"These patriots did nothing wrong," Trump says of supporters who surrounded Biden bus
The "Trump Train" — a caravan of trucks waving Trump and American flags — appeared to try to slow down the Biden campaign bus in Texas, as supporters honked their horns and shouted. The FBI is investigating.
""These patriots did nothing wrong," Trump says of supporters who surrounded Biden bus" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
On Sunday evening, President Donald Trump once again cheered on a group of supporters in Texas who surrounded and followed a Biden campaign bus driving up I-35 in Hays County. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it was looking into the incident, which happened on Friday and was captured on video from multiple angles.
The "Trump Train" — a caravan of trucks waving Trump and American flags — appeared to try to slow down the Biden campaign bus, as supporters honked their horns and shouted. The confrontation resulted in at least one minor collision and led to Texas Democrats canceling three scheduled campaign events that day, citing "safety concerns."
"In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people!" Trump said in a tweet. He had previously posted one of the videos showing the caravan along with the comment, “I LOVE TEXAS!”
Short for "anti-fascists," antifa is an umbrella term for militant groups that resist white supremacists at demonstrations and other events. Trump has portrayed antifa as an organized group threatening national security, often wrongly conflating the term with Black Lives Matter demonstrators who showed up to protest after the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
The FBI has described antifa as an "ideology," not an organization. The agency also named white supremacists one of the deadliest domestic threats in recent years.
Earlier in the day, Trump also claimed his supporters were "protecting" the bus and "being nice" when they slowed it down on the highway, according to media reports from a rally he held in Michigan. By contrast, Naomi Narvaiz, a Texas Republican Party official in San Marcos, told The Texas Tribune that supporters formed the convoy to show they backed Trump. “We don’t want any of the values or policies that the Democratic Party is embracing,” she said.
As the FBI continues its investigation, at least one state official has called for the state to step in. State Rep. Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, sent a letter to the Texas Department of Public Safety asking the agency to open an investigation into the "multi-county, criminal behavior on 1-35" and "use the full weight of its resources to hold these criminals accountable."
DPS "will provide assistance as necessary" to the San Marcos Police Department as it investigates the matter, according to a statement to the Tribune Monday.
How Votes are Counted in Texas
Each of Texas' 254 counties is responsible for counting its ballots, but they have specific guidelines they must follow.
By Hanna Kozlowska, Votebeat - November 2, 2020
This coverage is made possible by Votebeat, a nonpartisan reporting project covering local election integrity and voting access. The article is available for reprint under the terms of Votebeat’s republishing policy.
There are more votes than ever to count in Texas this year: A record-breaking 9.7 million people cast ballots during Texas’ early voting period — 8.7 million of those were cast in person, and nearly 1 million sent through the mail. By the time Election Day comes and goes, experts predict that the total Texas vote count could reach 12 million.
The state’s 254 counties are responsible for tabulating the ballots, but they must follow a certain set of rules. Here’s how the process works in Texas:
Processing and counting mail-in ballots
County officials have already started reviewing mail-in ballots. In counties with over 100,000 residents, early voting ballot boards were allowed to start convening and processing mail-in ballots 12 days before the election. In smaller ones, they could start after the polls closed on the last day of early voting — which this year was Oct. 30. Mail-in ballots must be postmarked by Nov. 3, and they must arrive by Nov. 4.Once the early voting ballot board gets the ballot, officials check whether the voter is registered to vote and may entrust a signature verification committee to match the signature on the envelope to the voter’s absentee ballot application. (They may use other signatures the county has on file.) The signature verification committee must have at least one reviewer from each party, and the majority of its members has to agree that the signature matches. Because of a ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Oct. 19, Texas officials can reject a mail-in ballot without telling the voter, unlike in states such as California, where voters must be notified of a problem with their ballot and given the opportunity to fix it.
