December, 2020:

Do we still have to worry about the Elections Administrator’s office?

Dec 31st, 2020

I’m a little hesitant to bring this up, but…

Isabel Longoria

This year, Harris County began the process of consolidating the two offices that have historically handled elections — the county clerk and the tax assessor-collector’s office — under one roof.

Isabel Longoria, a special advisor on voting rights to the county clerk, was sworn in to lead the new office last month.

“Fundamentally the office is shifting from being reactive to proactive,” Longoria told the Signal. “Under the tax office and county clerk offices, since elections and voter registration were just one part of what they did, it was always kind of like, ‘oh shit elections are coming, now what’ or ‘oh shit, we’ve got to register voters, now what’ — now we have the capacity to say that this is our focus year-round.”

Harris County voters are already benefiting from some new practices, some they can see and some they can’t. Election results in the county are now updating every thirty minutes, and behind the scenes, election officials are working more closely together. For example, Longoria said the heads of both the voter registration and elections department were in the same room at NRG on election day.

[…]

Earlier this month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a letter to Harris County informing them that Longoria’s newly created office did not exist. Paxton argued that the county violated Texas election code by creating the office without the proper timing and without appropriately informing the Texas Secretary of State. He gave the county two weeks to take “corrective action” before his office would intervene.

Harris County Commissioners Court was unmoved by the threat, the county attorney replied to Paxton detailing the paperwork, and nothing has come of it since. And business as usual has continued at the elections administrator’s office, Longoria said.

“I think he just wanted to make sure we filed our paperwork, and we did,” Longoria said. “That’s it. It’s one of those things where… yeah… nothing happened.”

That story was published on December 14, right after the District B runoff, which was the first election fully administered by the new office. It was also two weeks after Ken Paxton’s temper tantrum about the slow notification of the office’s creation and the appointment of Longoria as the chief. It’s now been four weeks since Paxton raised the possibility of taking Harris County to court if they didn’t take “corrective action” within two weeks. I guess Vince Ryan’s email to Paxton settled the matter, which suggests that maybe Paxton was making a much bigger deal over a minor boo-boo than he needed to make. Of course, he’s been a pretty busy man since then, what with being raided by the FBI and trying to overturn the election and all, so maybe he just hasn’t gotten back around to this. Sometimes these things just take longer than you think they will, you know?

No consensus on partisan judicial elections

Dec 31st, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Even the Texas Commission on Judicial Selection can’t agree.

There’s always been room for disagreement on the question of how to select judges in Texas. That won’t change in recommendations by the Lone Star State’s latest commission looking at the issue.

With a report to the Texas Legislature coming due this month, the Texas Commission on Judicial Selection met on Friday to vote on the recommendations it would include for Texas lawmakers to consider. The commission members’ votes were split down the middle when they were asked if Texas should stop electing judges as Republicans or Democrats and switch to a method where a commission initially appoints judges, who then run in retention elections. But the members found more agreement with smaller reforms, such as increasing the minimum qualifications to be a judge or further regulating how judges can use money in their campaigns.

When the final report comes out, it will say that Texas should not continue with partisan judicial elections. But that decision was highly divisive, with an 8-7 vote.

Most of the “no” votes came from Texas senators and representatives—both Republicans and Democrats—who serve on the commission. If their view is similar to their colleagues in the Texas Legislature, the recommendation has a slim-to-none chance of passing the lawmaking body.

“Constituents have relayed to me they do not want to have their rights taken away from them on judges they want to serve on these benches,” said Rep. Ina Minjarez, D-San Antonio.

Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, said he would not take away Texans’ constitutional rights.

“I’m going to be voting to stay with the current method of partisan selection, but I’m encouraging us to increase qualifications on the judges,” he said.

Considering that a majority of the commission did vote to recommend eliminating partisan judge races, Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, said she would not sign off on the commission’s report, and did not want her name associated with it, unless the report clearly explained her disagreement.

“We’re going to set forth exactly what the vote was, so everyone knows what they are agreeing to and what they are not,” replied commission Chairman David Beck, a partner in Beck Redden in Houston who added that Huffman could write a separate statement in the report about her viewpoint.

Another divisive vote asked if the commission should recommend that Texas create a judicial selection commission that would initially appoint judges to the bench, and then they would run in retention elections to keep their seats. The commission was tied on the idea by a 7-7 vote, with one member abstaining. Again, it was the legislator-members of the commission who said no.

See here and here for the background. You know how I feel about this, and I said quite a bit of it in those two posts, so I’ll leave it at that. The Commission‘s report is due today, so we’ll see what they have to say. They did find more agreement on questions of mandating more experience for judicial candidates and for further regulating campaign contributions for judicial races. As a philosophical matter, I’m fine with those ideas, though of course the details will matter. The bottom line here seems to be that there’s zero appetite in the Legislature to make fundamental changes to our judicial election system. As I’ve said many times, until someone actually comes up with a viable alternate system that addresses the actual complaints people have with the current system without introducing other problems, this is how it should be.

UPDATE: Here’s a Trib story about this.

Please shut up, CM Travis

Dec 31st, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

23 comments

And delete your Facebook account while you’re at it.

CM Greg Travis

The mayor, city activists and some of District G Councilmember Greg Travis’ colleagues are denouncing offensive comments he made online about former first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

On Facebook, Travis posted a meme that shows a photo of Obama, speaking demonstratively while sitting down, next to a photo of current First Lady Melania Trump, who has her legs crossed. Travis wrote, “Yep. Just saying,” on the post. In comments, he said affirmative action, the program that gives minorities preference in university admissions, was the reason Obama was admitted to Harvard Law School.

“It’s called Affirmative Action. Doesn’t take much—she was born with her qualification,” Travis wrote. “She isn’t the brightest bulb in the lot.”

Travis also wrote that Harris’ career was owed to a former romantic partner. Without him, Travis said, “she’d be working in an office cubicle.” Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “would be nothing without Bill,” he wrote.

Ashton Woods, a founder and leader of Houston’s chapter of Black Lives Matter, said on Twitter the comments are evidence Travis “hates black women” and wrote: “DEMAND HIS RESIGNATION,” with a call for people to sign up to speak at the next city council meeting on Jan. 5.

“It’s enough. We don’t need to talk representation at city council, because if he says things like this what other ideologies is he taking with him to work… with the most women ever elected to Houston city council,” Woods said. “It says to me that he has a problem with well-educated Black women.”

Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office said he asked Travis to take down the post and comments, which it described as “offensive.”

“The mayor is disappointed by the post and has no other comment at this time,” Mary Benton, Turner’s communications director, said.

Travis is unapologetic. He said the post was a meme that has circulated for years, and the comments represented his opinion. He only deleted them because the mayor asked him to do so “as a friend.”

The Press has screenshots, if you missed seeing the posts in question. No question that CM Travis is an idiot and a waste of space on Council, but there’s literally nothing anyone can say or do that will get him to resign, and he’s in his second term so he won’t face the voters again. CM Tiffany Thomas called for Travis to be censured, citing the precedent of then-CM Jim Westmoreland, who was censured in 1989 for his egregiously racist statements about the late Congressman Mickey Leland. I’m fine with that, but we should recognize that things like censure only work on people who are capable of feeling shame and remorse. Maybe the Council members who are justifiably angry about this can find a way to shun CM Travis until he expresses some regret for his actions. I’m not exactly sure how that would work, but it’s a thought.

Texas blog roundup for the week of December 28

Dec 31st, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The Texas Progressive Alliance says good-bye and good riddance to 2020 as it brings you this week’s roundup.

(more…)

Precinct analysis: Other cities

Dec 30th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Introduction
Congressional districts
State Rep districts
Commissioners Court/JP precincts
Comparing 2012 and 2016
Statewide judicial
Other jurisdictions
Appellate courts, Part 1
Appellate courts, Part 2
Judicial averages

I mentioned in an earlier post that I might look at election results from other cities that had their own races in November. Turns out there were quite a few of them that had their elections conducted by Harris County, and thus had their results in the spreadsheet I got. Let’s have a look.


City            Trump  Biden  Lib  Grn  Trump%  Biden%   Lib%   Grn%
====================================================================
Baytown         3,879  2,394   55   21  61.10%  37.71%  0.87%  0.33%
Bellaire        4,553  6,565  115   29  40.43%  58.29%  1.02%  0.26%
Deer Park      11,192  3,622  167   39  74.51%  24.11%  1.11%  0.26%
Friendswood     5,312  4,357  144   24  54.00%  44.29%  1.46%  0.24%
Galena Park     1,026  1,614   18    9  38.47%  60.52%  0.67%  0.34%
Humble          5,084  6,274  107   53  44.14%  54.47%  0.93%  0.46%
Katy            4,373  1,918   82   17  68.44%  30.02%  1.28%  0.27%
La Porte       11,561  5,036  201   69  68.54%  29.86%  1.19%  0.41%
League City     1,605  1,196   38    4  56.45%  42.07%  1.34%  0.14%
Missouri City     457  2,025    8    8  18.29%  81.06%  0.32%  0.32%
Nassau Bay      1,433  1,003   32    4  57.97%  40.57%  1.29%  0.16%
Pearland        5,397  7,943   84   32  40.11%  59.03%  0.62%  0.24%
Seabrook        5,532  2,768  104   21  65.66%  32.85%  1.23%  0.25%
Webster         4,594  4,850  159   33  47.68%  50.33%  1.65%  0.34%

City           Cornyn  Hegar  Lib  Grn Cornyn%  Hegar%   Lib%   Grn%
====================================================================
Baytown         3,814  2,255  119   49  61.15%  36.16%  1.91%  0.79%
Bellaire        5,312  5,762   93   48  47.37%  51.38%  0.83%  0.43%
Deer Park      11,098  3,355  269   90  74.93%  22.65%  1.82%  0.61%
Friendswood     5,380  4,009  221   74  55.56%  41.40%  2.28%  0.76%
Galena Park       892  1,408   40   42  37.45%  59.11%  1.68%  1.76%
Humble          5,098  5,927  233   98  44.89%  52.19%  2.05%  0.86%
Katy            4,401  1,749  129   40  69.65%  27.68%  2.04%  0.63%
La Porte       11,361  4,743  365  108  68.53%  28.61%  2.20%  0.65%
League City     1,654  1,099   39   18  58.86%  39.11%  1.39%  0.64%
Missouri City     458  1,934   38   25  18.66%  78.78%  1.55%  1.02%
Nassau Bay      1,471    928   43   12  59.94%  37.82%  1.75%  0.49%
Pearland        5,432  7,551  190  113  40.89%  56.83%  1.43%  0.85%
Seabrook        5,561  2,545  190   43  66.69%  30.52%  2.28%  0.52%
Webster         4,625  4,541  230   82  48.80%  47.91%  2.43%  0.87%

City           Wright  Casta  Lib  Grn Wright%  Casta%   Lib%   Grn%
====================================================================
Baytown         3,681  2,306  129   51  59.02%  36.97%  2.07%  0.82%
Bellaire        5,227  5,444  142  115  46.61%  48.54%  1.27%  1.03%
Deer Park      10,894  3,355  294  109  73.55%  22.65%  1.98%  0.74%
Friendswood     5,216  3,901  253  155  53.86%  40.28%  2.61%  1.60%
Galena Park       801  1,478   45   42  33.63%  62.05%  1.89%  1.76%
Humble          4,872  5,962  247  156  42.90%  52.50%  2.18%  1.37%
Katy            4,365  1,677  141   74  69.08%  26.54%  2.23%  1.17%
La Porte       11,057  4,773  393  175  66.70%  28.79%  2.37%  1.06%
League City     1,616  1,069   49   38  57.51%  38.04%  1.74%  1.35%
Missouri City     421  1,944   38   34  17.15%  79.19%  1.55%  1.38%
Nassau Bay      1,417    898   60   28  57.74%  36.59%  2.44%  1.14%
Pearland        5,205  7,571  189  172  39.18%  56.98%  1.42%  1.29%
Seabrook        5,477  2,439  232   83  65.68%  29.25%  2.78%  1.00%
Webster         4,488  4,416  283  165  47.35%  46.59%  2.99%  1.74%

A few words of caution before we begin. Most of these city races were at large – they were for Mayor or were citywide propositions (some of these towns had literally an entire alphabet’s worth of props for the voters), a few were At Large City Council races. Baytown, Katy, and Webster were City Council races that did not appear to be at large; League City had a Council race that didn’t give any indication one way or the other. Some of these cities – Friendswood, Katy, League City, Missouri City, and Pearland – are not fully contained within Harris County, so these are just partial results. As with the city of Houston, there’s no guarantee that Harris County precinct boundaries match city boundaries, or that precincts are contained entirely within that city, so the results from the other races may contain voters who aren’t in the city specified. Basically, consider these all to be approximations, and we’ll be fine.

I had no idea what to expect from these numbers. With the exception of Bellaire and Galena Park, all of these place are on the outer edges of Harris County, so generally in the red zone, but not exclusively. I expected Galena Park and Missouri City to be blue, I expected Baytown and Deer Park and Friendswood to be red, and the rest I either didn’t have any preconceived notions or was a little surprised. I wouldn’t have expected Bellaire or Humble to be blue – Bellaire is squarely in the CD07/HD134 part of town, so while it’s not all that shocking, I feel quite confident saying that if I did this same exercise in 2012, I’d have gotten a different result. The Katy area is getting bluer, which is how Dems won HD132 in 2018, but apparently that is not the case for the city of Katy proper, or at least the Harris County part of it. I’d guess the Brazoria County part of Pearland is redder than the Harris County part. As for La Porte, it’s not that I’m surprised that it’s red, it’s more that I’d never thought much about it.

I don’t have a whole lot more to say here – I don’t have past data handy, so I can’t make any comparisons, but even if I did we already mostly have the picture from earlier posts. It’s the same geography, just different pieces of it. There’s been a push by the TDP lately to get more local officials elected in towns like these, which is often a challenge in low-turnout May elections. There clearly some opportunities, though, and we should look to support candidates who put themselves out there in places where they’re not the norm. I have a friend who ran for Humble ISD in 2017, and while she didn’t win, that’s the sort of effort we need to get behind. Keep an eye out for what you can do this May, and find some good people to work with.

A new high in hospitalizations

Dec 30th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

9 comments

This is fine.

The Texas Department of State Health Services reported Monday a pandemic high 11,351 hospitalizations from COVID-19.

This surpasses the previous all-time high of 10,893, which occurred on July 22.

The record comes in the midst of a holiday season public health experts worry could exacerbate the already rapidly spreading virus and following an increase in cases weeks after Thanksgiving.

This hospital data does not account for people who are hospitalized but have not gotten a positive test, and DSHS says some hospitals may be missing from the daily counts. As of Monday, the state is also reporting 49 deaths from COVID-19, a lagging indicator of the extent of transmission rates, and more than 12,800 new confirmed COVID-19 cases. Reported cases may have appeared lower the last few days because some local health departments did not report data to the state over the holiday week.

Earlier this month, Texas’ ICU capacity was already the lowest since the start of the pandemic, leaving health care experts worried hospitals could be pushed to the brink as coronavirus cases continue to climb. Across the state, COVID-19 patients occupy 17.8% of the state’s hospital beds, and only 745 staffed ICU beds are still available.

At a press conference Monday, Mark Escott, Austin’s interim medical director and health authority, said that this week alone, “ICU utilization” is up 62% in Travis County and that hospital beds could become scarce in a matter of weeks.

“Our projections forward into the new year continue to look worse and worse day after day,” Escott said. “I think right now it appears we’re going to enter 2021 in a state of emergency.”

This is fine:

.
Big jump in #Houston region COVID hospitalizations, bringing total to 2,787 // base ICU usage 96%
We’re now returning to July’s numbers, the worst month of the pandemic here.
Big Red circle flag: We won’t know effect of Christmas spread for several weeks.

— Zach Despart (@zachdespart) 05:32 PM – 28 December 2020

This is fine:

Dr. Peter Hotez, professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said he anticipated a major fall surge amid a wave of new infections in West Texas and the Panhandle.

Those areas are among the hardest hit in the country, he said.

“Up in Midland and places like that, it’s still a really tough area,” he said, adding, “In terms of surges, I’m maybe a little less worried about the Texas Medical Center. But in other parts of the state, it’s going to be a real concern.”

There are 745 ICU beds available across the state, according to data from the Department of State Health Services, the lowest number available since the pandemic’s surge during the summer. Among 63,679 staffed hospital beds, 13,416 are available statewide.

Further, 15 of the state’s Trauma Service Areas are reporting that more than 15 percent of their total hospital capacity is taken up by COVID-19 patients, crossing the threshold for what the state considers “high hospitalizations.”

