications to voters who did not request them, even if voters automatically qualify to vote by mail because of age. Political parties can still send out unsolicited applications on their own dime.

“It’s understandable if you’re focusing on what’s most important in a given week or a given month that you might lose track of some of these other issues, and I think that goes for secretary of state as well,” Remi Garza, the president of the Texas Association of Election Administrators, said of the miscommunication between the state and the counties.

But this was a foreseeable situation, said Garza, who serves as the elections administrator for Cameron County.

Voting rights advocates have panned state Republican leadership over the issues, both because the problems were forewarned and because the law’s implementation date has not allowed election officials enough time to roll out its new requirements. Over the last year, advocates questioned how voters were expected to know which ID number might be on their voter record when they aren’t required to provide both while registering to vote.

Lawmakers bear “the responsibility to foresee problems in the implementation of a law,” said James Slattery, a senior staff attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, who testified on the ID issues at the Legislature.

“They are now reaping what they’ve sown,” said Slattery. “Though I should say it’s really the voter reaping what they’ve sown, which is the tragedy of all this. At the moment, it’s the voters that are facing the consequences.”

It would be nice to think that the Republicans who passed this atrocity will hear it from their voters who have been adversely affected. I just don’t think there will be that much blowback on them. For one thing, it’s still the case that only a limited number of people even can vote by mail, so the people feeling the brunt of this are a relatively small group. Of those that are Republicans – since let’s face it, those are the only ones that Greg Abbott and company care about – you have to figure that Donald Trump has made voting by mail a lot less attractive to them. And, as we have seen, Republican voters don’t seem to mind laws that make their lives worse as long as they believe that it’s making the lives of people they don’t like even more worse. So, while there is still the potential for disaster that will very much affect only Republicans in the near future, I don’t expect there to be much pressure on the people responsible for it. This was a feature, not a bug. If there isn’t a federal law to clear out some of these obstacles, we’re going to be stuck with it until we can elect enough Democrats to change the law. Given that the State Senate is pretty well out of reach for the foreseeable future, even with a great result elsewhere this is going to take some time.