In the counties that use scanning devices to count votes, officials could start opening the envelopes and scanning the ballots in preparation of Election Day. But this process hasn’t gone smoothly everywhere — in Tarrant County, Texas’ third most-populous, the scanners were rejecting about one-third of the mail-in ballots because of illegible bar codes, forcing board members to manually replicate the ballots in order for those votes to be counted. Although the votes can be scanned, they cannot be tallied before Election Day.
The portion of absentee ballots in Texas is larger than usual but smaller than in many other states since Texas is one of the few states that didn’t expand mail-in ballot eligibility requirements during the coronavirus pandemic. Voters had to have an excuse, whether it was being over 65 years old, having a disability, or being out of the county. The risk of getting infected with the coronavirus was not a sufficient reason.
Counting in-person ballots
Because of the pandemic, however, Texans were able to vote early in person starting on Oct. 13, providing six more days than in previous years. Voters use three methods to cast their ballots in person, depending on their county. Unlike many other states, Texas does not require a paper record of a person’s vote when using an electronic system. Still, for in-person voting, paper ballots remain the main way many Texans cast ballots, according to the secretary of state’s office. In some locations, the process is analog from start to finish, and ballots are both filled in and counted by hand. In others, voters mark paper ballots, which they then insert into a scanner, which also acts as a tabulating device.
The third method is through direct record electronic systems, or DREs. The voter makes their choices on a touchscreen or using a dial, and presses a “Vote” or “Cast Ballot” button to register their decision. That’s the kind of machine used by Harris County, making it the largest jurisdiction in the country — with 4.7 million residents — whose votes can’t be verified by a paper trail.
The Texas voting system is very decentralized, which means each of its 254 counties might handle the way it processes and counts its votes differently. For example, in Harris County, votes cast on the DRE machine are registered on a memory card, which has to be taken out of the device and transported to a central counting location, uploaded onto a computer and then tallied, The Houston Chronicle reported.
In Kendall County, population 47,431, which will use new equipment this year, the scanning machine is also the tabulator, and the process happens at the precinct level.
Not even the secretary of state’s office, which oversees elections in Texas, was able to tell Votebeat whether most counties do their vote tabulating on the precinct or on the county level.
Reporting results
All counties must, however, notify the secretary of state’s office of their results.
“The counties manually enter the vote totals into our system (TEAM, the state’s election interface) on election night,” Stephen Chang, spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, said. “They access a web based application and put the numbers in one digit at a time, one race at a time.”
Most Texas counties report their early vote tallies pretty soon after the polls close at 7 p.m. The in-person Election Day count across the state usually comes in later, especially since Texas voters can cast a ballot if they are in line when polling sites close at 7 p.m. The polling analysis website FiveThirtyEight estimates that Texas should get most of its tallying done on Tuesday, but the counting might go into Wednesday or Thursday.
That is not the end of the process. Texas has a post-election audit to ensure an accurate count. Districts that use electronic voting systems that do provide a paper record of the vote have to start conducting a partial manual count, also known as canvassing, by Friday, Nov. 6. It has to be done in three precincts or in 1% of the precincts, whichever is the larger number, and be completed by the 21st day after the election.
Small Towns in Texas Endure a Stressful Election
While big cities and high-stakes lawsuits dominate Texas voting news, the election may come down to rural counties where there's usually just a few people to handle registering voters and reporting results.
Without Christie Mooney, there is no election for Archer County’s 6,000 registered voters this year. No one else in the rural enclave near Wichita Falls in north Texas is responsible for registering voters, opening mail-in ballots, setting up polling stations, training poll workers, running the website, studying election code or pretty much anything else that comes along.
In a large city like Houston to the distant southeast, Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins has teams to perform each of those tasks, overseeing a staff of hundreds running a complex operation to serve the county's 2.4 million registered voters. As a flurry of lawsuits and court decisions have continually shifted the landscape of this year's highly charged election, election officials like Hollins in urban counties have gangs of lawyers, and daily find themselves in the thick of fierce partisan battles over voting rules and access.
But in much of Texas, elections come down to the people like Mooney, a 55-year-old former car dealership office manager turned election junkie. Rural counties like hers often have no more than a few people, sometimes in part-time jobs, responsible for everything.