At the Texas Medical Center, the weekly average of new COVID patients has more than doubled since early November, from 104 to 248. Medical center data from Sunday shows 1,594 total COVID patients and another 404 in the ICU. There are 1,298 total occupied ICU beds with hundreds more available, the data shows.

“The medical center has gotten a lot of heft, in terms of being able to accommodate COVID patients,” Hotez said.

[…]

The sporadic use of masks has contributed to the surge, said Hotez, adding that he doesn’t anticipate the number of statewide hospitalizations decreasing anytime soon. He noted that the number of beds is less of a concern than the number of trained staff available.

Hotez said he did not know how much Christmas gatherings would impact the number of infections. But he warned people that New Year’s celebrations would be the “best party the COVID virus can hope to have.”

“I would just say any kind of New Year’s celebration is fraught with risk ,” he said. “Because when you have this high level of transmission going on in the state, anytime you bring four or five people together, there’s a good likelihood they’re going to have COVID.”

I’m really scared for what the next few weeks may bring. Wear your mask, practice social distancing, avoid indoor gatherings, and try to survive until you can get vaccinated.

HD68 special election set

Dec 30th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Welcome to your first election of 2021.

Sen. Drew Springer

Gov. Greg Abbott has selected Jan. 23 as the date of the special election to fill the seat of state Rep. Drew Springer, R-Muenster, who recently won a promotion to the Texas Senate.

The candidate filing deadline is a week away — Jan. 4 — and early voting begins a week after that.

Springer is headed to the upper chamber after winning the Dec. 19 special election runoff to replace Sen. Pat Fallon, R-Prosper, who is on his way to Congress next month.

Springer’s House District 68 is safely Republican. It covers a rural swath wrapping from north of the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs up into the Panhandle.

At least two Republicans have already announced campaigns for the House seat. They are Jason Brinkley, who is resigning as Cooke County judge to run for the seat, and David Spiller, a Jacksboro attorney and Jacksboro ISD trustee.

The Jan. 23 date means that Springer’s successor could be sworn in early in the 140-day legislative session, which begins Jan. 12. State law gives Abbott the power to order a sped-up special election when a vacancy occurs within 60 days of the session.

See here for the background. “Safe Republican” is almost an understatement – as noted, Ted Cruz got over 83% of the vote in 2018 in HD68. When Springer’s successor could be sworn in is more a function of whether or not there’s a runoff – that’s the difference between a January swearing-in, and one in March. This is the only special legislative election on the docket at this time. That can vary a lot from cycle to cycle – there were multiple special elections and runoffs in 2015 and 2019, none in 2011 and 2017, and one in 2013. The House will move forward with 149 members until this is resolved in HD68.

Okay, so this is the last pointless gesture

Dec 29th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

You can always count on Louie Gohmert to find the stupidest thing possible to do.

Vice President Pence was sued Sunday by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and several other Republicans in a far-fetched bid that appeared aimed at overturning President-elect Joe Biden’s election win.

The lawsuit focuses on Pence’s role in an upcoming Jan. 6 meeting of Congress to count states’ electoral votes and finalize Biden’s victory over President Trump. Typically, the vice president’s role in presiding over the meeting is a largely ceremonial one governed by an 1887 federal law known as the Electoral Count Act.

But the Republican lawsuit, which was filed against Pence in his official capacity as vice president, asks a federal judge in Texas to strike down the law as unconstitutional. The GOP plaintiffs go further: They ask the court to grant Pence the authority on Jan. 6 to effectively overturn Trump’s defeat in key battleground states.

Election law experts were dismissive of the lawsuit’s prospects for success.

“The idea that the Vice President has sole authority to determine whether or not to count electoral votes submitted by a state, or which of competing submissions to count, is inconsistent with a proper understanding of the Constitution,” said Edward Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University.

[…]

Election law experts said there’s a strong possibility that U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump appointee, would find that Gohmert, Ward and the other Republican litigants lacked a legal right to sue.

“I’m not at all sure that the court will get to the merits of this lawsuit, given questions about the plaintiffs’ standing to bring this kind of claim, as well as other procedural obstacles,” Foley said.

Take that, Lance Gooden! Louie will show you what true fealty to Dear Leader looks like. In the spirit of not wasting your time any more than I already have, I will as tradition demands quote a couple of tweets from people who have some knowledge of the law and the constitution.

.
If the Twelfth Amendment somehow gave the Vice President the power to unilaterally throw out electoral votes for the other guy in favor of their own party (and even *themselves*), one might think that one of them would’ve noticed by now.

But I guess they were all just idiots…

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) 11:22 AM – 28 December 2020

.
The chance that Judge Kernodle (ker-node-el) does anything but dispose of this ridiculous case ASAP is 0.

— Raffi Melkonian (@RMFifthCircuit) 10:16 AM – 28 December 2020

Rick Hasen has a copy of the complaint if for some reason you want to read it. Otherwise, you may safely resume ignoring Louie Gohmert, at least until the next time he unleashes some Kraken-level stupidity. Daily Kos has more.

Abbott appoints another statewide judge

Dec 29th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

From before the holidays:

Judge Michael Keasler

Jesse McClure, a trial judge on a criminal court in Houston, will join the state’s highest court for criminal matters in the new year.

Gov. Greg Abbott appointed McClure, a Republican, to the Court of Criminal Appeals, where he will fill a seat being vacated by Judge Michael Keasler. Keasler, 78, is departing Dec. 31 under Texas’ mandatory retirement law for judges.

McClure was appointed to his current bench by Abbott in November 2019 but lost his reelection bid to Democrat Te’iva Bell last month in an election that saw Democrats sweep Harris County.

Previously, McClure worked as a prosecutor for the Texas Department of Insurance, as an attorney with the Department of Homeland Security and as an assistant district attorney in Tarrant County. He will serve the remainder of Keasler’s term, which lasts through the end of 2022, and then plans to seek reelection.

[…]

A Texas law that requires judges to retire within a few years of turning 75 forced Keasler to step down partway through his six-year term.

In Keasler’s case, the law caused a fair bit of confusion.

Last year, two Democrats pursued the nomination to run for Keasler’s seat, expecting an election, rather than an appointment, in a misunderstanding that even the Texas secretary of state’s office did not escape. Ultimately, given that Keasler served through the end of the year, the seat fell to Abbott to fill, not the voters.

Keasler said that did not influence his decision to serve through the end of the year.

“I know I’m in the fourth quarter, there’s no question about that, I just hope I’m not at the two-minute warning just yet,” he joked.

See here for the background on that confusion. I guess “within a few years of turning 75” does leave some room for interpretation. McClure was Abbott’s second appointment to a statewide bench in the last three months, following the well-timed resignation of now-former Supreme Court Justice Paul Green. For all the biennial debate we have about electing judges versus some other system for naming them, we sure do have a lot of judges on the Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals who got there initially via gubernatorial appointment. Such selections come with no requirement for Senate confirmation, and in nearly every case the newbie judge gets two full years on the bench before having to face the voters. We can as always debate the merits of the system we have, but we should be honest about the way that system actually works.

Hunting hogs from hot air balloons

Dec 29th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

Not as popular as hoped.

Turns out, hunting feral hogs from a hot air balloon is not all that popular in Texas.

Three years after state lawmakers approved the high-flying hunts, no balloon company has gotten a permit, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife.

Gunning down feral hogs from a helicopter, however, has taken off. Since the Legislature passed the so-called “pork chopper” bill in 2011 to drive down invasive pig populations, scores of businesses have begun offering aerial hog hunts to customers willing to pay thousands of dollars for the experience.

[…]

[Ag Commissioner Sid] >Miller said he floated the hot air balloon proposal to a state lawmaker after meeting a West Texan who raved about using balloons to hunt hogs. They are less noisy than helicopters and offer a more steady shooting platform, proponents have said.

Still, balloons come with their own challenges, chief among them, the wind, which can send hunters flying in the opposite direction of the hogs.

“Even though you might know where the winds are forecasted to go, doesn’t mean that’s always what the winds are going to do,” said Josh Sneed, Southwest Region Director for the Balloon Federation of America.

Sneed doesn’t know any Texas balloon pilots who offer hog hunts. Safety has been a chief concern, he said.

“You can do it safely,” he said. “But most pilots don’t feel comfortable having people carrying rifles in their balloons with them and discharging (them).”

Helicopters have proven far more popular. There are currently 155 active permits for aerial wildlife management that list helicopters, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife.

HeliBacon, based in Bryan, has approval from farmers and ranchers to hunt hogs across roughly 300,000 acres in the area, said CEO Chris Britt. Hogs tend to be nocturnal, so the after-dawn excursions last just a few hours. About 85% of the company’s customers come from out of state and some of them from abroad, he said.

“From the customer’s perspective, they want to fly in a helicopter at a low level. They want to shoot a machine gun. They’re chasing a live, moving target,” Britt said. “The fact it happens to be a feral pig that they are killing… and it’s good for the ecology, the farmers and the economy is a bonus.”

Using aircraft to take out an entire group of wild pigs is effective, but if some get away, they learn to start avoiding the sound of helicopters, said John M. Tomecek, Assistant Professor and Extension Wildlife Specialist at Texas A&M University.

See here, here, and here for more on the pork-chopping bill, which also got off to a slow start. I don’t know how I missed the story of the hot air balloon option, but it wasn’t expected to do much anyway.

It’s easy to make fun of all this, and honestly I don’t know why anyone would want to pilot any kind of aerial vehicle while one or more people in said vehicle was firing guns at moving targets, but as we have noted many times before, feral hogs are a huge problem in Texas. It’s nearly impossible to control the population growth, because they reproduce so quickly and plentifully. I’m fine with some outside-the-box ideas to try and keep the population under some control – a plan to deploy poison against the hogs was ultimately withdrawn after concerns were raised about environmental damage – though as the story notes, it’s not clear how effective the pork-chopping strategy has been. But hey, until something better comes along, at least people are trying it.

Precinct analysis: The judicial averages

Dec 28th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

As you know, I use the average totals and percentages from local judicial races as my go-to metric for determining partisan indexes for each district. That’s because these are two-candidate races, and generally speaking people vote in them on the party label and not on detailed knowledge of the individual candidates. I’ve looked at this data in various ways over the years – in 2018, it was all about undervoting, as my contribution to the ~~deeply annoying~~ great straight-ticket voting debate. This year, I just want to provide as comprehensive a look as I can at what the partisan index of each district is, so without further ado here are the averages and minimum/maximum values for each district:


Dist    Avg R    Avg D  Avg R%  Avg D%
======================================
CD02  180,657  152,260  54.26%  45.74%
CD07  152,705  147,943  50.79%  49.21%
CD08   25,930   14,830  63.62%  36.38%
CD09   37,855  119,136  24.11%  75.89%
CD10  103,043   58,975  63.60%  36.40%
CD18   59,751  178,574  25.07%  74.93%
CD22   21,796   19,965  52.19%  47.81%
CD29   49,285  100,975  32.80%  67.20%
CD36   82,990   47,534  63.58%  36.42%
				
SBOE4 106,801  333,572  24.25%  75.75%
SBOE6 387,513  345,132  52.89%  47.11%
SBOE8 219,698  161,490  57.64%  42.36%
				
SD04   55,837   22,370  71.40%  28.60%
SD06   57,502  117,156  32.92%  67.08%
SD07  236,992  169,822  58.26%  41.74%
SD11   77,482   46,126  62.68%  37.32%
SD13   38,020  158,384  19.36%  80.64%
SD15  114,322  192,386  37.27%  62.73%
SD17  118,535  122,335  49.21%  50.79%
SD18   15,323   11,618  56.88%  43.12%
				
HD126  39,112   33,088  54.17%  45.83%
HD127  54,309   34,783  60.96%  39.04%
HD128  48,197   21,688  68.97%  31.03%
HD129  48,127   34,606  58.17%  41.83%
HD130  70,364   31,748  68.91%  31.09%
HD131  10,092   44,290  18.56%  81.44%
HD132  50,934   47,797  51.59%  48.41%
HD133  50,892   35,660  58.80%  41.20%
HD134  49,172   56,015  46.75%  53.25%
HD135  36,694   36,599  50.07%  49.93%
HD137  10,422   20,732  33.45%  66.55%
HD138  31,922   30,597  51.06%  48.94%
HD139  15,711   44,501  26.09%  73.91%
HD140   9,326   21,677  30.08%  69.92%
HD141   7,106   35,937  16.51%  83.49%
HD142  13,933   41,496  25.14%  74.86%
HD143  11,999   24,126  33.21%  66.79%
HD144  13,786   16,469  45.57%  54.43%
HD145  14,992   26,765  35.90%  64.10%
HD146  11,408   43,008  20.96%  79.04%
HD147  15,323   52,737  22.51%  77.49%
HD148  22,392   36,300  38.15%  61.85%
HD149  21,640   30,536  41.47%  58.53%
HD150  56,160   39,038  58.99%  41.01%
				
CC1    93,365  277,707  25.16%  74.84%
CC2   150,891  143,324  51.29%  48.71%
CC3   228,295  207,558  52.38%  47.62%
CC4   241,461  211,606  53.29%  46.71%
				
JP1    93,441  162,045  36.57%  63.43%
JP2    34,172   48,572  41.30%  58.70%
JP3    51,782   67,626  43.37%  56.63%
JP4   235,236  182,956  56.25%  43.75%
JP5   204,805  212,367  49.09%  50.91%
JP6     8,152   26,921  23.24%  76.76%
JP7    18,654   99,583  15.78%  84.22%
JP8    67,769   40,125  62.81%  37.19%


Dist    Max R    Min D  Max R%  Min D%
======================================
CD02  185,931  148,006  55.68%  44.32%
CD07  159,695  144,247  52.54%  47.46%
CD08   26,439   14,393  64.75%  35.25%
CD09   40,013  116,625  25.54%  74.46%
CD10  105,177   57,133  64.80%  35.20%
CD18   63,096  174,763  26.53%  73.47%
CD22   22,436   19,262  53.81%  46.19%
CD29   55,680   94,745  37.02%  62.98%
CD36   84,840   45,634  65.02%  34.98%
				
SBOE4 117,378  322,667  26.67%  73.33%
SBOE6 401,507  336,009  54.44%  45.56%
SBOE8 224,690  156,133  59.00%  41.00%
				
SD04   56,905   21,704  72.39%  27.61%
SD06   64,474  110,326  36.88%  63.12%
SD07  242,602  164,480  59.60%  40.40%
SD11   79,333   44,482  64.07%  35.93%
SD13   40,293  155,638  20.56%  79.44%
SD15  118,813  187,188  38.83%  61.17%
SD17  124,541  119,169  51.10%  48.90%
SD18   15,619   11,279  58.07%  41.93%
				
HD126  40,053   31,945  55.63%  44.37%
HD127  55,452   33,703  62.20%  37.80%
HD128  49,089   20,798  70.24%  29.76%
HD129  49,387   33,547  59.55%  40.45%
HD130  71,729   30,669  70.05%  29.95%
HD131  11,027   43,306  20.30%  79.70%
HD132  52,228   46,423  52.94%  47.06%
HD133  53,008   34,318  60.70%  39.30%
HD134  53,200   53,340  49.93%  50.07%
HD135  37,600   35,481  51.45%  48.55%
HD137  10,831   20,255  34.84%  65.16%
HD138  32,956   29,493  52.77%  47.23%
HD139  16,700   43,426  27.78%  72.22%
HD140  10,796   20,276  34.75%  65.25%
HD141   7,844   35,148  18.25%  81.75%
HD142  15,015   40,325  27.13%  72.87%
HD143  13,599   22,554  37.62%  62.38%
HD144  14,965   15,326  49.40%  50.60%
HD145  16,455   25,318  39.39%  60.61%
HD146  11,924   42,368  21.96%  78.04%
HD147  16,147   51,800  23.76%  76.24%
HD148  23,754   35,054  40.39%  59.61%
HD149  22,315   29,713  42.89%  57.11%
HD150  57,274   37,933  60.16%  39.84%
				
CC1    98,310  271,971  26.55%  73.45%
CC2   158,199  135,874  53.80%  46.20%
CC3   236,301  201,920  53.92%  46.08%
CC4   248,120  205,046  54.75%  45.25%
				
JP1    99,574  157,709  38.70%  61.30%
JP2    36,841   45,917  44.52%  55.48%
JP3    54,016   65,253  45.29%  54.71%
JP4   240,145  177,376  57.52%  42.48%
JP5   211,698  206,389  50.63%  49.37%
JP6     9,694   25,425  27.60%  72.40%
JP7    19,825   98,162  16.80%  83.20%
JP8    69,422   38,580  64.28%  35.72%


