Oldham County Clerk Becky Groneman hit a roadblock when she began preparations for the record-breaking party that many expect the 2008 November elections to be: instead of the usual elections workers for early voting — meaning herself and her normal staff — she realized she may have to actually pay to have outside workers come into the office and sit around all day, every day, for two weeks, thanks to a piece of legislation passed during the 80th session.
To Groneman, who works in a county with less than 1,500 registered voters, having to hire inexperienced early voting workers seemed, well, inefficient at best, and a waste of taxpayer money. In the most recent primaries, the county saw only 125 early voters during the two-week period, a reasonable number for her and her small but trained staff to easily handle.
But thanks to Senate Bill 1434, it won’t be up to her to decide how to best handle early voting workers in her county come November – it’ll be up to the local political party chairs, one who has thrown in the towel at 89 years old and the other who was newly appointed to the role and had never gone through an election before. According to the new law, those who administer elections (both elected county clerks and hired election administrators) will have to make a reasonable attempt to have an equal number of Democrat and Republican workers at all early voting locations, and, if the political party chairs desire, the workers had to be hired based off lists the chairs provide. Groneman didn’t have a problem with the legislation’s intent — to ensure that both major parties would have equal representation at early voting locations, which are becoming more and more popular en masse.
“I think anytime that you have party elections, it makes the parties feel better, it makes the candidates feel better, to know that there is cross-representation there,” Groneman said. “I don’t think the voters will pay as much attention to it. Voters just want the ability to go cast their ballot in the easiest, simplest form they can.”
But it seemed to to Groneman to be an unnecessary waste of resources to require such a thing across-the-board.
“It’d be quite expensive to have someone here all day, every day, during early voting to manage early voting,” Groneman said. “I’m not the only county that is going through this. You have many counties the size of mine or smaller, and they are under the same hindrance here.”
Texas Director of Elections Ann McGeehan said the new law means that regular county employees can only be appointed to work early voting sites if those employees were on the lists provided by party chairs, or if party chairs did not submit a list or the lists did not include enough workers to cover the sites. Counties that do not have an equal number of Democrats and Republicans could see contested elections.
The statute now requires elections administrators to hire a judge from the county’s primary party (as determined by the winner of the last gubernatorial election) for each early voting location. An alternate judge from the county’s secondary party must also be selected. Any additional workers should be split equally between Democratic and Republican party lines — the language states “for each political party holding a primary election in the county” — to the extent possible. County party chairs had until June 30 to submit their lists of early voting workers; even if party chairs did not submit a list, elections administrators must hire in a way that “attempts to ensure” equal representation.
The law strengthens the necessity for elections administrators and clerks to have good relationships with both party chairs in their county. Whether the law will impede elections administrators when it comes to conducting the November early voting sites may rely solely on that relationship.
“For those counties who do not have a good working relationship with their party chairs, this is going to be a very difficult law,” said Burnet County Elections Administrator Melanie Huff, who does have a good relationship with her party chairs (see the input by Shirley Schmidt, below). “My goal when running an election is to get the most capable people available to do the work, and I do not care what party they come from. The focus should be on how to retain good election workers, but the Legislature seems to be coming from a standpoint of, you have two different foxes watching the chicken coop.”
Though the requirement is somewhat flexible in its language, there are still several problems: It means counties that do not normally hire outside workers for early voting may now have to hire them, and in large counties, it may mean elections administrators lose experienced early voting workers to inexperienced workers favored by party chairs — a concern for clerks and administrators who are anticipating one of the largest voter turnouts in history. In most counties, the new statute is not fixing a known problem, just a hypothetical what-if.
Don Alexander, Denton County elections administrator and an officer of the Texas Association of Elections Administrators, said he’s never heard a complaint related to biased workers during early voting in his county, so it frustrates him to have to “fix” a system that ran functionally and efficiently.
“I don’t know where the problem was and have yet to learn where the problem was that caused this bill to be drafted,” he said, adding that to his knowledge, the elections administrators association was never contacted for help regarding the bill’s language or intent. In the past, he has not worried about his early voting workers’ politics. “We recruit people and they run a non-partisan operation, and in the 10 years I have had this job I have never gone out to check their voting history to see what party they voted in,” he said, adding that each additional early voting worker costs the county about $1,125.
His office runs 15 early voting sites, many of which see 1,000 to 1,200 voters a day. Like many counties, his temporary early voting workers have been loyal in coming back election after election. “I have trained teams that go out and run each site. If I have to rely on people who are nominated by the party who have not run an early voting site before, then I am going to lose the experience I have had for seven or eight years,” Alexander said, speaking before the June 30 deadline for county party chairs, adding that he was hoping to look up his previous election workers’ political party and submit their names to the proper party chair, so that they could include those workers on their lists. “But there is no guarantee.”