Four days before Election Day, with voting underway at the county's three early polling places, her office in the Archer County courthouse reflected that. Plastic tables stacked with half-a-tree’s worth of papers lined the walls, crowding the methodically organized office. A giant whiteboard loomed over the room bearing endless reminders and to-dos written in blue marker: Program ballot — check. Order election kits — check. She still needed to install backup batteries in voting machines in case of a power outage and build voting kits.
Her desk showed a flare of fall — blue, orange and white pumpkins — and 2020 election mayhem, with dozens of manilla envelopes set in 11 piles.
“No one understands how difficult elections are to run,” Mooney said “The election administrators in every state in the Union are the ones that are under the pressure, waking up at three o'clock in the morning.”
Before an impending ice storm earlier this week, Mooney made sure her poll workers had rides and scheduled a de-icer for the parking lots and paths into the building to ensure voters’ safety. Over the course of a few hasty phone calls, she barely had time to explain all this, let alone breathe.
Rule changes have come often this election season, covering everything from when absentee ballots can be counted to wearing masks while voting, leaving election administrators scrambling to keep up.
“It’s been really hectic,” said Virginia Pallarez, who's running the election in Presidio County, in far West Texas, closer to New Mexico than Austin. An extra week of early voting, which Gov. Greg Abbott announced in late July, left Pallarez searching for more poll workers in a county with fewer than 5,000 registered voters. She spent precious time placing ads and calling anyone who she thought would help out.
When counties were limited to one location to drop off mail-in ballots, she stretched herself even thinner trying to figure out where that would be.
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Hollins has nothing but empathy for his rural colleagues. In Houston, he has the staff to handle changes as they come in, but he knows that’s not the case for most Texas counties, which he says is “frustrating.”
“I know that there are 253 other election administrators who face similar challenges and may not have as large of a team who could step up and do this work at these critical junctures,” Hollins said. “I feel for the election administrators across Texas.”
While Pallarez struggled to find enough poll workers, Hollins has 12,000 this year — drawn from a pool of 40,000 applicants — roughly double the number the county had in 2016. This allowed him to staff polls for 24 hours one day this week, and gives him a cache of 28,000 contacts should he need more. He’s doing everything he can to allow voters to cast ballots whenever they can.
“This is the most important election of our lifetime, period,” Hollins said.
But after months of adrenaline and caffeine, Hollins, like the fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters running the election across Texas, is tired. This year has been dizzying. Rushed special and local elections, the end of straight-ticket voting, one mail-in ballot drop-off location per county, curbside voting, a raging pandemic. The list is endless.
“We're all losing sleep right now,” Hollins said on his way to visit a polling station Tuesday. “And we'll all be anxious to catch up on that once this election is over. But we know how important this is. And we're deeply committed to this mission.”
That exhaustion is even more pronounced in rural counties.
Kevin Stroud, like Mooney, is running Aransas County’s election mostly by himself — he has one other full-time staffer and one part-timer in the rural county near Corpus Christi on Texas’ Gulf Coast. Stroud used to work at the city library, and came into the election administrator's job in September. He had to hit the ground sprinting to keep up with the changes.
“We’re just average ordinary people,” Stroud said. “We come to work and do our best job to allow them to get out there and exercise their right to vote.”
From answering questions from his 18,000 registered voters about where they can go vote and when, to documenting voting procedures and sending data to the office of Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughes to make sure he is adhering to the latest rules, Stroud has put in an extra 20 hours in recent weeks. He wouldn’t change a thing.
“Once you get bit with the election bug, you can’t get away from it,” Stroud said.
With rumbles from both major political parties indicating that they're prepared to challenge unwelcome election results, on top of trying to keep voters safe from the coronavirus, many of Stroud’s peers are even more stressed than usual about getting things right.
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“This is a different election. Everybody’s under a lot of pressure right now,” Pallarez said. “I’ve never felt just this type of pressure to conduct the election without any problems. I don’t want anybody to come in and question whether we did this wrong or that went wrong.”
