Texas: General Elections 2006

Of course, I meant to post about this over the weekend, but, what can I say, I’m a college kid. Retention span of a goldfish. In any event, it seems our two favorite parties have started flinging crap back and forth again in court. It seems like they’ve realized that direct attacks on the other’s choice of car upholstery color isn’t quite as effective as drawing in the federal court system:

Texas Democrats File Suit Against Voting Fraud Law

HOUSTON, Sept. 22 — In the latest of the nation’s skirmishes over voting rights, Texas Democrats have sued two top Republican state officials over an antifraud law that the suit says is being used to intimidate minority voters casting ballots by mail.

(Source: NY Times, 9/22/06)

Hmmmm. To me, making mail balloting seem so imposing almost seems like it hurts the Republicans more than you’d think. In my district (22), the only way to cast a vote in the Republican candidate’s favor is via write-in: i.e. mailing it in. The article goes on to say that the GOP are purportedly going after people more apt to vote Democrat (surprise?), but all the same–is it really wise to get this crap into the limelight about six weeks before the election? There are really two ways to view this, in the end:

1. Extremely Stupid: Republicans have shot themselves in the foot by calling the public’s attention to the fallacies of write-in balloting. If they expect to win District 22 at all–remember that the Republicans have no one on the formal election day ballot due to DeLay’s crap, meaning that they MUST wage a write-in campaign to keep the seat from turning Democrat–pointing out the possibility of someone’s vote getting lost in the mail due to partisan crap, my guess would be that not many will do so. The write-in process is complicated enough for the “average American,” so pointing out that all that effort to get the ballot and complete it correctly all for naught is slightly moronic.
2. Roveian Genius: By filing this suit, Democrats are taking a gamble. They have now brought the whole mailing-the-ballot thing out of the closet, which is a huge break for the Republicans. Even though this case is about falsifying the ballots, any press is good press for the Republicans. Believe me when I say that they’ve been stumping the whole “write in” thing in their cute, GOP way. As far as I know, they’ve yet to hand out stuffed elephants with a suitable slogan emblazoned on a 100-percent-cotton-made-in-America mini-elephant t-shirt, but it wouldn’t surprise me. The front page of Sekula-Gibbs’s webpage is all about how to write-in, and all her election paraphernalia has “write in” all over it. The people in the district, therefore, have been made *somewhat* aware. Frickin getting an article published in the Times is akin to shooting up a frickin HUGE red distress flare when you’re trying to ambush someone—the genie’s out of the bottle (note the metaphor, for those who are metaphorically challenged) in a big way. Not only is that entire constituency now aware of the write-in ballot, but so is the rest of Texas…and the rest of the country as well. The added publicity might just be what the Republicans need to mount a serious campaign to keep the seat. Congrats to the Democrats for aiding and abetting the enemy competition.

I’d like to end with this amusing paragraph from the article (for the record, I do not condone window surfing):

One plaintiff, Gloria Meeks, a 69-year-old Fort Worth woman who said she was being investigated for helping elderly and disabled voters cast ballots, provided a sworn statement saying two state investigators “peeped into my bathroom window not once but twice while I was in my bathroom drying off from my bath.”

What, were they expecting a smoke-filled bathroom with ballots piled sky high?