At least one of his party chairs seemed to be of the same mind. “If you attempt to hire somebody according to their political persuasion, I think that runs contrary to what we are about,” said Denton’s Democratic Party chair Neil Durrance. “It’s not about political party or political label, we need to hire people who are fair and well-balanced.”
The legislation may also make it logistically more difficult to assign workers to polling places. Montgomery County, for instance, has seven early voting locations, with one central site needing approximately 20 workers, and is expecting to have about 234,000 registered voters come election time. As important as it is to spread workers out across the sites according to party affiliation, elections administrators also must try – or must, depending on population – to make sure each site has a bilingual speaker. Computer skills and elections experience should also be spread across the board. Montgomery County Elections Administrator Carol Gaultney said she has always strived to have equal representation present for early voting, and said that she believed both party chairs would select early voting workers who have done the job in previous elections. “We’ve always tried to make it as even as we possibly could, but it does take a lot of work recruiting,” Gaultney said. “Our county started with 80, 85 percent Republican, so it was hard finding (Democrats) but we have a real good crew now.”
But she said counties where one party is much larger than the other will still have problems, especially if smaller parties cannot come up with enough workers to cover the need – the one benefit of the mandate is that county political chairs cannot complain about imbalance.
“I think in some counties, when a county clerk chooses people all from one party, there can be a perception of unfair treatment or bias, but it would just be a perception problem,” Gaultney said. Other aspects of the statute have drawn ire. For instance, in most counties, the legislation only requires equal representation from parties holding primary elections in a county; minor parties don’t hold primaries. And, some argue against the idea of having partisan polling place workers at all.
“We thought SB 1434 was unnecessary,” said Travis County Clerk Dana Debeauvoir. “We also believe the two-party approach to election workers is antiquated thinking. Ozzie and Harriett have been replaced by a very mobile, internet-connected population that ex pects competence at the polling place above all. Today’s voters do not want partisanship in the polling place.”
Whether partisanship has a place among election workers is perhaps one of the biggest philosophical debates sprung from the law. “I think this is another example of legislators who campaign on the issue of less government, who do just the opposite when they get to the Capitol. The legislators need to stop trying to manage so many of the details of the elections conducted in the county,” said former Burnett County Democratic chair Shirley Schmidt, whose term just ended.
“Requiring the elections administrator to have an equal number of election officials during early voting from each party may appear noble. However, it is the nuts and bolts of making it operational – recruiting election workers is a huge task. Individuals hold up their hands and offer to work, but when (they) get down to the long hours, unpaid training required to serve, etcetera, it is an unending task to keep the volunteers on board,” Schmidt added. “This law was not necessary and creates an unnecessary burden.”
But not all party chairs see it the same way. Some see it as an issue of transparency and fairness and the only way to prevent politicking. “Checks and balances are good,” said Blanco County Republican chair Ann Hall. “Any effort to make U.S. elections transparent and honest is good. We read about elections in other countries and know that there is dishonesty and resulting violence. There have always been tales about LBJ and how elections were run (that) may be true, may be tales of the Old West. I grew up in Louisiana and know that elections there were not always above board. The electorate should have every attempt made to hold elections that are monitored by both parties.”
Where one stands on the issue doesn’t seem to be connected to party, but more to a person’s relationship with their elections administrator or to the county’s political demographics, if voter turnout is heavily one-sided. A random sampling of both Republican and Democratic county chairs (more Democrats responded than Republicans) drew responses all over the map.
Lampasas County Republican chair Skipper Wallace said he helped push for the legislation after hearing numerous complaints from both Republican and Democratic chairs. “I think that voters from the minority party will get a fair shake in the early voting process,” Wallace said.
For the most part, those who were for the legislation talked about mistrust between parties and having to keep a watchful eye over the “enemy,” while those against it talked about speed and efficiency at the polling places.
Rosa Patlan, a minority party chair in a small county, was one who had voiced some complaints and said she had seen instances of unfairness and political favoritism when it came to which party representatives were present for vote counting and other procedures.
“In the past there have been problems when there are more of the (others) because they have more freedom to walk around and converse with or whisper to the voters. When (we) are busy little bees processing the voters they are not able to be mindful of what is happening,” Patlan said.
She had already submitted a list of early voting election workers to her county’s election administrator, weeks before the deadline. “This law or rule will benefit all voters because the appearance of secrecy and control by one party will be eliminated, which gives the voter confidence that there is not something crooked going on,” she said.