Dist    Min R    Max D  Min R%  Max D%
======================================
CD02  175,786  157,942  52.67%  47.33%
CD07  145,575  154,644  48.49%  51.51%
CD08   25,520   15,264  62.57%  37.43%
CD09   36,275  121,193  23.04%  76.96%
CD10  101,112   61,042  62.36%  37.64%
CD18   56,673  182,314  23.71%  76.29%
CD22   21,218   20,673  50.65%  49.35%
CD29   45,744  105,745  30.20%  69.80%
CD36   81,336   49,507  62.16%  37.84%
				
SBOE4 100,933  342,178  22.78%  77.22%
SBOE6 373,961  359,113  51.01%  48.99%
SBOE8 215,025  167,034  56.28%  43.72%
				
SD04   55,047   23,216  70.34%  29.66%
SD06   53,562  122,474  30.43%  69.57%
SD07  231,452  175,578  56.86%  43.14%
SD11   75,844   48,065  61.21%  38.79%
SD13   36,086  160,806  18.33%  81.67%
SD15  109,597  198,247  35.60%  64.40%
SD17  112,679  127,956  46.83%  53.17%
SD18   15,000   11,985  55.59%  44.41%
				
HD126  38,215   34,107  52.84%  47.16%
HD127  53,344   35,933  59.75%  40.25%
HD128  47,390   22,477  67.83%  32.17%
HD129  46,964   36,012  56.60%  43.40%
HD130  69,298   32,900  67.81%  32.19%
HD131   9,584   44,980  17.56%  82.44%
HD132  49,625   49,260  50.18%  49.82%
HD133  48,359   37,729  56.17%  43.83%
HD134  45,698   59,519  43.43%  56.57%
HD135  35,662   37,653  48.64%  51.36%
HD137   9,997   21,240  32.00%  68.00%
HD138  30,912   31,792  49.30%  50.70%
HD139  14,891   45,442  24.68%  75.32%
HD140   8,496   22,687  27.25%  72.75%
HD141   6,751   36,444  15.63%  84.37%
HD142  13,366   42,296  24.01%  75.99%
HD143  11,100   25,218  30.56%  69.44%
HD144  13,029   17,345  42.90%  57.10%
HD145  14,011   28,167  33.22%  66.78%
HD146  10,824   43,630  19.88%  80.12%
HD147  14,469   53,867  21.17%  78.83%
HD148  21,053   38,031  35.63%  64.37%
HD149  20,955   31,398  40.03%  59.97%
HD150  55,070   40,198  57.81%  42.19%
				
CC1    88,636  283,723  23.80%  76.20%
CC2   146,468  149,847  49.43%  50.57%
CC3   220,181  215,729  50.51%  49.49%
CC4   234,765  219,028  51.73%  48.27%
				
JP1    87,533  168,977  34.12%  65.88%
JP2    32,564   50,632  39.14%  60.86%
JP3    50,336   69,338  42.06%  57.94%
JP4   230,567  188,394  55.03%  44.97%
JP5   197,305  219,993  47.28%  52.72%
JP6     7,269   28,198  20.50%  79.50%
JP7    17,578  100,870  14.84%  85.16%
JP8    66,324   41,925  61.27%  38.73%

There were 15 contested District or County court races, with another 12 that had only a Democrat running. All of the numbers are from the contested races. The first table is just the average vote total for each candidate in that district; I then computed the percentage from those average values. For the second and third tables, I used the Excel MAX and MIN functions to get the highest and lowest vote totals for each party in each district. It should be noted that the max Republican and min Democratic totals in a given district (and vice versa) may not belong to the candidates from the same race, as the total number of votes in each race varies. Consider these to be a bit more of a theoretical construct, to see what the absolute best and worst case scenario for each party was this year.

One could argue that Democrats did better than expected this year, given the partisan levels they faced. Both Lizzie Fletcher and Jon Rosenthal won re-election, in CD07 and HD135, despite running in districts that were tilted slightly against them. The one Republican that won in a district that tilted Democratic was Precinct 5 Constable Ted Heap, who won as his JP colleague Russ Ridgway fell; as previously noted, Dan Crenshaw clearly outperformed the baseline in CD02. The tilt in Commissioners Court Precinct 3 was too much for Michael Moore to overcome, though perhaps redistricting and four more years of demographic change will move things in the Democratic direction for 2024. As for Precinct 2, I believe Adrian Garcia would have been re-elected if he had been on the ballot despite the Republican tilt in that precinct, mostly because the Latino Democratic candidates generally carried the precinct. He will also get a hand from redistricting when that happens. I believe being the incumbent would have helped him regardless, as Jack Morman ran ahead of the pack in 2018, just not by enough to hang on.

The “Republican max” (table 2) and “Democratic max” (table 3) values give you a picture of the range of possibility in each district. At their high end for Republicans, CD02 and SBOE6 don’t look particularly competitive, while CD07 and HD135 look like they really got away, while HD144 looks like a missed opportunity, and JP5 could have maybe been held in both races. HD134 remained stubbornly Democratic, however. On the flip side, you can see that at least one Democratic judicial candidate took a majority in CD07, HD135, HD138, and CC2, while CC3 and CC4 both look enticingly close, and neither HDs 134 nor 144 look competitive at all. If nothing else, this is a reminder that even in these judicial races, there can be a lot of variance.

On the subject of undervoting, as noted in the Appellate Court posts, the dropoff rate in those races was about 4.7% – there wasn’t much change from the first race to the fourth. For the contested local judicial races, the undervote rate ranged from 5.06% in the first race to 6.54%, in the seventh (contested) race from the end. There was a downward trend as you got farther down the ballot, but it wasn’t absolute – as noted, there were six races after the most-undervoted race, all with higher vote totals. The difference between the highest turnout race to the lowest was about 24K votes, from 1.568 million to 1.544 million. It’s not nothing, but in the grand scheme of things it’s pretty minimal.

The twelve unopposed Democrats in judicial races clearly show how unopposed candidates always do better than candidates that have opponents. Every unopposed judicial candidate collected over one million votes. Kristen Hawkins, the first unopposed judicial candidate, and thus most likely the first unopposed candidate on everyone’s ballot, led the way with 1.068 million votes, about 200K more votes than Michael Gomez, who was the leading votegetter in a contested race. Every unopposed Democratic candidate got a vote from at least 61.25% of all voters, with Hawkins getting a vote from 64.44% of all. I have always assumed that some number of people feel like they need to vote in each race, even the ones with only one candidate.

I’m going to analyze the vote in the non-Houston cities next. As always, please let me know what you think.

One last (?) pointless gesture

Dec 28th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

Because true desperation never dies, I guess.

Rep. Lance Gooden of Terrell is one of the latest members of Congress to say he is going to object to the Electoral College certification on Jan. 6. Now, he says he just needs Sen. Ted Cruz or Sen. John Cornyn to join him.

The Terrell Republican said neither senator had yet responded to him on a Fox News interview Wednesday evening, but he said he was confident that another senator would step up. Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville of Alabama has indicated that he might object.

“On January the 6th, I suspect that more senators will come out and join me in this objection,” Gooden said. “But we’re starting here at home with Sen. Cornyn and Sen. Cruz.”

Gooden is not the only Texas Republican who has pledged to object to the Electoral College count. He signed a letter with Reps. Brian Babin of Woodville, Louie Gohmert of Tyler and Randy Weber of Friendswood saying they all would object to the results of the presidential election if Congress does not investigate claims of alleged voter fraud by Jan. 6.

In a letter to the senators, Gooden called for a full audit of ballots in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where the Trump campaign alleges fraud has occurred, despite little evidence.

[…]

The Electoral College voted for President-elect Joe Biden with a 306-232 majority on Dec. 14, but the last opportunity to challenge the results of the election will take place when Congress meets to certify the Electoral College results on Jan. 6. If at least one member of the Senate and one member of the House object to the results of the election, Congress must debate the matter.

Unless a majority in each chamber votes to reject the electors, the tally will stand. Since Democrats control the House, it is unlikely to be successful.

That’s “zero evidence”, and “not going to be successful”, but do go on. Louie Gohmert is stupid enough to believe his own bullshit, but I suspect the others have to know this is all a farce, and they’re doing it anyway because Donald Trump means more to them than any of the American values they have so piously intoned at us over the years. In the spirit of Christmas, I’m just going to leave it at that.

Too much virus, not enough treatment

Dec 28th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Still a bad combination.

Three weeks after Gov. Greg Abbott visited Lubbock to celebrate new antibody treatments amid a surge of infections, the city remains in crisis. Its two main hospitals had nearly two dozen patients waiting for beds Friday, and the city has administered only about 200 doses of the new medications, with about 4,500 active cases countywide.

Hospitals are also filling in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and other parts of the state that were slower to be hit by the fall surge. The state is hovering around 9,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients and reported fewer than 700 available intensive care beds for the first time this week, less than half the supply in September.

While most hospital officials in Texas welcomed the new treatments and remain hopeful that they prevent some hospitalizations, the limitations are also becoming apparent. Without enough doses or a way to distribute them quickly, hospitals will continue to be strained unless infections slow or until vaccines become widely available, not likely until at least early summer.

In Lubbock, hundreds of nurses and other hospital employees are out sick or quarantining from the coronavirus, and administrators worry that the hundreds more who have come to help from across the state and country will be called back as outbreaks in their home communities worsen. More than 231,000 new cases were reported Friday nationwide, nearly 4,000 above the previous record set on Dec. 4.

“We always have more contingency plans, and we’re deep into the middle of some of those where we truly are turning away patients from outlying communities because we can’t take them,” said Dr. Ron Cook, Lubbock’s health authority and the chief health officer at the Texas Tech University Health Science Center.

The treatments, made by the companies Eli Lilly and Regeneron, were granted emergency use authorizations last month to help prevent hospitalizations for the most vulnerable patients, including those over 65 and with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, obesity or kidney disease. They are the same treatments President Donald Trump and his lawyer Rudy Guiliani have received.

Texas got about 20,000 doses in the past five weeks, while it reported 330,000 new infections. Early clinical research suggests the drugs prevent about 1 in 20 people who receive them from being hospitalized.

Doctors at University Medical Center in Lubbock are encouraged by the early outcomes, but have often struggled to contact and persuade enough eligible patients to receive the treatments. The drugs need to be administered early on, before a person is hospitalized, and patients may not yet have developed symptoms. Some have never heard of the treatments or spoken with the hospital’s doctors before.

[…]

Combating the virus has been especially tough in Lubbock, a college town in a fiercely independent swath of the state where pandemic science has been regularly questioned and the governor’s tepid mask mandate largely unenforced. In recent weeks, the mayor and others have resorted to pleading with residents to physically distance and wear face coverings.

“Our independence is also hurting us,” Cook said.

Abbott’s mask order includes several exceptions and calls for fines only on the second offense, which county officials have said is nearly impossible to track.

It’s like I was saying. Prevention will have an exponentially better effect on the pandemic than treatment will, and that’s true even if the treatment we’d been given was much more effective than preventing five percent of its recipients from being hospitalized if they take it in time. Donald Trump and Greg Abbott have failed us at so many levels.

(This story is from two weeks ago, it’s been in my drafts because there’s been so much news as well as the holidays. It’s possible things are a little better in Lubbock now – I sure hope they are – but the point still stands. We are reacting instead of trying to take control of the situation. We’ve been doing that for months. The fact that we have better tools now to react with doesn’t change that.)

Weekend link dump for December 27

Dec 27th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

“When Usually Solitary Octopuses Get Together, Odd Things Happen”.

“Atlantic City Is Offering Bidders The Chance To Blow Up A Former Trump Casino”.

“What If There’s a COVID-22? How Should We Handle It?”

You’re not helping, guys. Not helping at all.

“That means don’t book liars, don’t show fighting for the sake of fighting.”

“So, one has to ask: What were the worst things to lie about in 2020, and who among those who told those lies had the most responsibility to do better? The first part is easy. Lies about subjects of national importance, such as the election and COVID, rise, like pond scum, to the top. The second part of the question takes you to people who, at least in theory, have more power at their disposal than your run-of-the-mill Proud Boy-adjacent meme-maker. Therefore, in the spirit of holiday cheer and the impending joy that will come in slamming the door shut on 2020, and to memorialize this remarkable age of outrageous, magical, and maniacal thinking, here are my offerings for the year’s worst takes from politicians and other political figures aside from Trump himself.”

“A pluralistic society needs to insure that people of faith, as well as those without any faith, have a role in the public square. But the defiance of the church during the pandemic has come with a cost. The pandemic in 2020 has held a mirror to Christianity, just as the epidemics of antiquity did, but today’s reflection carries the potential to repulse rather than attract.”

“Five Tips for How to Actually Change an Anti-Masker’s Mind, According to Experts”.

Leave Fairytale of New York alone!

More than you ever wanted to know about various jokes on The Simpsons.

RIP, Francesca Kaczynski, also known as Bean, Beanie or Beans. Cancer truly, truly sucks.

RIP, KC Jones, Hall of Fame player and coach for the Boston Celtics.

RIP, Phil Niekro, Hall of Fame pitcher known for his knuckleball.

The proper level of seriousness

Dec 27th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Meet John Fetterman (if you haven’t already), Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania and America’s foremost Dan Patrick troll.

John Fetterman

All John Fetterman wants for Christmas is the $3 million he says Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick owes him.

The Democratic lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania has been trolling his Republican counterpart for weeks to collect on the $1 million Patrick offered in November for evidence of fraud in the Nov. 3 election. Three supporters of President Donald Trump have now been charged in separate voter fraud schemes in Pennsylvania. Fetterman says they should all count for bounty purposes.

The most recent charges came this week — against the second Pennsylvania man to be accused of casting a ballot for Trump in the name of his deceased mother.

“We hit the jackpot with this last one,” Fetterman said. “There are three documented cases — three.”

“All I want for Christmas is my handsome reward from Dan Patrick,” Fetterman tweeted on Dec. 18 with a Christmas tree and pleading face emoji. Fetterman says he’ll donate the proceeds to food banks in the form of gift cards to Sheetz and Wawa, competing Pennsylvania convenience stores with die-hard followings.

Patrick has responded to Fetterman just once, in a tweet in November that read: “Faith in the electoral process is a serious issue. Transparency is critical. PA Dems brought this on themselves w/ last minute changes to election laws and counting ballots behind closed doors. Respond to the reports. Answer the questions. Stop the snide put-downs and #getserious”

Fetterman says he is serious — about debunking the false allegations being thrown at his state. He has taken the lead in Pennsylvania pushing back on bogus claims of voter fraud circulated by Trump and his allies. Patrick — honorary chairman of Trump’s campaign in Texas — and his million-dollar reward are helping to disprove those claims, Fetterman says.

“While it’s undoubtedly and undeniably hilarious these cases involved Trump voters and their dead mothers, it’s irrelevant because it documents how truly rare voter fraud is and how impossible it is to truly pull it off,” Fetterman said.

Fetterman has spent the last six weeks hounding Patrick, who he says is “just such a Trump simp, it’s just pathetic.”

“The thing that’s so especially galling is that people like him were smearing our state when we actually had an impeccable election,” Fetterman said. “They keep trying to malign and smear the quality work done by both sides — we’ve got way more Republican counties than Democratic counties. He’s smearing Republicans and Democrats alike when he impugns the electoral integrity.”

“If you’re going to smear my state, then you need to pay up, because we delivered what you asked for,” he said.

I trust you recall the Dan Patrick “one million dollars for voter fraud” challenge. Of course it was a ridiculous stunt by a shameless publicity whore – anyone else remember the time then-Sen. Dan Patrick, in his first term, brought a million dollars in actual cash to a press conference he’d called because he wanted to make sure everyone understood how much money that was? – and I doubt he gave it much thought beyond approving the media release, but I suspect Fetterman’s response caught him flat-footed. The prune-faced responses from Patrick and his press secretary would suggest they had no planned answer for anyone who took his “challenge” seriously. As such, he’s been thoroughly owned by someone who played the game at a much higher level than he did.

The great irony of this is that the relentless efforts by clowns like Patrick and Ken Paxton – and Greg Abbott before Paxton – to find and prove “voter fraud” on anything grander than a “dude who tried to cast a ballot for his dead mother” level is the best proof anyone could offer of the lack of same. I call this a “Bigfoot hunt” because the parallel is so clear – after decades of Bigfoot hunter tromping around the woods and forests without a single bone, footprint, pelt, or piece of scat to offer as proof of existence, what reasonable person could conclude anything other than there ain’t no such thing? We have literally tons of evidence of creatures that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, but not even one lousy sample of Bigfoot DNA. We have millions of dedicated “voter fraud” hunters, and they can’t come up with anything better than the Fetterman-supplied dude in Forty Fort impersonating his dead mother. You tell me what it means.