Mooney agrees. She is often on the phone with neighboring election administrators talking through logistics and the latest procedural changes that are essential to running a successful election.
“The stakes are too high to make a mistake,” Mooney said. “I double check, triple check everything. I don’t want there to be any questions about the integrity of my elections.”
In many rural counties, like in urban Harris county, voter engagement is way up, making the jobs of election administrators even busier. In Archer, Mooney hears from voters daily asking for early returns and has registered 200 new voters this year. In Aransas, Stroud opened up a second early voting site, which means he had to find more staffing, to absorb the record number of voters. With about double the number of Aransas residents voting by-mail this election — through Thursday, 1,400 voters did so — he’s busy processing those ballots and fielding calls from voters wondering if their votes have been received.
According to each of the election officials, their families and friends finally understand how important and stressful their job is. They are regularly thanked for what they are doing.
For Mooney, Tuesday night will be less of an end to a marathon — though she will feel relieved when it does come — than another lap in an unrelenting race.
“It’s a feeling of accomplishment,” she said. “But it only lasts one night before you have to start getting ready for the next one.”
Kleberg County - Early Voting Ends October 30
Early voting for Kleberg County will end on Friday, October 30th.
South Texas Community News - October 30, 2020
Early voting for Kleberg County will end on Friday, October 30th. Voting will be held at the Annex Building located at 720 E. King Ave. in Kingsville from 7 a.m. - 7 p.m.
Kleberg County Polling Locations for November 3, 2020
Joint General and Special Election Polling locations will be open from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Precinct # 11 - Wild Horse Mall - Main Entrance, 1601 S. Highway 77
Precinct # 12 - H. M. King High School, 2210 Brahma Blvd
Precinct # 13 - Coastal Bend Fellowship Church, 1500 E. Caesar Street
Precinct # 14 - Harvey Elementary School, 1301 E. Kenedy Ave.
Precinct # 21 - Kleberg Elementary School, 900 N 6th St. & Nettie
Precinct # 22 - Henrietta Memorial Center, 405 N. 6th Street
Precinct # 23 - University Baptist Church, 1324 N. Armstrong
Precinct # 24 - Santa Gertrudis School, 803 Santa Rosa Road
Precinct # 31 - Knights of Columbus Hall Council 3389, 320 Gen Cavazos Blvd.
Precinct # 32 - Memorial Middle School, 915 S. Armstrong
Precinct # 33/34 - Riviera County Building, 103 N. 7th Street (Riviera)
Precinct # 35 - Ricardo Community Senior Center, 109 N. Nix Street (Ricardo)
Precinct # 41 - Romeo L. Lomas Human Services Building, 1109 E. Santa Gertrudis
Precinct # 42 - Gillett Intermediate School, 1007 N. 17th Street
Here's how to be Sure Your Vote Counts
If you're concerned that you haven't received your mail-in ballot, there are ways to be counted by showing up in person. Officials say ballots are still being sent out with less than a week before Election Day.
Editor's Note: This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan reporting project covering local election integrity and voting access. The article is available for reprint under the terms of Votebeat’s republishing policy.
Charles Inge has voted in Dallas County from his home in London, England, for more than three decades, mailing in his overseas ballot while he works across the Atlantic as an architect and academic.
Like clockwork, the 65-year-old requests his mail-in, or absentee ballot, every February, and his November ballot arrives in September. But not this year.
County officials told him to check his inbox’s spam folder, but Inge insists he’s not received it.
“If I get a ballot at all, I guess I’ll have to pay to send it by courier at this point to stand a chance that it will arrive,” said Inge.
There is no way to know yet how many absentee ballots have gone missing or are still en route to voters’ mailboxes or — in the case of overseas voters — inboxes. It hasn’t been a major problem in years past, voters say, but there’s no question that the system is strained by a record number of absentee voters in an election marked by unprecedented turnout, pandemic fears and a high-stakes presidential election.