PAC to boot Paxton formed

Dec 27th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

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No time like the present to start the fight against America’s worst AG.

Thursday, the Boot Texas Republicans Political Action Committee launched a campaign that is dead set on kicking Paxton out of office. Treasurer Zack Malitz said the PAC is raising money to aid Democratic efforts against the attorney general when he’s up for reelection in 2022.

“Someone who is corrupt and criminal should not be the top law enforcement official in Texas — at a basic level,” said Malitz, who also served as former Congressman Beto O’Rourke’s statewide field director during the 2018 U.S. Senate race.

[…]

The Boot Texas Republicans PAC will set up sturdy campaign infrastructure for future candidates running statewide, Malitz said. It will be a data-driven operation aiming to create small-dollar fundraising and volunteer bases for whoever Paxton’s Democratic opponent will be.

On top of Paxton’s legal woes, the attorney general failed his constituents when he tried to block local public health regulations in El Paso during the COVID-19 crisis, Malitz said.

Paxton isn’t focused on his basic duty of serving his Texas constituents, he added.

“Of course, [Paxton] is unfit to serve, given the legal problems that he’s facing,” Malitz said.

The Boot Paxton campaign won’t be taking a position in terms of backing a particular candidate during the primaries, Malitz said. Rather, the PAC is focused on a general election effort and will put all its support behind whoever the eventual nominee is.

Malitz is also the founder of the Beat Abbott PAC that was set up in July. The basic idea is to do some fundraising now, to help the future candidate later. As we know, Joe Jaworski is in for AG, and I feel confident he’ll have some company in the primary. It’s hard to know right now what the 2022 environment is going to look like, but there’s no reason not to prepare for 2022 as if we can win. This is a good start. The Current has more.

The Harris County Election Security Task Force

Dec 26th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

I hadn’t realized that this was a thing, but it was and I’m glad it was.

A task force formed to ensure the security of the November election in Texas’ biggest county has found no evidence of wrongdoing after finishing its work.

The Harris County Election Security Task Force was made up of the Harris County Precinct 1 constable’s office, the district attorney’s office, the county attorney’s office and the county clerk’s office. In a report published Friday, the task force said it “received approximately 20 allegations of wrongdoing that needed to be elevated to the level of a formal investigation.”

“Despite claims, our thorough investigations found no proof of any election tampering, ballot harvesting, voter suppression, intimidation or any other type of foul play that might have impacted the legitimate cast or count of a ballot,” the report says.

[…]

The task force operated from Oct. 13 through Nov. 3, which was Election Day, according to the report. Undercover officers made 6,311 visits to 122 early voting and 806 Election Day polling sites. The task force responded to 77 calls for service. And it used four explosive-detecting K-9 units to to make 323 sweeps of polling locations, as well as “continual sweeps” while voters dropped off ballots at NRG Stadium on Election Day. (The task force found no explosives.)

“We all worked together to ensure our elections, which are the lifeblood of democracy, were free and fair and that any and all allegations were thoroughly investigated,” Ogg said.

The report is here, and it’s an easy read. This is good from a pragmatic perspective, in that it was good for the various law enforcement agencies to work together and coordinate efforts, and it was good from a transparency perspective, as each incident is detailed along with the response and resolution. You should read through the incident reports, which begin on page 8 and are the bulk of the document. Incident #2 was the subject of some fever-swamp “reporting” on right wing websites – a fellow Democrat who had come across one of those stories emailed me about it early on, and I noted in my reply to them the various ways in which it sounded like BS – while incident #22 was the Aguirre situation, which the report noted was referred to the DA’s office. The fact that in addition to responding to calls from the public, the task force made regular proactive checks on voting locations to ensure their safety was retroactively reassuring to me. It also had an actual, positive effect, unlike the fear-mongering and snipe hunting our state leaders engaged in. Put this down as another innovation from 2020 that we should keep on doing in the future.

Next in line for the vaccine

Dec 26th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

Attention will shift to more vulnerable populations.

Texans who are 65 years old and older, and those who are at least 16 with certain chronic medical conditions will be next in line for the COVID-19 vaccine, the Texas Department of State Health Services announced Monday.

“The focus on people who are age 65 and older or who have comorbidities will protect the most vulnerable populations,” said Imelda Garcia, chair of the state Expert Vaccine Allocation Panel and DSHS associate commissioner for laboratory and infectious diseases. “This approach ensures that Texans at the most severe risk from COVID-19 can be protected across races and ethnicities and regardless of where they work.”

The vaccine, which arrived in Texas on Dec. 14, has been available so far only to front-line health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities. There are nearly 1.9 million Texans in that group, so it will likely take a few weeks before the state transitions to the next phase, state health officials said.

The state expects to receive 1.4 million vaccine doses by the end of the month. Eligible facilities under the current phase include hospitals, pharmacies, nursing homes and Texas Department of Criminal Justices facilities.

The city of Houston will also receive 6,000 doses that are ticketed for firefighters and health care workers, so that’s good. A list of comorbidities that would get you onto the eligible list for the vaccine is in the article, so click over and check it out if you think this may apply to you or someone you know. But do keep in mind that bit about it taking a few weeks to transition into that next phase, because it will take awhile to get through the first phase. We need to continue to practice prevention so as not to sicken and kill many more people needlessly.

Indeed, for those of us in Houston, the next few weeks are looking rough.

The spread of COVID-19, steadily increasing in Houston and Texas since the beginning of November, is expected to accelerate in coming weeks, according to the latest modeling, a trajectory that could make the city and state one of the nation’s next hot spots.

The models project COVID-19 numbers — cases, hospitalizations, deaths — to continue rising in Houston and many other parts of Texas before likely peaking sometime in January. Parts of the state at crisis levels the past month have peaked.

“There’s a lot of concern about the Houston area as we enter the Christmas season,” said David Rubin, a pediatrician and director of The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s PolicyLab, which produces one of the models. “If I were to say what areas in the country still have the potential to surge, the Houston area definitely would be one of them.”

Rubin and others urged everyone to hunker down over the coming holiday period in an attempt to limit the damage from the coronavirus’ seeming last onslought before gradually deployed vaccines can begin to shut down the pandemic. He noted widespread deployment won’t be in time to affect Houston’s winter peak.

[…]

“What’s concerning is that so many regions of Texas look to be hit about the same time,” said Spencer Fox, associate director of the UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium. “It’s a sad trend at a time when the vaccines are almost within reach.”

The Houston-area trends are worrisome in two of the models. Fox’s group projects 2,121 COVID-19 hospitalizations in the area on Jan. 15, for instance, an increase of 36 percent over the 1,561 such admissions for Dec. 17.

In addition, the CHOP PolicyLab modeling shows the number of Harris County COVID-19 cases should nearly double by the end of the first week of January. The model projects 2,919 cases on Jan. 7, up from 1,478 on Dec. 14.

A third forecast, by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), projects the number of deaths in Texas will peak Jan. 5 at 292. The model, the only one of the three that projects more than a few weeks out, says daily deaths would total 280 on that date assuming universal mask wearing but reach 345 by late January if mandates are eased.

Thanks partly to the vaccines, the IHME model projects the number of daily Texas deaths will decrease dramatically after the Jan. 5 peak — 138 on Feb. 1, 55 on March 1 and 17 on April 1. The vaccine’s most immediate effect is expected to be more of reducing severe illness and deaths than cases.

The IHME model does not project past April.

In all, 28,134 COVID-19 Texas deaths are expected as of Dec. 31, according to the IHME model. All but 2,700 of those came after June 30.

“That’s a devastating loss of lives in just a six-month period,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a Baylor College of Medicine infectious disease specialist and vaccine scientist. “Has Texas ever lost so many lives in such a short time?”

The CHOP PolicyLab foresaw the June/July spike, though they were more alarmist than the situation turned out to be. But between the holidays and the colder weather that makes outdoor dining less feasible, the conditions are certainly there for an uptick. We all know what to do about this, it’s just on us to actually do it.

Say goodbye to 2020, Mel Torme

Dec 25th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

You know the story by now, my favorite Christmas story ever. If you know it, treat yourself and read it again. If you don’t know it, if you’re new here and you have no idea what I’m talking about, go click the link and find out. You won’t regret it. Merry Christmas, everyone.

Christmas Eve video break: Time for tradition

Dec 24th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

And that can only mean my favorite rendition of “A Visit From Saint Nicholas”:

I’ve been posting this on Christmas Eve for over a decade now. I watch it every year, more than once, and I never get tired of it. Merry Christmas Eve to you all.

Ken Paxton’s attempted jihad against Harris County

Dec 24th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Wow.

Best mugshot ever

Attorney General Ken Paxton tried to get the Trump administration to revoke millions in federal COVID relief funding that Harris County budgeted for expanding mail-in voting earlier this year, newly revealed records show.

Paxton wrote in a May 21 letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that Harris County’s plan was an “abuse” of the county’s authority and an “egregious” violation of state law. The letter was obtained and published by the Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“We respectfully ask the department to scrutinize its award of CARES Act funding to Harris County in light of the county’s stated intent to use federal funding in violation of state law, and to the extent possible, seek return of any amounts improperly spent on efforts to promote illegal mail-in voting,” Paxton wrote. “Without implementing adequate protections against unlawful abuse of mail-in ballots, the department could be cast in a position of involuntarily facilitating election fraud.”

The letter to Mnuchin illustrates the lengths Paxton went in his efforts to stop Harris and other counties from making it easier to vote by mail during the pandemic, which included suing Harris County as it tried to send mail ballots applications to all 2.4 million of its registered voters. The mail-ballot application push was part of the county’s $27.2 million plan to expand voting options, funded in large part through CARES Act money.

[…]

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Mnuchin heeded Paxton’s request to investigate how Harris County used the funding.

In a written statement, County Judge Lina Hidalgo said that the loss of the funds “would have knocked the floor out of our citizens’ ability to vote safely” during an important election held in the middle of a global pandemic.

“This attempt to cut off emergency federal funding for fellow Texans is indefensible,” she said. “To do so in secret is truly a shame and I’m relieved this is now out in the open.”

Members of the Texas Democratic Party accused the attorney general of “picking fights” to distract from his personal life.

“In the middle of the biggest pandemic in American history, every Texan should have been afforded the opportunity to vote as safely as possible. Indicted Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton continues to try to pick fights to distract away from his personal life and his abuse of office. Paxton is a carnival barker who has made Texas a laughingstock with his ridiculous inquiries and lawsuits. To restore trust in the Attorney General’s office, we must all band together to vote him and his abuse of power out in 2022.”

I suppose if there’s one thing that the year 2020 has been good for, it’s to serve as a reminder to me that I am still capable of being shocked. I can’t say that I’m surprised, because it was clear from the beginning that then-County Clerk Chris Hollins’ aggressive efforts to make voting easier, ably funded by Commissioners Court, were going to draw a heated response. I guess I had just assumed that the lawsuits filed by Paxton and others against the various things that Hollins pioneered were the response, with bills filed in the 2021 Legislature the culmination, but I had not expected this.

It is interesting that Paxton chose to fire this particular shot in secret. We would have found out about it at the time if he had succeeded, of course, but it’s strangely out of character for Paxton to do something like this under cover of darkness. Say what you will about Ken Paxton, the man does not lack confidence in the correctness of his positions. I don’t know what his motivation was for not being front and center about this – I mean, we saw the lawsuit he filed to overturn the election. Shame, or fear of being publicly dragged, are not inhibitions for him. Maybe he was afraid of spooking Secretary Mnuchin, who is generally less cartoon-y in his villainy. I’m open to suggestion on this point.

The story mentions that this letter came from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which led me to this:

CREW obtained Paxton’s letter to Mnuchin as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Treasury Department, which remains ongoing.

The lawsuit in question is over the appointment of Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General. We might never have found out about this scurrilous and cowardly action otherwise.

I was going to spend more time in this post pointing out that Paxton’s allegations were 1) essentially baseless, and 2) should have been made in a lawsuit, as this would have fallen squarely under his law enforcement authority if Harris County were indeed breaking the law as he claimed, but honestly that CREW article laid it out thoroughly, so go read that for those details. The main takeaway here is that this wasn’t just a partisan dispute, which could and should have been carried out in public as so many other mostly ginned-up voting “controversies” this year were, it was 100% unadulterated bullshit from our despicable Attorney General. He’s not feeling any pressure to step down from his fellow Republicans, and do brace yourself for a pardon from our Felon in Chief, so it really is up to us to vote his sorry ass out in 2022. The Texas Tribune has more.

Are you ready to attend a basketball game?

Dec 24th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I’m not, at least not yet. Ask me again after I’ve been vaccinated.

The Rockets on Thursday made official their plans to have limited numbers of fans in attendance at home games under a variety of health and safety protocols during the spike in cases in the coronavirus pandemic.

There will be a reduced capacity of spectators at Toyota Center of approximately 16-20 percent (3,000 to 3,660) for Rockets games and other events, beginning with the Rockets regular-season season opener next Wednesday. Thursday’s preseason game against the Spurs is to be played with staff, friends and family in attendance as a final test of the health and safety requirements and sanitation steps planned.

Fans will be required to answer health questions prior to entering Toyota Center with additional league-mandated testing protocols required of fans closer to the court.

Face masks are required for all those in the building 2-years-old and older, other than players, unless eating or drinking. Gaiters, bandanas or vented coverings will be not considered acceptable face coverings.

The NBA did a great job with the bubble for their 2020 playoffs, but that’s not practical for the regular season, which will be slightly shorter than usual but still pretty close to normal. College basketball is happening now, though I don’t know what the fan attendance policies are. I’m not ready for this, and I don’t think it’s a great idea. I wish I knew what the city of Houston and/or Harris County think about this, but that topic was not explored in the story. I hope this doesn’t cause any large-scale breakouts, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

(By the way, the scheduled season opener for the Rockets yesterday was postponed because of COVID concerns on the team. Womp womp.)

Precinct analysis: Appellate courts, part 2

Dec 23rd, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Introduction
Congressional districts
State Rep districts
Commissioners Court/JP precincts
Comparing 2012 and 2016
Statewide judicial
Other jurisdictions
Appellate courts, Part 1

Here’s the more traditional look at the Court of Appeals races. Unlike the Supreme Court and CCA, all of these races just have two candidates, so we get a purer view of each district’s partisan measure.