Registered voters can qualify to vote by mail if they are 65 years or older, cite a disability or an illness, or are confined in jail but still eligible to vote. Voters who will not be in the county where they're registered on Election Day and during the entire early voting period can also request a ballot by mail.
Election officials say mail-in ballots are still being sent to voters through this week, and they will be counted as long as they are postmarked by Tuesday, Election Day, and arrive in county offices by Wednesday.
Inge has a last resort — a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot, which is the equivalent of a provisional ballot for overseas and military voters and wouldn’t be counted on Election Day, but would before the final vote canvass.
But if a mail-in voter in the U.S. never receives a ballot and can’t make it back home to vote by Election Day, their options evaporate. The possibility has some Texas voters worried about losing their shot and frustrated about the hoops they’re being forced to jump through to get answers.
In Travis County, elections officials are expecting some 100,000 mail-in ballots to be cast in this election. In Harris County, where officials sent out applications to every registered voter over 65, some 250,000 requests for mail-in ballots were received and are being processed — more than double the number from 2016. In Bexar County, the elections office had mailed out more than 115,000 absentee ballots as of Monday, and more requests are being processed as they come in this week. All those numbers are breaking records, county officials said.
Some absentee voters may not see their ballots hit their mailboxes until Halloween, said Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen, acknowledging the “tight window” that scenario creates for many voters. For those who don’t live in the same county, it’s unlikely that a ballot will arrive in the mail the very next day.
“We’re pushing it,” she said. “But that’s how it works.”
What do you do if you haven’t received your mail-in ballot?
Voters worried about mail-in voting can ensure their ballot is counted by showing up at the polls in person, though that's not an option for some who are out of state.
Joaquin Gonzalez, a voting rights attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, said voters can cancel their absentee ballots or ballot applications at county elections headquarters or, in some counties, the polling sites.
That’s what happened to Texas resident Jonathan Van Ness, an expert on the Netflix series “Queer Eye.” His absentee ballot never arrived at the location where he was going to be working on Election Day, but officials told him it had been mailed out Oct. 8, Van Ness wrote in an Instagram post last week.
Van Ness went to the elections office, filled out the paperwork to cancel his ballot, and then took the paperwork to an early voting site. But because the computer system hadn’t yet updated that action in the system, poll workers told him his only option at that moment was to cast a provisional ballot — which he declined to do.
Provisional ballots are a last resort for people who are in the county but can’t or don’t want to cancel their absentee ballots, or whose registration is in question when they vote. They are counted after Election Day if they are found to qualify, but before the official vote canvass is concluded.
“I want my vote counted period, end of story. Provisional is better than not voting but not ideal,” Van Ness wrote.
Another call to the elections office led to officials expediting his cancellation, and he was able to vote later in the day.
“The point is it took me like four hours to make sure my vote would count,” he wrote. “How many other absentee ballots are lost?”
If the ballot has not been sent, voters can cancel the application and vote in person.
Ken Ward and his wife, Breanna, ended up having to take that action because of an error. The Wards showed up to vote early in Beaumont and were told by the election worker that Breanna Ward had requested an absentee ballot and would need to cancel it.
But she had neither asked for nor received a mail-in ballot, she told the worker.
“When my wife reiterated that she wanted to vote then and there, the worker helped her cancel the absentee ballot,” Ken Ward said. “My wife definitely didn’t request the ballot.”
She got to cast a regular ballot, but the confusion was worrisome.
“It was really peculiar,” said Ward. “And we walked away with sort of a sour taste in our mouths. Just because of everything going on in this particular election, you don’t want any hiccups like that — especially ones you’ve never had before.”
Surrendering the ballot
Some voters say they received their mail-in ballots but became worried about whether their votes would be counted if they weren’t cast in person.
Denise Lynn of Hondo, in Medina County outside San Antonio, said she questioned the integrity of the process.
When her absentee ballot didn’t show up at its usual time in September, elections officials initially told her that her ballot was mailed Oct. 5. It arrived Oct. 22. As Republican state leaders waged a war on the expansion of mail-in voting, Lynn worried that her ballot could be invalidated.