Dist    Chris    Robsn  Chris%  Robsn%
======================================
CD02  184,964  152,768  54.77%  45.23%
CD07  157,736  147,670  51.65%  48.35%
CD08   26,431   14,916  63.92%  36.08%
CD09   39,195  119,621  24.68%  75.32%
CD10  104,717   59,540  63.75%  36.25%
CD18   62,244  178,810  25.82%  74.18%
CD22   22,412   20,080  52.74%  47.26%
CD29   51,407  100,718  33.79%  66.21%
CD36   84,772   47,797  63.95%  36.05%
				
SBOE4 111,462  333,791  25.03%  74.97%
SBOE6 398,123  345,585  53.53%  46.47%
SBOE8 224,293  162,545  57.98%  42.02%
				
SD04   56,898   22,562  71.61%  28.39%
SD06   59,896  116,837  33.89%  66.11%
SD07  241,721  170,662  58.62%  41.38%
SD11   79,273   46,425  63.07%  36.93%
SD13   39,578  158,975  19.93%  80.07%
SD15  118,283  192,558  38.05%  61.95%
SD17  122,640  122,169  50.10%  49.90%
SD18   15,589   11,734  57.05%  42.95%
				
HD126  39,903   33,263  54.54%  45.46%
HD127  55,384   34,979  61.29%  38.71%
HD128  49,071   21,878  69.16%  30.84%
HD129  49,357   34,835  58.62%  41.38%
HD130  71,485   31,992  69.08%  30.92%
HD131  10,547   44,331  19.22%  80.78%
HD132  51,970   48,189  51.89%  48.11%
HD133  52,531   35,414  59.73%  40.27%
HD134  51,636   55,503  48.20%  51.80%
HD135  37,498   36,828  50.45%  49.55%
HD137  10,775   20,855  34.07%  65.93%
HD138  32,788   30,669  51.67%  48.33%
HD139  16,375   44,551  26.88%  73.12%
HD140   9,795   21,511  31.29%  68.71%
HD141   7,493   35,952  17.25%  82.75%
HD142  14,378   41,649  25.66%  74.34%
HD143  12,559   24,038  34.32%  65.68%
HD144  14,250   16,410  46.48%  53.52%
HD145  15,600   26,725  36.86%  63.14%
HD146  11,819   43,211  21.48%  78.52%
HD147  16,024   52,771  23.29%  76.71%
HD148  23,255   36,320  39.03%  60.97%
HD149  22,187   30,741  41.92%  58.08%
HD150  57,197   39,304  59.27%  40.73%
				
CC1    97,397  278,086  25.94%  74.06%
CC2   154,992  143,474  51.93%  48.07%
CC3   234,325  208,116  52.96%  47.04%
CC4   247,164  212,247  53.80%  46.20%
				
JP1    97,730  161,507  37.70%  62.30%
JP2    35,419   48,550  42.18%  57.82%
JP3    53,112   67,814  43.92%  56.08%
JP4   239,927  183,854  56.62%  43.38%
JP5   210,230  213,175  49.65%  50.35%
JP6     8,570   26,891  24.17%  75.83%
JP7    19,569   99,806  16.39%  83.61%
JP8    69,321   40,326  63.22%  36.78%


Dist    Lloyd   Molloy  Lloyd% Molloy%
======================================
CD02  182,465  155,019  54.07%  45.93%
CD07  155,392  149,641  50.94%  49.06%
CD08   26,105   15,215  63.18%  36.82%
CD09   38,009  120,873  23.92%  76.08%
CD10  103,826   60,311  63.26%  36.74%
CD18   59,729  181,164  24.79%  75.21%
CD22   22,012   20,440  51.85%  48.15%
CD29   47,790  104,691  31.34%  68.66%
CD36   83,738   48,699  63.23%  36.77%
			
SBOE4 105,088  340,408  23.59%  76.41%
SBOE6 392,723  350,361  52.85%  47.15%
SBOE8 221,255  165,285  57.24%  42.76%
				
SD04   56,516   22,841  71.22%  28.78%
SD06   55,876  121,303  31.54%  68.46%
SD07  238,891  173,275  57.96%  42.04%
SD11   78,393   47,111  62.46%  37.54%
SD13   38,185  160,335  19.23%  80.77%
SD15  114,913  195,701  37.00%  63.00%
SD17  120,892  123,589  49.45%  50.55%
SD18   15,400   11,900  56.41%  43.59%
				
HD126  39,359   33,787  53.81%  46.19%
HD127  54,725   35,562  60.61%  39.39%
HD128  48,591   22,310  68.53%  31.47%
HD129  48,813   35,233  58.08%  41.92%
HD130  71,017   32,409  68.66%  31.34%
HD131   9,999   44,913  18.21%  81.79%
HD132  51,123   48,982  51.07%  48.93%
HD133  52,075   35,754  59.29%  40.71%
HD134  50,815   56,050  47.55%  52.45%
HD135  36,859   37,440  49.61%  50.39%
HD137  10,494   21,131  33.18%  66.82%
HD138  32,143   31,246  50.71%  49.29%
HD139  15,702   45,174  25.79%  74.21%
HD140   8,932   22,448  28.46%  71.54%
HD141   6,966   36,461  16.04%  83.96%
HD142  13,717   42,333  24.47%  75.53%
HD143  11,615   25,061  31.67%  68.33%
HD144  13,600   17,131  44.25%  55.75%
HD145  14,768   27,651  34.81%  65.19%
HD146  11,569   43,424  21.04%  78.96%
HD147  15,344   53,409  22.32%  77.68%
HD148  22,543   37,048  37.83%  62.17%
HD149  21,838   31,134  41.23%  58.77%
HD150  56,458   39,961  58.55%  41.45%
				
CC1    93,785  281,473  24.99%  75.01%
CC2   150,775  147,845  50.49%  49.51%
CC3   231,120  210,968  52.28%  47.72%
CC4   243,386  215,770  53.01%  46.99%
				
JP1    94,795  164,261  36.59%  63.41%
JP2    33,861   50,188  40.29%  59.71%
JP3    51,723   69,237  42.76%  57.24%
JP4   236,701  186,804  55.89%  44.11%
JP5   206,960  216,197  48.91%  51.09%
JP6     7,778   27,817  21.85%  78.15%
JP7    18,795  100,517  15.75%  84.25%
JP8    68,453   41,035  62.52%  37.48%


Dist    Adams   Guerra  Adams% Guerra%
======================================
CD02  184,405  152,836  54.68%  45.32%
CD07  157,212  147,381  51.61%  48.39%
CD08   26,351   14,919  63.85%  36.15%
CD09   38,998  119,778  24.56%  75.44%
CD10  104,820   59,234  63.89%  36.11%
CD18   61,326  179,332  25.48%  74.52%
CD22   22,218   20,211  52.37%  47.63%
CD29   48,121  104,386  31.55%  68.45%
CD36   84,501   47,871  63.84%  36.16%
			
SBOE4 107,293  337,920  24.10%  75.90%
SBOE6 397,124  345,286  53.49%  46.51%
SBOE8 223,535  162,743  57.87%  42.13%
				
SD04   56,904   22,386  71.77%  28.23%
SD06   56,357  120,880  31.80%  68.20%
SD07  241,466  170,348  58.63%  41.37%
SD11   79,098   46,319  63.07%  36.93%
SD13   39,476  158,887  19.90%  80.10%
SD15  116,690  193,656  37.60%  62.40%
SD17  122,412  121,729  50.14%  49.86%
SD18   15,549   11,745  56.97%  43.03%
				
HD126  39,813   33,289  54.46%  45.54%
HD127  55,237   34,999  61.21%  38.79%
HD128  48,957   21,899  69.09%  30.91%
HD129  49,340   34,653  58.74%  41.26%
HD130  71,559   31,806  69.23%  30.77%
HD131  10,266   44,574  18.72%  81.28%
HD132  51,808   48,208  51.80%  48.20%
HD133  52,597   35,086  59.99%  40.01%
HD134  51,370   55,317  48.15%  51.85%
HD135  37,274   36,945  50.22%  49.78%
HD137  10,724   20,876  33.94%  66.06%
HD138  32,559   30,808  51.38%  48.62%
HD139  16,147   44,644  26.56%  73.44%
HD140   8,966   22,430  28.56%  71.44%
HD141   7,254   36,084  16.74%  83.26%
HD142  14,142   41,863  25.25%  74.75%
HD143  11,744   24,953  32.00%  68.00%
HD144  13,658   17,072  44.45%  55.55%
HD145  14,824   27,584  34.96%  65.04%
HD146  11,928   43,032  21.70%  78.30%
HD147  15,656   53,073  22.78%  77.22%
HD148  22,757   36,812  38.20%  61.80%
HD149  22,195   30,784  41.89%  58.11%
HD150  57,176   39,156  59.35%  40.65%
				
CC1    95,892  278,971  25.58%  74.42%
CC2   152,017  146,563  50.91%  49.09%
CC3   233,933  207,769  52.96%  47.04%
CC4   246,110  212,648  53.65%  46.35%
				
JP1    95,938  162,864  37.07%  62.93%
JP2    34,099   49,931  40.58%  59.42%
JP3    52,405   68,430  43.37%  56.63%
JP4   239,343  183,827  56.56%  43.44%
JP5   209,649  213,147  49.59%  50.41%
JP6     7,852   27,792  22.03%  77.97%
JP7    19,566   99,631  16.41%  83.59%
JP8    69,100   40,329  63.15%  36.85%


Dist     Wise    Craft   Wise%  Craft%
======================================
CD02  187,076  150,161  55.47%  44.53%
CD07  160,323  144,461  52.60%  47.40%
CD08   26,468   14,814  64.12%  35.88%
CD09   39,255  119,480  24.73%  75.27%
CD10  105,224   58,786  64.16%  35.84%
CD18   62,464  178,398  25.93%  74.07%
CD22   22,479   19,942  52.99%  47.01%
CD29   51,350  100,685  33.78%  66.22%
CD36   85,152   47,195  64.34%  35.66%
				
SBOE4 111,160  333,956  24.97%  75.03%
SBOE6 403,452  338,891  54.35%  45.65%
SBOE8 225,179  161,076  58.30%  41.70%
				
SD04   57,202   22,111  72.12%  27.88%
SD06   59,943  116,758  33.92%  66.08%
SD07  242,902  168,936  58.98%  41.02%
SD11   79,698   45,696  63.56%  36.44%
SD13   39,579  158,895  19.94%  80.06%
SD15  119,640  190,784  38.54%  61.46%
SD17  125,186  119,108  51.24%  48.76%
SD18   15,641   11,636  57.34%  42.66%
				
HD126  40,122   32,983  54.88%  45.12%
HD127  55,653   34,618  61.65%  38.35%
HD128  49,175   21,666  69.42%  30.58%
HD129  49,744   34,245  59.23%  40.77%
HD130  71,894   31,468  69.56%  30.44%
HD131  10,420   44,469  18.98%  81.02%
HD132  52,080   47,898  52.09%  47.91%
HD133  53,487   34,292  60.93%  39.07%
HD134  53,678   53,121  50.26%  49.74%
HD135  37,617   36,577  50.70%  49.30%
HD137  10,841   20,738  34.33%  65.67%
HD138  33,111   30,252  52.26%  47.74%
HD139  16,338   44,533  26.84%  73.16%
HD140   9,677   21,649  30.89%  69.11%
HD141   7,162   36,255  16.50%  83.50%
HD142  14,336   41,735  25.57%  74.43%
HD143  12,465   24,123  34.07%  65.93%
HD144  14,238   16,400  46.47%  53.53%
HD145  15,761   26,507  37.29%  62.71%
HD146  12,019   42,980  21.85%  78.15%
HD147  16,327   52,404  23.75%  76.25%
HD148  24,026   35,407  40.43%  59.57%
HD149  22,369   30,513  42.30%  57.70%
HD150  57,250   39,088  59.43%  40.57%
				
CC1    98,291  276,873  26.20%  73.80%
CC2   155,580  142,504  52.19%  47.81%
CC3   236,903  204,782  53.64%  46.36%
CC4   249,017  209,766  54.28%  45.72%
				
JP1   100,430  158,362  38.81%  61.19%
JP2    35,440   48,448  42.25%  57.75%
JP3    52,981   67,919  43.82%  56.18%
JP4   240,598  182,662  56.84%  43.16%
JP5   212,371  210,308  50.24%  49.76%
JP6     8,629   26,793  24.36%  75.64%
JP7    19,649   99,743  16.46%  83.54%
JP8    69,693   39,690  63.71%  36.29%

If you just went by these results, you might think Dems did worse overall in Harris County than they actually did. None of the four candidates carried CD07, and only Veronica Rivas-Molloy carried HD135. They all still carried Harris County, by margins ranging from 6.0 to 8.7 points and 94K to 137K votes, but it’s clear they could have done better, and as we well know, even doing a little better would have carried Jane Robinson and Tamika Craft (who, despite her low score here still lost overall by less than 20K votes out of over 2.3 million ballots cast) to victory.

I don’t have a good explanation for any of this. Maybe the Libertarian candidates that some statewide races had a bigger effect on those races than we think. Maybe the incumbents had an advantage that enabled them to get a better share of the soft partisan vote. Maybe the Chron endorsements helped the incumbents. And maybe the lack of straight ticket voting did matter. The undervote rate in these races was around 4.7%, which is pretty low, but in 2018 it was around 2.7%. Picking on the Robinson race again, had the undervote rate been 2.7% instead of the 4.68% it actually was, there would have been an additional 36,154 votes cast. At the same 53.43% rate for Robinson, she would have received another 19,317 votes, with Tracy Christopher getting 16,837. That’s a 2,480 vote net for Robinson, which would be enough for her to win, by 1,291 votes. Tamika Craft would still fall short, but Dems would have won three out of four races instead of just two.

Of course, we can’t just give straight ticket voting back to Harris County and not the other nine counties. I’m not going to run through the math for each county, but given that Christopher did better in the non-Harris Counties, we can assume she’s net a few votes in them if straight ticket voting were still in effect. Maybe it wouldn’t be enough – remember, there were far more votes in Harris than in the other nine, and the Republican advantage wasn’t that much bigger, so the net would be smaller. It’s speculation built on guesswork, and it’s all in service of making up for the fact that the Democratic candidates could have done better in Harris County with the votes that were cast than they did. Let’s not get too wishful in our thinking here.

So does this affect my advice from the previous post? Not really – we still need to build on what we’re already doing, and figure out how to do better in the places where we need to do better. Maybe a greater focus judicial races is needed, by which I mean more money spent to advertise the Democratic judicial slate. As we’ve observed, these are close races in what is clearly very swingy territory, at least for now. With close races, there’s a broad range of possible factors that could change the outcome. Pick your preference and get to work on it.

More on the TDP 2020 audit

Dec 23rd, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

I’m very much looking forward to seeing the final report, but I don’t have a clear idea of the objectives from this story.

[Unsuccessful State House candidate Brandy Chambers’] election night confusion mirrors the second-guessing going on within the Texas Democratic Party, the members of which received every advantage they hoped for in 2020 — enough campaign cash to keep pace with a well-funded GOP, a polarizing candidate at the top of the Republican ticket and historically high voter turnout — but still gained virtually nothing.

The early diagnosis: A national push to avoid in-person campaigning because of the pandemic was ruinous, especially with Latino voters who are key to the party’s fortunes in Texas. Early polls were skewed against conservatives and gave Democrats a false sense of security. Republicans effectively characterized calls to defund the police as a threat to public safety. And the party’s message did not connect with the average voter worried about recovering from the economic hurt inflicted by COVID-19.

Texas Democrats believe the lack of in-person campaign events and door-knocking especially hurt them come Election Day, as Republicans continued to meet with voters.

“This was probably the most difficult thing that we faced — the most impactful thing in our election,” Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said. “You had the Republican Party engaged in all of these races in a massive canvassing campaign and bragging about it. … We were left at a very, very severe disadvantage.”

Hinojosa said President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign had advised down-ballot candidates to avoid in-person events and that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee issued similar rules for its candidates, threatening to withhold funds from campaigns if they went door to door.

About two months before the election, Hinojosa said, he’d heard concerns from congressional candidates and organizers who said they “were having a hard time reaching Hispanic voters by the phone. … They really needed to be freed to knock on doors.”

But the national officials wouldn’t budge, he said.

A DCCC spokesman confirmed that there was a nationwide policy directing candidates not to canvass in person during the pandemic but denied that the organization threatened to take away funding from Texas Democrats if they persisted.

[…]

The members demanded 12 action items to move forward, including changes in senior leadership, the creation of a 10-year strategic plan and a request for assistance from states where Democrats had successfully run campaigns this cycle.

“The ultimate goal was ‘let’s start a conversation.’ It was not meant to be petty or divisive,” said Jen Ramos, a member of the state party’s executive committee and co-author of the letter. “We just decided that we’ve got to be firm about this but also really have a means to healing.”

[…]

“Republicans were talking about how we could keep you working,” [SDEC member and letter co-author Kendall] Scudder said. “Democrats were talking about shutting the economy down. Democrats were being the most responsible, but sometimes you don’t love the parent who spanks you. You love the parent that buys you candy.”

Scudder said the party must improve its communication with minority voters and stop pushing only issues that “we ascribe to them as important,” such as immigration for Latino voters or criminal justice reform for Black voters.

[Committee co-chair Chris] Hollins said the committee will meet soon to settle on an initial list of objectives. Revamping party messaging is at the top of his list, too — especially as it relates to the specific identity and goals of the Texas Democratic Party and how they differentiate from those of more liberal states.

See here for the background and some more information about the letter. While it’s important to really understand what happened and learn from it, I hope this committee looks forward at least as much as it looks back. Every election is unique in its own ways, and I think the conditions of 2020 are especially singular. We already know that there’s no debate about issue of in-person campaigning – everyone agrees it was a net negative, and no one has any plans to try it again, so it’s not like this is some new ongoing advantage the Republicans have gained. Figure out what if anything was good about the other forms of campaigning everyone did, recommend ways to build it into future campaigns, and more on.

As far as the messaging stuff goes, I feel like it’s the post-2004 election all over again, though at least this time we won the Presidency. So much time and effort and money and think-pieces were spent on What The Democrats’ Message Needs To Be and How Do We Connect With Those Bush Voters and so on, and then Hurricane Katrina happened and public opinion turned sour on the Iraq War, and Democrats dominated the next two elections. I’m not suggesting that things will magically turn around and get better, nor am I saying that the post-2004 effort had no lessons for us, but I am saying that events can and will shape the political environment in substantial and unforeseeable ways, and that’s why we need to be looking forward as much as possible, while doing everything we can to make the opportunity we have in front of us – fixing the economy, successfully rolling out the COVID vaccine, getting people back to work, protecting our democracy, and more – so that the future environment is as filled with recent positive achievements we can point to as possible. Nothing succeeds like success.

My viewpoint in that paragraph is affected greatly by this WaPo story about the national Democratic reckoning; it’s where the post-2004 parallels occurred to me, because so much of the language was familiar. Again, I agree there’s a ton of value in auditing what just happened so we can understand what went well and what did not, and what we can learn from each. I just don’t want to get too bogged down in that, because what we do now, over the next 12-18 months will, I guarantee you, have a bigger effect on the 2022 election. If we’ve made progress in making people’s lives better, and we’ve been up front about taking credit for it, which is one trick from the Trump playbook that we really do need to appropriate, then we’ll be in good shape.

One last thing, which I have not seen mentioned in any of these “what did Dems screw up in 2020” stories is the effect of disinformation, propaganda, and fake news on voters’ behavior. We are seeing the effect of the constant barrage of bullshit coming from Trump and too many Republican leaders to count in the lawsuits, the increasing threats of violence from riled-up fringe types, the outrageous legislation being proposed around the country, and so forth, but that barrage began well before the election, and it’s being aimed at immigrants and people of color as well, with the same dispiriting effect. There was plenty of evidence of this occurring before the election, and I personally believe it’s a key part of the explanation for why Trump did better among Latinos and Asian-Americans than he had done before. Any strategy to improve Democratic performance, whether in Texas or nationally, has to take this into account. We can’t stop the liars from lying, but we can and we must figure out a way to blunt the effect of that lying. If that’s not a pillar of our plans going forward, then those plans are inadequate and not meeting the moment.

You’d think with all that voter fraud out there, they could actually find some

Dec 23rd, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

So much effort, so little to show for it.

Best mugshot ever

The Texas Attorney General’s office this year almost doubled the amount of time it spent looking into and working on voter fraud cases in 2018 — more than 22,000 staff hours — yet resolved just 16 prosecutions, half as many as in 2018, records show.

All 16 cases involved Harris County residents who gave false addresses on their voter registration forms. None of them received any jail time.

Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has made the hunt for voter fraud a top priority of his office, between January and October gave the election integrity unit access to eight additional law enforcement sergeants on top of the nine already assigned to it, and doubled the number of prosecutors to four, according to records obtained from the agency by nonprofit government watchdog American Oversight and shared with Hearst Newspapers.

In its 15 years of its existence, the unit has prosecuted a few dozen cases in which offenders received jail time, none of them involving widespread fraud.

[…]

The low number of prosecutions resolved this year in contrast with the hours worked shines light on a core disagreement between Paxton and voting rights advocates: Is the low prosecution rate a cause or effect? Does it signify that few cases exist or that more resources are needed to find the cases presumed to be lurking undetected?

Paxton did not respond to a request for comment for this story, but in a taped interview with the conservative-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation in September, he explained why he believes the number of cases does not represent the scope of the issue.

“It just takes a lot of effort to take it through the entire process. So you’re never going to see thousands of cases coming out of an office that has three prosecutors, and we probably have more than most states,” Paxton said. “It’s limited to what we can do, but we try to send the message with what we do and the fact that we’re investigating well over 100 cases right now, that we take this seriously, and we’re going to do our best. You may be the unfortunate one we catch.”

University of Texas election law professor Joseph Fishkin said there could be another explanation.

“This is not the only voter fraud effort to pour in a lot of resources and end up with a relatively small number of cases found,” Fishkin said, referring to the Trump Administration’s voting integrity commission, which disbanded in 2018 after finding no evidence of widespread voter fraud. “Finding very few defendants, even if they can charge some with multiple offenses, is consistent with the possibility that there just isn’t that much fraud to prosecute.”

It’s also possible that Paxton, like Greg Abbott before him, is just really incompetent at his job, which in this case would provide counter-evidence to the belief that it takes a crook to catch a crook.

Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, said investing in a program that has not uncovered widespread fraud speaks to Paxton’s priorities.

“How many resources are they going to spend to try to put political wins on the board?” Pérez said. “No one is saying that there’s never mistakes or that fraud never happens. People are saying it’s extraordinarily rare; study after study demonstrates that that’s the case.”

Pérez added that the attorney general’s office tends to try to make examples out of voters who made mistakes and isn’t finding the organized election fraud that Paxton claims to be guarding against.

For example, Crystal Mason is a 45-year-old Fort Worth woman who was sentenced to five years in prison for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election — one that was never counted — while on supervised release for a federal conviction. She has said she did not know she was ineligible to vote. At the end of November, her lawyers filed a petition to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to review her case and acquit her of the illegal voting charge.

“Crystal Mason got more time than that ‘affluenza’ kid,” she said, referring to a Texas man who got no jail time after claiming in court that his wealthy upbringing clouded his sense of right and wrong during his trial for killing four people while driving drunk. “It’s really hard to say who you’re protecting people from.”

He’s trying to protect Republicans from the scourge of Democratic voting. That much is clear.

Look, in a sense this is all just hunting for Bigfoot. The fact that we’ve spent all this time and money trying to find Bigfoot without ever finding any evidence of Bigfoot doesn’t mean that Bigfoot doesn’t exist, it just means we’re not looking hard enough. Alternately, one can claim that all this time and money being spent on Bigfoot hunting is the only thing that’s keeping us safe from rampaging Bigfoot massacres, because if we weren’t out there so publicly hunting for Bigfoot, then Bigfoot would get all emboldened and run amok in the community. And we wouldn’t want to send the message that we’re soft on Bigfoot, now would we?

Trump commutes Stockman sentence

Dec 23rd, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

6 comments

Crooks of a feather.

Best newspaper graphic ever

President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday commuted the remaining prison sentence of former Republican Texas congressman Steve Stockman, who was sentenced to 10 years in 2018 after he was convicted of nearly two-dozen felonies, including fraud.

Prosecutors said the conservative firebrand from Friendswood misused $1.25 million in funds from political donors to pay for expenses like hot air balloon rides, kennel bills and a new dishwasher — rather than for charity like the donors were told. He was also accused of planting an undercover intern in the state House office of a political rival.

Former U.S. Reps. Bob McEwen and Bob Barr, Republicans from Ohio and Georgia respectively, were among the public figures who called for Stockman’s release, according to a statement from the White House Press Secretary, announcing the outgoing president had pardoned 15 people and commuted the sentences of five.

Stockman, 64, has underlying health conditions that place him at heightened risk during the pandemic. He has already been infected with the coronavirus while in prison, the release said.

He has served more than two years of his decade-long sentence, and will “remain subject to a period” of supervised release and a requirement that he pay $1 million in restitution, the release said.

See here for the background. The Chron story mentions a pardon as well as the commutation, but it’s not clear to me that was the case. What is clear is that this latest batch of pardons is another hive of scum and villainy, and we’ve still got four weeks to go.

I suppose I should feel some outrage about this particular order, as one of the nation’s leading Steve Stockman obsessives, but my reaction when I saw the Chron headline was a sigh and a head-shake. It’s not like this was a surprise, after all. Steve Stockman is exactly the type of person Trump is moved to help. I’m a little surprised it hadn’t already happened. At least he still has the restitution to pay. Either Stockman will fade back into obscurity from here, or he’ll find another way to get arrested, because that’s the kind of person he is. I don’t know what else to say.

Texas blog roundup for the week of December 21

Dec 23rd, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes all who celebrate a very Merry Christmas as it brings you this week’s roundup.

(more…)

Precinct analysis: Appellate courts, part 1

Dec 22nd, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Introduction
Congressional districts
State Rep districts
Commissioners Court/JP precincts
Comparing 2012 and 2016
Statewide judicial
Other jurisdictions

My next two posts in this series will focus on the 1st and 14th Courts of Appeals. These courts are a little strange electorally, as the elections cover ten counties in all, and over the past few elections they have proven to be pretty darned balanced. As we know, turnout in Harris County has gone up a lot in recent years, and the county has gone from evenly split to strongly blue, yet the balance in these ten counties persists. In this post, I’m going to do a bit of a historical review, to look at the trends and see if we can spot the underlying metrics.


2008 - 1st CoA Pl 3 (50.58%)

County   Tot Votes   Share  DemVotes    Dem%
============================================
Harris   1,111,642  70.74%   585,249  52.65%
Others     459,704  29.26%   209,510  45.57%

2012 - 14th CoA Pl 3 (47.74%)

County   Tot Votes   Share  DemVotes    Dem%
============================================
Harris   1,137,580  69.82%   580,356  51.01%
Others     491,673  30.18%   197,511  40.17%

2016 - 1st CoA Pl 4 (48.95%)

County   Tot Votes   Share  DemVotes    Dem%
============================================
Harris   1,273,638  69.00%   671,908  52.76%
Others     572,258  31.00%   231,702  40.49%

2018 - 1st CoA Pl 2 (50.93%)

County   Tot Votes   Share  DemVotes    Dem%
============================================
Harris   1,187,403  68.63%   647,398  54.52%
Others     542,765  31.37%   233,693  43.06%

2020 - 1st CoA Pl 3 (50.76%)

County   Tot Votes   Share  DemVotes    Dem%
============================================
Harris   1,575,122  68.23%   856,056  54.35%
Others     733,364  31.77%   314,644  42.90%

2020 - 1st CoA Pl 5 (50.10%)

County   Tot Votes   Share  DemVotes    Dem%
============================================
Harris   1,573,903  68.24%   845,951  53.75%
Others     732,455  31.76%   309,497  42.25%

2020 - 14th CoA Chief Justice (49.97%)

County   Tot Votes   Share  DemVotes    Dem%
============================================
Harris   1,575,801  68.23%   841,923  53.43%
Others     733,698  31.77%   312,231  42.56%

2020 - 14th CoA Pl 7 (49.57%)

County   Tot Votes   Share  DemVotes    Dem%
============================================
Harris   1,573,716  68.25%   833,925  52.99%
Others     732,057  31.75%   309,115  42.23%

A couple of points of explanation here. For 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2018, I picked the top Democratic performer among the appellate court candidates. For 2008, that meant the one Democratic winner. In 2018, as every Dem won their race, I went with the candidate with the narrowest victory, since what I’m most interested in is the threshold needed to win. For 2020, I included all four candidates.

In each table, I separated out the total votes cast in that race from Harris County, and from all the other counties. “Share” is the share of the vote that came from Harris County, so in the 2008 race 70.74% of the total vote came from Harris County. “DemVotes” is the total number of votes the Democratic candidate got, in Harris and in the other counties, and “Dem%” is the percentage of the vote that Democratic candidate got.

We see that the share of the vote from Harris County has dropped every year, from over 70% in 2008 to a bit more than 68% this year. That doesn’t appear to be predictive of anything, as Dems swept these races in 2018 and won two out of four this year, with the lowest-performing Dem having (by a tiny amount) the largest Harris County vote share. The rise of Fort Bend County as a Democratic bastion has no doubt mitigated the shrinking contribution from Harris, but that points out again the importance of counties around Harris, as the reddening of Galveston and the smaller counties has kept these races competitive. One thing I hadn’t realized till I went through this exercise was that Waller County was quite close to even in 2008, but gave Republicans a 7K vote edge in 2020. Indeed, Dem candidates in Waller in 2020 were getting about the same number of votes as Dem candidates in Waller in 2008, after two cycles of failing to meet the 2008 number, as the Republican vote steadily climbed. As we have discussed before, Jane Robinson lost her race by 0.06 percentage points, or a bit more than a thousand votes out of over 1.5 million votes cast. In a race that close, you can point to many, many ways in which a small difference would have changed the outcome.

That’s one reason why these races interest me so much. For one, the appellate courts were a place where Dems made numerous pickups in 2020, yet still fell a bit short of expectations – I at least thought we’d win all four of these, given how well we’d done in 2018. But as you can see, it wasn’t quite to be. I don’t want to downplay the races we did win – Veronica Rivas Molloy and Amparo Guerra are both terrific candidates, and they are now the only Latinas on that court – I’m just greedy enough to have wanted more.

What’s frustrating to me is that I can’t tell what I think is the magic formula here. The difference between Guerra, who won by four thousand votes and 0.20 percentage points, and Robinson is tiny enough to be rounding error. The main difference is that Guerra won Harris County by ten thousand votes more than Robinson did, while Robinson did five thousand votes better in the other counties than Guerra did (she lost them by 421K while Guerra lost them by 426K). We know that Latinx candidates generally did better in Harris County this year than their peers, but that wasn’t the case outside Harris County. And even if it was, that’s not much of a lesson to learn. It was a game of inches, and we won one and lost one.

Ultimately, I think the path here is the same as the path I’ve described in the various “key counties” posts. We’re starting to move in the right direction in Brazoria County, and if we can keep that going that could be enough to tip the scales to the blue side on a longer-term basis. Basically, if we keep doing what we’re doing we’ll likely be at least competitive in these races, and if we can step it up a bit, especially but not exclusively in Brazoria, we can do better than that. Maybe not the deepest insight you’ll ever read, but it’s what I’ve got.

(Assuming that the judicial districts don’t get redrawn, which I suppose they could. In 2004, the First and Fourteenth districts included Burleson, Trinity, and Walker Counties plus the current ten. We’d have zero chance of winning these races if those three were added back in. I have no idea what the process or criteria for defining the judicial districts is. I’m just saying that if Republicans decided to do something about this, they probably could.)

Next up, I’ll do the district breakdown for these four races in Harris County. After that, more judicial races and then on to the other county races. As always, let me know what you think.

A closer look at the Aguirre/Hotze debacle

Dec 22nd, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

This WaPo story was pointed out in the comments here, and it’s worth your time to read. I should note that while the Houston Chronicle has not (at least so far) identified the air conditioning repairman that Aguirre attacked, this story did identify and talk to him. For now, I’m going to stick to the Chron’s style guide, so where the WaPo story includes his name, I’m going to put “[the ACRM]” in my excerpt, to stand for “the air conditioning repairman”.

The episode illustrates the extreme and sometimes dangerous tactics that a set of conservative groups have employed in an effort to substantiate President Trump’s unproven allegations of widespread voting fraud in the election. Theories about truckloads of missing mail-in ballots, manipulated voting machines and illegal mail-in ballot collections have abounded in far-right circles, despite a lack of credible evidence, leading to threats of violence against election workers and officials.

Many of the fraud allegations have come in the form of lawsuits that have been rejected by state and federal judges across the country.

The overall effort in Houston stands out because it relied on an expensive, around-the-clock surveillance operation that, for reasons so far unknown publicly, targeted a civilian — authorities called him “an innocent and ordinary air conditioner repairman” — with no apparent role in government or election administration. The operation was also financed by a newly formed nonprofit group run by a well-known GOP donor in Texas and prominent former party officials in Harris County, the state’s most populous county, corporation records show.

The nonprofit group, the Liberty Center for God and Country, paid 20 private investigators close to $300,000 to conduct a six-week probe of alleged illegal ballot retrievals in Houston leading up to the election, the group has said. None of its allegations of fraud have been substantiated.

The group’s president, Steven F. Hotze, did not respond to an interview request.

Aguirre declined to say why the operation focused on [the ACRM].

“I’m not trying my case in the paper,” Aguirre, who was released on $30,000 bail, told The Post in a brief phone interview on Dec. 16. “I don’t care about public opinion. I’m trying my case against these corrupt sons of [expletives].”

The origins of Aguirre’s election fraud investigation date to the formation of the Liberty Center for God and Country in late August.

[…]

Hotze’s nonprofit group was created “for the purpose of ensuring election integrity primarily,” said Jared Woodfill, Hotze’s personal lawyer and the former executive director of the Harris County Republican Party, the county that includes Houston. Woodfill is listed on state incorporation records as a director of the nonprofit group, along with Jeffrey Yates, the former longtime chairman of the county’s Republican Party. Yates did not respond to phone messages.

“The socialist Democrat leadership in Harris County has developed a massive ballot by mail vote harvesting scheme to steal the general election,” a now-deleted fundraising page for the group alleged. “We are working with a group of private investigators who have uncovered this massive election fraud scheme.”

The group raised nearly $70,000 through a GoFundMe page from Oct. 10 through last week. Hotze has said publicly that he donated $75,000 to the probe and that an unnamed individual had donated another $125,000.