She surrendered her mail-in ballot at an in-person polling site and voted on a machine instead.
“They may pull some shenanigans about not counting our mail-in votes, and I didn’t want to take that chance,” said Lynn, 67.
No application processed
If a voter has sent in an application or requested an application, but the application has not been received or processed, that voter can still vote in person with a regular vote with no affidavit required, Gonzalez said.
The absentee ballot will not be mailed if a vote has already been cast, Gonzalez said.
That’s what Bexar County voter Jacob Anderson did when his wife’s absentee ballot showed up, but his did not, he said.
“I waited as long as possible and figured given the situation, I was better off just voting in person, rather than waiting and possibly not getting my absentee ballot in time and not getting to vote at all,” he wrote in an email.
Worried that he wouldn’t be able to cast a ballot, Anderson drove three hours from Montgomery County back home to Bexar, went to an early voting site and was told that since there was no record of his application being processed yet, he could go ahead and cast a regular vote at the machine.
“They said that if it had been mailed to me, their computer would have notified them when I checked in with the first poll worker,” Anderson said. “I signed next to my name and moved on to the voting machine and voted just like I always have.”
Here’s What you can and can’t Wear to Vote in Texas
Wearing T-shirts, buttons or hats supporting political candidates at the polls is illegal. But in the pandemic era, voters are now being reminded that the electioneering rules also apply to face masks.
By Aria Jones , Texas Tribune - October 28, 2020
Wearing T-shirts, buttons or hats supporting political candidates at the polls is illegal. But in the pandemic era, voters are now being reminded that the electioneering rules also apply to face masks.
According to the law, “a person may not electioneer for or against any candidate, measure, or political party” within 100 feet of a polling place. “It's really a protected area that should be just focused on providing the access to the ballot and voting processes without any kind of interruption or any kind of chaos, or stress, or concerns,” said Bruce Sherbet, elections administrator for Collin County.
For years, election officials have had to ask voters to turn their political shirts inside out and leave their accessories in the car. This election cycle, poll workers are also dealing with political messages on some face masks intended to protect voters from the coronavirus.
Sherbet said Collin County judges this year are offering plain disposable masks to cover the political ones, he said. “We strongly encourage masks, so if someone is wearing them, we don't want to be too inconvenient with it as long as they can just cover it up,” Sherbet said.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld an electioneering ban at polling places in 1992, meaning that states could create laws to prevent voter intimidation and ban electioneering around polling places.
What can I wear to the polls?
Electioneering specifically includes advocating “for or against any political candidate, measure or political party.” Sherbet said this means while a "Make America Great Again" hat or Joe Biden button would count as electioneering, a Black Lives Matter or “Don’t tread on me” message would not because they are advocating for a movement.
But electioneering could be interpreted and enforced differently across the state.
In 2016, a San Antonio man wore a T-shirt and hat supporting Donald Trump. He removed the hat, but not the “Basket of Deplorables” shirt. He was arrested on electioneering charges.
In 2012, a woman in Williamson County was asked to cover up her shirt that read "Vote the Bible."
“Ultimately, it falls upon local Election Officials to make the final determination as to what constitutes electioneering,” said Stephen Chang, spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office in an email.
According to the secretary of state’s office, voting clerks and election judges decide what counts as electioneering and have the authority to ensure there is no electioneering in that area.
So why are there so many signs and political volunteers outside my polling site?
Within 100 feet of the polls, electioneering is not allowed. But outside of that boundary, campaigns are free to wave signs, hand out fliers, advocate for proposals and wear whatever campaign gear they want.
But campaign volunteers and advocates cannot use sound amplification devices or loudspeakers, which must be 1,000 feet away from the polls.
While those who control or own the building used for voting cannot prohibit electioneering, they can enact reasonable regulations of the time, place and manner electioneering happens. For example, a reasonable regulation would be prohibiting electioneering on sidewalks to keep them clear for pedestrians, according to the secretary of state's office.