Hotze turned to Aguirre to assemble a team of 20 private investigators, according to Aguirre’s attorney, Terry Yates, who is not related to Jeffrey Yates.

“Mark would say he’s the guy who was in charge,” Terry Yates told The Post.

I’m not going to try to guess what might be going on in Steven Hotze’s whack-a-mole brain, but I do want to understand why these jokers came to focus on this one poor guy. There had to be some reason for it, however irrational and ultimately wrong-headed. If nothing else, the attorney that eventually files a massive lawsuit against Hotze for the pain and suffering our ACRM endured will want to know the full story.

In September, Aguirre wrote an affidavit for a lawsuit brought by Hotze and the Harris County GOP before the Texas Supreme Court seeking to curtail early and mail-in voting. The affidavit alleged Democrats had devised a scheme to submit as many as 700,000 fraudulent ballots in Harris County. The Texas Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit on Oct. 7.

Nevertheless, law enforcement officials in Harris County began looking into the claims in the affidavit. The affidavit did not mention [the ACRM], but described what it contended was a broader ballot-harvesting effort directed by local Democratic officials.

Four investigators from the Harris County Precinct 1 Constable’s Office, which is responsible for investigating voter integrity issues, were assigned to the investigation, an official said.

“We looked into the allegations,” said Constable Alan Rosen, who said investigators conducted interviews with various people but got no cooperation from Aguirre and other private investigators. “We wanted to investigate their side of the story and they wouldn’t talk to us.”

“No proof was ever substantiated,” according to Rosen.

As the Nov. 3 Election Day neared, Aguirre and other unidentified private investigators began to monitor [the ACRM] more closely, court records show. By mid-October, they had devised a plan to carry out extensive monitoring that kept eyes on the air conditioning repairman day and night, court records show.

Beginning around Oct. 15, the investigators started “24 hour surveillance” on [the ACRM]’s mobile home, a police affidavit states. They set up a “command post” nearby, renting two hotel rooms for four days in a Marriott hotel, according to the affidavit. As they watched [the ACRM], Aguirre unsuccessfully tried to convince law enforcement authorities at the state level that he was on to something big, according to several law enforcement agencies and court records.

On Oct. 16, Aguirre called a member of the state attorney general’s election task force, Lt. Wayne Rubio, to request that Rubio order a traffic stop of [the ACRM]’s vehicle, court records show. Rubio declined. Aguirre “seemed upset that the Department of Public Safety could not stop and detain an individual based solely on [Aguirre]’s uncorroborated accusations,” Rubio later told police, according to the affidavit.

Aguirre told Rubio that he would make the traffic stop and execute a “citizen’s arrest,” the affidavit states. Rubio did not respond to interview requests, and the Attorney General’s Office declined to comment.

Aguirre also contacted Jason Taylor, a regional director at a separate statewide law enforcement agency — the Texas Department of Public Safety — the agency said in a statement to The Post. That contact came a day before Aguirre is accused of ramming [the ACRM].

“Mr. Aguirre brought up the allegations of election fraud during a phone call on Oct. 18, 2020, with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Regional Director,” a spokesman wrote. “Based on that call, the matter was then discussed with the (DPS) Texas Ranger Division. The decision was then made to refer Mr. Aguirre to the Office of the Texas Attorney General.”

Aguirre later told police he was frustrated that he had “not received any help” from law enforcement agencies, according to the police affidavit.

So many questions here. What evidence did Aguirre present to DPS and the AG task force? Clearly, it was pitiful, because had there been anything at all to the juicy allegation of Democrats engaging in massive fraud, these guys would have been all over it, but that’s not the whole picture. The bigger question is, should Aguirre’s delusions have given these guys cause to worry about his actions and the potential danger to the ACRM? Did they take his threat of a “citizen’s arrest” seriously, and if not why not? Imagine for a minute if our ACRM had had a concealed carry license, and had made the determination when he saw Aguirre approach him that his life was in danger (which, as it happens, it was) and he needed to defend himself. Or instead imagine if Aguirre had gotten jumpy and made the same decision for himself. This “citizen’s arrest” could very well have had a body count, which is why I ask, should the law enforcement officers that Aguirre complained were unwilling to help him have taken action against him instead? It’s more grist for our ACRM’s future attorney, I suppose.

Police later reviewed grand jury subpoena records from Aguirre’s bank, the police affidavit states, and saw wire transfers of nearly $270,000 to his account from the Liberty Center for God and Country with payments of $25,000 each wired on Sept. 22 and Oct. 9, and $211,400 deposited the day after the alleged assault.

Houston police declined an interview request and said they would not answer specific questions about the case because the department’s investigation is ongoing.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office, which charged Aguirre after a grand jury indictment, also declined to answer questions. “This is an active, ongoing investigation,” spokesman Michael Kolenc wrote in an email.

As I said before, I really hope that this ongoing investigation includes Hotze and the malevolent organization he spawned to finance this travesty. I sure won’t be surprised to learn that they were not scrupulous in following the law prior to Aguirre’s attack on the ACRM. Don’t be afraid to go where the evidence leads.

SCOTUS mostly punts on Census apportionment shenanigans

Dec 22nd, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

They seem to be hoping that the problem will solve itself, while applying a partisan litmus test to when it is appropriate for them to step in.

The Supreme Court dismissed a challenge to Donald Trump’s final sabotage of the census on Friday, deeming it premature. Trump seeks to exclude an estimated 10.5 million people from the data used to divide up congressional seats among the states because they are undocumented immigrants. This policy, if successful, would strip seats in the House of Representatives from diverse states with large immigrant communities. Because it has not been implemented, however, the Supreme Court determined, by a 6–3 vote, that the case is not yet ripe for resolution. All three liberal justices dissented.

Friday’s decision in Trump v. New York does not come as a surprise: At oral arguments, several conservative justices seemed to be looking for a way out of deciding whether the president has the power to manipulate the census this way. A few, including Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, even appeared to recognize that Trump’s policy is unlawful. The Constitution requires the apportionment of House seats based on “the whole number of persons in each state,” and the government has never before in history sought to exclude undocumented immigrants. By declaring that an entire class of immigrants are not “persons” who reside in the United States, Trump is trying to pass a modern three-fifths clause—except his policy reduces millions of immigrants to zero-fifths of a person.

Still, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority decided that this threat was insufficient to create a live controversy due to the uncertainty that plagues this case. (It did so in an unsigned opinion apparently joined by all six conservatives.) The federal government does not actually know how many undocumented immigrants live in each state. Trump has directed the Census Bureau to use existing administrative records to obtain these figures. But this process is ongoing, and the bureau has warned that it may not produce the data for weeks—possibly not until Trump has left office. (Joe Biden will undoubtedly retract the policy if it has not yet been executed.) The administration has speculated that it may narrow its goal by excluding only subsets of immigrants, like those in detention. (There are more than 50,000 people in ICE detention today, so even that exclusion could affect apportionment and funding.)

In light of this uncertainty, the majority found that the plaintiffs—which include states that may lose representation and local governments that may lose funding—lacked standing to attack the policy in court. Trump’s policy “may not prove feasible to implement in any manner whatsoever, let alone in a manner substantially likely to harm any of the plaintiffs here,” the majority asserted. In other words, Trump might fail to carry out his scheme, which would spare the plaintiffs any injury. Moreover, if the president only excludes a subset of immigrants, like ICE detainees, the plan might not “impact interstate apportionment.”

The court also found that the case “is riddled with contingencies and speculation,” declaring that “any prediction how the Executive Branch might eventually implement” Trump’s policy is “no more than conjecture.” As a result, “the case is not ripe,” and the plaintiffs must come back when they can contest a more explicit policy. The court clarified that “we express no view on the merits of the constitutional and related statutory claims presented.”

[…]

Friday’s ruling also entrenches a new rule that emerged after Barrett replaced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Plaintiffs only have standing when they are challenging a policy that the conservatives do not like. In November, by a 5–4 vote, the ultraconservatives blocked a COVID-19 restriction on New York City churches that was no longer in effect. As Roberts explained in his dissent, the restrictions were not in force when the court issued its decision. Yet the court blocked them anyway, reasoning that the governor might enforce them again in the future.

It is difficult to square that decision with Friday’s census punt. Trump has stated his policy in stark terms and directed the government to execute it as soon as possible. There is a serious, looming threat that his administration will carry it out in the near future. No one actually knows whether Biden or Congress can reverse the policy after it has been implemented. Yet the conservative justices still considered the case premature. This inconsistent approach gives the impression that at least five conservative justices are manipulating the rules to roll back blue states’ COVID orders while giving Trump leeway to test out illegal policies. Friday’s decision is not the end of this litigation, and the administration may ultimately fail to rig the apportionment of House seats. It is framed as a modest, narrow, technical decision. But the court has revealed its priorities, and they have nothing to do with restraint.

See here and here for the background. Texas would also likely lose a seat or two if this went into effect, not that you’d know it from the total radio silence of our state leaders. My hope is of course that the Census does not deliver this data before January 20, in which case the Biden administration could just drop the subject and proceed as we have always done. It’s not great that we have to rely on that hope, of course. Daily Kos and TPM have more.

Precinct analysis: Other jurisdictions

Dec 21st, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

Introduction
Congressional districts
State Rep districts
Commissioners Court/JP precincts
Comparing 2012 and 2016
Statewide judicial

You may be wondering “Hey, how come you haven’t reported on data from SBOE and State Senate districts?” Well, I’ll tell you, since the SBOE and Senate serve four-year terms with only half of the races up for election outside of redistricting years, the results in the districts that aren’t on the ballot are not discernable to me. But! I was eventually able to get a spreadsheet that defined all of the relevant districts for each individual precinct, and that allowed me to go back and fill in the empty values. And now here I present them to you. Oh, and as a special bonus, I merged the data from the 2012 city of Houston bond elections into this year’s totals and pulled out the numbers for the city of Houston for the top races. So here you have it:


Dist     Trump    Biden    Lib    Grn  Trump%  Biden%   Lib%   Grn%
===================================================================
SBOE4  110,192  350,258  3,530  1,787  23.66%  75.20%  0.76%  0.38%
SBOE6  371,101  391,911  8,796  2,157  47.95%  50.64%  1.14%  0.28%
SBOE8  219,337  176,022  4,493  1,185  54.69%  43.89%  1.12%  0.30%
								
SD04    55,426   25,561    936    145  67.54%  31.15%  1.14%  0.18%
SD06    61,089  123,708  1,577    770  32.64%  66.10%  0.84%  0.41%
SD07   232,201  188,150  4,746  1,216  54.47%  44.13%  1.11%  0.29%
SD11    77,325   51,561  1,605    389  59.08%  39.40%  1.23%  0.30%
SD13    38,198  166,939  1,474    753  18.42%  80.51%  0.71%  0.36%
SD15   110,485  208,552  3,444  1,045  34.15%  64.46%  1.06%  0.32%
SD17   110,788  140,986  2,706    720  43.41%  55.25%  1.06%  0.28%
SD18    15,118   12,735	   331     91  53.47%  45.04%  1.17%  0.32%

Hou    285,379  535,713  8,222  2,704  34.30%  64.39%  0.99%  0.32%
Harris 415,251  382,480  8,597  2,425  51.34%  47.29%  1.06%  0.30%


Dist    Cornyn    Hegar    Lib    Grn Cornyn%  Hegar%   Lib%   Grn%
===================================================================
SBOE4  110,002  330,420  8,479  5,155  23.62%  70.94%  1.82%  1.11%
SBOE6  387,726  359,196 13,130  4,964  50.68%  46.95%  1.72%  0.65%
SBOE8  220,500  164,540  7,608  2,770  55.76%  41.61%  1.92%  0.70%
								
SD04    56,085   23,380  1,405    393  69.02%  28.77%  1.73%  0.48%
SD06    59,310  115,620  3,609  2,257  32.80%  63.95%  2.00%  1.25%
SD07   237,216  173,948  7,682  2,796  55.64%  40.80%  1.80%  0.66%
SD11    77,887   47,787  2,508    854  60.36%  37.03%  1.94%  0.66%
SD13    39,386  157,671  3,502  2,149  19.43%  77.78%  1.73%  1.06%
SD15   114,616  195,264  6,065  2,657  35.43%  60.35%  1.87%  0.82%
SD17   118,460  128,628  3,892  1,603  46.42%  50.40%  1.53%  0.63%
SD18    15,268   11,859    554    180  54.80%  42.56%  1.99%  0.65%

Hou    297,735  498,078 14,537  7,021  36.43%  60.94%  1.78%  0.86%
Harris 420,493  356,080 14,680  5,868  52.75%  44.67%  1.84%  0.74%


Dist    Wright    Casta    Lib    Grn Wright%  Casta%   Lib%   Grn%
===================================================================
SBOE4  102,521  332,324  8,247  7,160  22.01%  71.35%  1.77%  1.54%
SBOE6  379,555  347,938 16,311  9,217  50.40%  46.21%  2.17%  1.22%
SBOE8  214,771  163,095  8,573  4,631  54.92%  41.70%  2.19%  1.18%
								
SD04    54,997   22,915  1,715    685  68.48%  28.53%  2.14%  0.85%
SD06    54,732  118,635  3,389  2,751  30.49%  66.09%  1.89%  1.53%
SD07   232,729  169,832  9,084  4,902  54.59%  39.84%  2.13%  1.15%
SD11    75,580   47,284  2,906  1,454  59.41%  37.17%  2.28%  1.14%
SD13    37,009  156,577  3,653  3,306  18.45%  78.08%  1.82%  1.65%
SD15   111,109  192,351  6,833  4,347  34.34%  59.45%  2.11%  1.34%
SD17   115,654  124,174  4,931  3,219  45.32%  48.66%  1.93%  1.26%
SD18    15,037   11,590    620    344  54.50%  42.01%  2.25%  1.25%

Hou    286,759  491,191 16,625 11,553  34.47%  59.04%  2.00%  1.39%
Harris 410,088  352,168 16,506  9,455  50.71%  43.54%  2.04%  1.17%

Dist     Hecht  Meachum    Lib  Hecht% Meachum%  Lib%
=====================================================
SBOE4  104,675  334,600 10,745  23.26%  74.35%  2.39%
SBOE6  387,841  349,776 17,294  51.38%  46.33%  2.29%
SBOE8  217,760  164,210  9,466  55.63%  41.95%  2.42%
						
SD04    55,773   22,920  1,721  69.36%  28.50%  2.14%
SD06    56,313  117,884  4,832  31.45%  65.85%  2.70%
SD07   235,317  172,232  9,800  56.38%  41.27%  2.35%
SD11    77,081   47,122  3,169  60.52%  37.00%  2.49%
SD13    37,495  158,731  4,500  18.68%  79.08%  2.24%
SD15   113,248  194,232  7,612  35.94%  61.64%  2.42%
SD17   119,941  123,630  5,196  48.21%  49.70%  2.09%
SD18    15,108   11,836    675  54.70%  42.85%  2.44%

Dist      Boyd   Will's    Lib   Boyd% Will's%   Lib%
=====================================================
SBOE4  104,397  336,102  8,832  23.23%  74.80%  1.97%
SBOE6  380,861  354,806 15,618  50.69%  47.23%  2.08%
SBOE8  217,360  164,288  8,525  55.71%  42.11%  2.18%
						
SD04    55,481   22,982  1,621  69.28%  28.70%  2.02%
SD06    56,932  117,444  4,132  31.89%  65.79%  2.31%
SD07   234,080  173,025  8,683  56.30%  41.61%  2.09%
SD11    76,633   47,377  2,834  60.42%  37.35%  2.23%
SD13    36,755  160,184  3,557  18.33%  79.89%  1.77%
SD15   111,564  195,699  6,798  35.52%  62.31%  2.16%
SD17   116,011  126,731  4,723  46.88%  51.21%  1.91%
SD18    15,162   11,755    627  55.05%  42.68%  2.28%


Dist     Busby   Triana    Lib  Busby% Triana%   Lib%
=====================================================
SBOE4  104,071  335,587  9,074  23.19%  74.79%  2.02%
SBOE6  389,317  343,673 17,392  51.88%  45.80%  2.32%
SBOE8  218,278  162,376  9,125  56.00%  41.66%  2.34%
						
SD04    55,864   22,402  1,739  69.83%  28.00%  2.17%
SD06    55,719  118,801  4,006  31.21%  66.55%  2.24%
SD07   235,948  169,843  9,532  56.81%  40.89%  2.30%
SD11    77,324   46,265  3,101  61.03%  36.52%  2.45%
SD13    37,498  158,536  3,962  18.75%  79.27%  1.98%
SD15   113,780  192,651  7,220  36.28%  61.42%  2.30%
SD17   120,435  121,393  5,349  48.72%  49.11%  2.16%
SD18    15,098   11,746    682  54.85%  42.67%  2.48%


Dist    Bland    Cheng  Bland%   Cheng%
=======================================
SBOE4  112,465  336,620  25.04%  74.96%
SBOE6  401,946  350,154  53.44%  46.56%
SBOE8  225,783  164,516  57.85%  42.15%
				
SD04    57,378   22,793  71.57%  28.43%
SD06    60,243  118,418  33.72%  66.28%
SD07   243,089  172,941  58.43%  41.57%
SD11    79,757   47,134  62.85%  37.15%
SD13    40,242  160,069  20.09%  79.91%
SD15   119,474  194,619  38.04%  61.96%
SD17   124,299  123,453  50.17%  49.83%
SD18    15,712   11,864  56.98%  43.02%


Dist     BertR  Frizell  BertR% Frizell%
=======================================
SBOE4  107,445  340,670  23.98%  76.02%
SBOE6  392,514  355,217  52.49%  47.51%
SBOE8  221,860  166,900  57.07%  42.93%
				
SD04    56,609   23,176  70.95%  29.05%
SD06    57,800  120,402  32.44%  67.56%
SD07   239,113  175,071  57.73%  42.27%
SD11    78,483   47,818  62.14%  37.86%
SD13    38,419  161,433  19.22%  80.78%
SD15   115,389  197,276  36.90%  63.10%
SD17   120,576  125,566  48.99%  51.01%
SD18    15,430   12,046  56.16%  43.84%


Dist     Yeary  Clinton  Yeary%Clinton%
=======================================
SBOE4  107,727  339,999  24.06%  75.94%
SBOE6  387,309  359,489  51.86%  48.14%
SBOE8  221,725  166,780  57.07%  42.93%
				
SD04    56,405   23,323  70.75%  29.25%
SD06    58,285  119,666  32.75%  67.25%
SD07   238,608  175,225  57.66%  42.34%
SD11    78,085   48,109  61.88%  38.12%
SD13    38,214  161,577  19.13%  80.87%
SD15   114,407  197,949  36.63%  63.37%
SD17   117,277  128,438  47.73%  52.27%
SD18    15,480   11,982  56.37%  43.63%


Dist    Newell    Birm  Newell%   Birm%
=======================================
SBOE4  110,449  336,329  24.72%  75.28%
SBOE6  392,944  352,514  52.71%  47.29%
SBOE8  223,453  164,440  57.61%  42.39%
				
SD04    56,669   22,936  71.19%  28.81%
SD06    59,575  117,944  33.56%  66.44%
SD07   240,463  172,769  58.19%  41.81%
SD11    78,816   47,161  62.56%  37.44%
SD13    39,166  160,126  19.65%  80.35%
SD15   116,700  195,074  37.43%  62.57%
SD17   119,849  125,464  48.86%  51.14%
SD18    15,608   11,810  56.93%  43.07%

To be clear, “Harris” refers to everything that is not the city of Houston. It includes the other cities, like Pasadena and Deer Park and so forth, as well as unincorporated Harris County. There are some municipal results in the 2020 canvass, and maybe I’ll take a closer look at them later – I generally haven’t done that for non-Houston cities in the past, but this year, we’ll see. Please note also that there are some precincts that include a piece of Houston but are not entirely Houston – the boundaries don’t coincide. Basically, I skipped precincts that had ten or fewer votes in them for the highest-turnout 2012 referendum, and added up the rest. So those values are approximate, but close enough for these purposes. I don’t have city of Houston results for most elections, but I do have them for a few. In 2008, Barack Obama got 61.0% in Houston and 39.5% in non-Houston Harris County. In 20122018, Beto reached a new height with 65.4% in Houston; that calculation was done by a reader, and unfortunately he didn’t do the corresponding total for Harris County. Joe Biden’s 64.39% fits in just ahead of Adrian Garcia in 2012, and about a point behind Beto. Not too bad.

SBOE4 is a mostly Black district primarily in Harris County with a piece in Fort Bend as well; Lawrence Allen, son of State Rep. Alma Allen and an unsuccessful candidate for HD26 in the Dem primary this year, is its incumbent. SBOE8 is a heavily Republican district with about half of its voters in Harris County and about a third in Montgomery County. It was won this year by Audrey Young over a Libertarian opponent, succeeding Barbara Cargill. Cargill was unopposed in 2016 and beat a Dem candidate in 2012 by a 71-29 margin, getting about 66% of the vote in Harris County. Like just about everywhere else, that part of the county is a lot less red than it used to be. SBOE6 was of course the focus of attention after Beto carried it in 2018. Biden fell a tad short of Beto’s mark, though Trump also fell short of Ted Cruz. No other Dem managed to win the vote there, with the range being about four to seven points for the Republicans, which does represent an improvement over 2018. Michelle Palmer lost by two points here, getting 47.38% of the vote (there was a Libertarian candidate as well; the victorious Republican got 49.76%), as the Dems won one of the three targeted, Beto-carried seats, in SBOE5. I presume the Republicans will have a plan to make the SBOE a 10-5 split in their favor again, but for now the one gain Dems made in a districted office was there.

I don’t think I’ve ever done a full accounting of State Senate districts in previous precinct analyses. Only three of the eight districts that include a piece of Harris County are entirely within Harris (SDs 06, 07, and 15; 13 extends into Fort Bend), and only SD17 is competitive. Beto and a couple of others carried SD17 in 2018 – I don’t have the full numbers for it now, but Rita Lucido won the Harris County portion of SD17 by a 49.4-48.8 margin in 2018, and every Dem except Kathy Cheng won SD17 this year, with everyone else except Gisela Triana exceeding Lucido’s total or margin or both. An awful lot of HD134 is in SD17, so this is just another illustration of HD134’s Democratic shift.

The other interesting district here is SD07, which Dan Patrick won by a 68.4-31.6 margin in 2012, and Paul Bettencourt won by a 57.8-40.3 margin in 2018. Every Dem had a smaller gap than that this year, with most of them bettering David Romero’s percentage from 2018, and Biden losing by just over ten points. It would be really interesting to see how this district trended over the next decade if we just kept the same lines as we have now, but we will get new lines, so the question becomes “do the Republicans try to shore up SD07”, and if so how? SD17 is clearly the higher priority, and while you could probably leave SD07 close to what it is now, with just a population adjustment, it doesn’t have much spare capacity. If there’s a lesson for Republicans from the 2011 redistricting experience, it’s that they have to think in ten-year terms, and that’s a very hard thing to do. We’ll see how they approach it.

TDP asks SCOTUS to review age discrimination claim in mail voting

Dec 21st, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

From the inbox:

Today, the Texas Democratic Party and voters filed their final brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking its review of the case filed last Spring which challenged the constitutionality of Texas’s law that limits voting by mail, without excuse, to voters age 65 and older. The 26th Amendment prohibits “denying or abridging” the right to vote based on age, which Texas law does. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in September that so long as all voters can vote in person, it does not abridge the right to vote if the state provides some voters with additional voting options. The Texas Democratic Party and voters argue this ruling runs contrary to the 26th Amendment and is inconsistent with U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to confer regarding this case on January 8, 2021. On January 11, 2021, at 10:00 am ET, the Court will issue its orders list for the 2021 term. At that point, the Court may grant review of the case, deny review, or hold the case over for further consideration at a later time. If the Court grants review, the case could be heard this term, with a decision before Summer or it could decide to hear the case in its term beginning Fall of 2021. If the court denies review of the case, it will return to the U.S. District Court in San Antonio, where it will proceed to the final trial and, thereafter, potentially go back through the appeals process.

See here for my last update on this case, and here for a copy of the filing, which in fancy lawyer-speak is a “petition for a writ of certiori”. SCOTUSblog has a concise summary of the case so far. The brief makes three arguments, of which the first two are technical and boring to non-lawyers, but the third is a straightforward claim that the Fifth Circuit erred in its ruling:

The error in the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning was powerfully illustrated by the statement respondents’ counsel made at oral argument: “[I]f a state were to pass a law saying that White people must vote by personal appearance but Black people can vote by personal appearance or by mail-in balloting, …. the Fifteenth Amendment would not prohibit that law because that law does not deny or abridge the right to vote within the meaning of the Fifteenth Amendment.” Or. Arg. Rec. at 41:27-42:07. To state that position is to show its indefensibility.

1. The Fifth Circuit treated “abridge” as solely a temporal restriction: In its view, a state’s law does not “abridge” the right to vote when it adds voting opportunities for some, so long as one manner of voting remains in place for those not given the new voting opportunity. See BIO App. 38a. That holding is inconsistent with this Court’s precedents that the concept of abridgement “necessarily entails a comparison” of “what the right to vote ought to be.” Reno v. Bossier Par. Sch. Bd., 528 U.S. 320, 334 (2000).

Contrary to the Fifth Circuit’s arid resort to dictionary definitions of “abridgment,” BIO App. 33a34a, the proper baseline under the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth Amendments is given in the text of those amendments themselves. Those amendments provide that the right to vote shall not be abridged “on account of” or “by reason of” specific characteristics: “race,” “sex,” taxpaying status, or “age.” By their plain terms, those amendments call for a comparison between the law’s treatment of voters of different races, sexes, taxpaying statuses, or ages—not between the scope of the right a particular voter enjoyed yesterday and the scope of the right he or she enjoys today. It cannot be that the Fifteenth Amendment would have nothing to say if a jurisdiction gave white voters an early voting period, as long as it left untouched a preexisting ability for Black voters to cast a ballot in person on election day. But that perverse consequence is exactly what the Fifth Circuit’s logic commands.

The reason why the voting amendments use the word “abridge” is not to create a temporal comparison, but to make clear that any race-, sex-, taxpaying-, or age-based suffrage rule, and not only categorical denial of the right to vote, is covered. The Voting Rights Act, which was enacted to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment, illustrates this point. While Section 5, the provision at issue in Bossier Parish involved a statute with language explicitly requiring a temporal comparison, Section 2 echoes the Fifteenth Amendment text and requires an inter-voter comparison. Section 2(a) prohibits practices that result “in a denial or abridgement” of the right to vote on account of race or color or membership in a specified language minority. 52 U.S.C. § 10301(a). Section 2(b) declares that a violation of that prohibition occurs, among other things, when the plaintiff group has “less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” 52 U.S.C. § 10301(b) (emphasis added). That understanding of abridgment is also, as the petition explains, more consistent with this Court’s decision in Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U.S. 528 (1965). See Pet. 20-22.

Basically, the Fifth Circuit said that giving one set of voters (in this case, voters over the age of 65) something extra (no-excuses absentee ballots) was fine and not a form of discrimination against other voters, who were still able to vote. The TDP argues that the correct interpretation of the 26th and other amendments to the constitution is that not giving the under-65 voters the same benefit as the 65-and-older crowd is an abridgement of their rights, and thus unconstitutional. I think the plaintiffs have a solid argument, but as we know I Am Not A Lawyer, and also this particular Supreme Court is nobody’s friend when it comes to voting rights. We’ll know in January if we’ll get a short-term resolution or if this goes back to the trial court for a do-over.

Aguirre’s arraignment

Dec 21st, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

The latest update on the Aguirre/Hotze fever-dream “vote fraud” case.

An ex-Houston police officer on Friday swore he is “done” with private investigations after being arrested and charged with assaulting an air conditioning repairman he claimed was involved in a massive ballot fraud scheme.

Mark Aguirre, a former Houston Police Department captain who is now a licensed private investigator, called in to state District Judge Greg Glass’ courtroom for his first court appearance in the case. His setting originally was scheduled for Thursday but was postponed because he has COVID-19, his attorney said.

As conditions of his release on bond, Aguirre is barred from contacting the repairman, possessing firearms, or continuing to work with the Liberty Center for God and Country, which hired him to investigate voter fraud leading up to the Nov. 3 general election.

When prosecutors requested Aguirre no longer work with the right-wing group, he volunteered not to do any more investigations, period.

“No. I’m done,” he said.

Aguirre frequently works with law firms around Houston, defense attorney Terry Yates said.

Glass denied prosecutors’ requests that Aguirre be monitored by a GPS tracking device. He has one firearm that he said he would turn over to his attorney.

Aguirre was charged Tuesday with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a felony, and was released after posting bond on a $30,000 bail.

[…]

Yates gave a different account of what happened in an interview Friday, alleging that the incident took place after Aguirre and the repairman were involved in a “fender bender.” Yates said the repairman got out of his truck and rushed at Aguirre, prompting the confrontation.

“(The police) came out and investigated, and after they took quite a bit of time out there interviewing everybody, they gave (Aguirre) his gun back and told everybody to go their separate ways,” Yates said.

See here and here for the background. My first thought is that I’m going to need to come up with a pithy name for this saga, because the description I used in the opening of this post just won’t do. My second thought is that if Aguirre goes and does something stupid before his trial, at least he met the criteria of being able to pay a bail bondsman for his ability to be out on the street. My third thought is that defense attorney Terry Yates, and by extension Hotze, is going long on the defense here by claiming a completely alternative reality, one in which the victim in the alleged crime is actually the instigator and the defendant is the real victim. I presume there will be a heaping helping of conspiracy as part of this defense, since there was a few weeks between the event in question and the arrest of Aguirre. I wonder if Yates will have any evidence to present to back his claims about the van driver, or if he’s just going to spray a lot of countercharges and hope to confuse the jury. I have previously speculated that there may be further investigation into the payments that Hotze made to Aguirre, and so I wonder if we will see further charges down the line. Or maybe this is all there is and it will fizzle out, perhaps into a misdemeanor plea. It’s something to look forward to in 2021, at least.

Weekend link dump for December 20

Dec 20th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Face shields aren’t quite enough to fully protect you from COVID.

Two words: COVID penis. Make sure you get that vaccine when it’s available for you, OK?

“I get it. It’s a pandemic. If ever there was a time to give up, this is it. Don’t be pressured into half-assing your holiday lights. If you’re fortunate enough to be housed — in suburban Disneyland or anywhere else — you have done enough this year. I’d rather you give up before you murder the inflatable elves every morning or deaden your soul with projector lights at night.”

“U.S. government agencies were hit by a “global intrusion campaign” of cyber-attacks that exploited a flaw in the update of a software company, cyber-security firm FireEye said, which the Washington Post reported was a breach by Russian government hackers.”

RIP, John le Carré, master British spy novelist.

“Shortly before six o’clock Eastern Time, in Sacramento, California, fifty-five Democratic members of the Electoral College cast their votes for Biden, raising him above the threshold of two hundred and seventy. The 2020 election result was now official, pending only the formality of a ratification by the U.S. Congress, on January 6th.”

RIP, Ann Reinking, Tony Award-winning actor, dancer, and choreographer.

RIP, Ann Criswell, longtime food editor, writer, and evangelist in Houston.

How much Star Wars is too much Star Wars?

Lots of info about that SolarWinds hack.

“Let’s Talk About Simulated Sex: Intimacy Coordinators Two Years On”.

RIP, Catie Lazarus, writer, comedian, and creator of the talk show/podcast “Employee of the Month”.

“The City of Detroit wants attorney Sidney Powell to pay—literally—for her reality-adjacent dog and pony legal challenge to Michigan’s election results.”

“Trump failed to steal the election because he and his legal team are incompetent criminals, not because our democratic institutions defeated him. Saying that our democracy proved resilient against Republican attempts at subversion is like saying the fences at Jurassic Park proved resilient against raptors.”

“Joe Biden should use every legitimate power at his disposal as President to do everything at once. No sequencing or playing for buy-in. You win an election. You gain certain legitimate powers. You use them. Period. Should Biden be open to bipartisan compromise? Absolutely. The door should be open. But it would be a grave mistake to spend any time coaxing anyone to come through it. We’ve played that game enough. Biden should always be willing to talk but not to delay.”

“How fingerprint and firearm experts use misleading math to appear infallible.”

RIP, Jeremy Bulloch, actor and the original Boba Fett.

One of the more interesting election maps you’ll see.

“This means that the set of potential victims is not just (just!) the 18,000 SolarWinds customers who may have downloaded the compromised updates, but also all of those 18,000 organizations’ customers, and potentially the clients of those second-order organizations as well—and so on. So when I say the SolarWinds cyberespionage campaign will last years, I don’t just mean, as I usually do, that figuring out liability and settling costs and carrying out investigations will take years (though that is certainly true here). The actual, active theft of information from protected networks due to this breach will last years.”

RIP, Bear Dalton, wine expert, Rodeo fixture, general mensch and man about town.

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