What’s the difference between electioneering and voter intimidation?
Voter intimidation is illegal nationally, regardless of where it takes place at a polling location, said David Becker, executive director at the Center for Election Innovation & Research, in an email.
“So, if any conduct goes from being merely expressive to intimidating toward voters, it would be outlawed regardless of where it occurred,” Becker said.
He said generally electioneering is “ordinary campaign activity.”
The difference is that voter intimidation is when someone does “anything that could negatively affect a voter” when they go to vote. This includes making people feel in physical danger or uncomfortable, verbally accosting them and any other activity that someone “shouldn’t have to endure while exercising their most fundamental right,” he said.
The ACLU website says voter intimidation can include aggressively questioning voters about citizenship or criminal record and falsely representing oneself as an elections official. It also includes spreading false information about voter requirements and voter fraud.
What should I do if I see electioneering?
Sherbet said it’s best to tell an election judge at the voting location if you see what could be illegal electioneering. He said they are trained to handle electioneering and if someone notifies the election office, the office will relay the message to the judge at that location.
According to the secretary of state’s office, local voting clerks and election judges decide what counts as electioneering. While serving in that capacity, they have the authority of a district judge to ensure there is no electioneering. If judges or clerks have questions, they can ask their local election office or the secretary of state’s office.
Texas Voters Have to Wear Masks While Voting
The judge ruled that the exemption to Abbott’s statewide face mask mandate put a discriminatory burden on Black and Latino voters. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is poised to hear an appeal.
Texas voters have to wear masks while voting despite Gov. Greg Abbott's exemption, federal judge rules
"Texas voters have to wear masks while voting despite Gov. Greg Abbott's exemption, federal judge rules" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas voters are now required to wear face masks when casting ballots during the pandemic, a federal district judge ruled Tuesday, invalidating an exemption for polling places that Gov. Greg Abbott had included in his statewide mask mandate.
The governor’s mandate for Texans to cover their mouths and noses in public does not apply to polling places, an exclusion that has been challenged as discriminatory against Black and Latino voters who are more likely to be harmed by the coronavirus. Abbott has previously said he encourages voters to wear a face mask, but said he excluded polling places from his mandate to prevent people from being turned away from voting just because they don’t have a mask. Under Abbott’s order, poll workers are also not required to wear masks.
In his temporary ruling, U.S. District Judge Jason Pulliam said the exemption “creates a discriminatory burden on Black and Latino voters.”
Abbott and Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs immediately sought an appeal at the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The argument for a mask mandate at the polls was first raised in a much broader lawsuit filed against Abbott and the Texas secretary of state in July by Mi Familia Vota, the Texas NAACP and two Texas voters. The plaintiffs also sought things like a month of early voting, the opening of additional polling places and a suspension of rules that limit who can vote curbside without entering a polling place.
Pulliam, based in San Antonio, had dismissed the lawsuit in September, with Texas having convinced him that the sweeping changes sought to the state’s rules for in-person voting during the pandemic were outside of his jurisdiction as a federal judge. But earlier this month, with early voting already underway, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals punted the case back to Pulliam for him to again review the argument for an across-the-board mask mandate for anyone at a polling place.
The appeals court said that if Pulliam found that Abbott’s decision to not require masks at the polls violated the federal Voting Rights Act’s disallowance of discriminatory voting practices based on race, he would have jurisdiction to order changes.
“Black and Latino Texans … are more likely to become infected and more likely to suffer severe illness or to die of COVID-19. Black and Latino voters in Texas also face longer lines at the polls, increasing their risk of transmission by exposing them to crowds of other voters and poll workers,” the plaintiffs wrote in their renewed argument before Pulliam last week. “Under these conditions, Black and Latino voters must choose between not voting or risking their lives or the lives of their loved ones to vote. White voters do not face the same level of risk.”
The Texas attorney general’s office countered that the majority of states are not requiring masks at polling places and argued that the new legal fight over a potential Voting Rights Act violation is happening too late — after more than 7 million Texans have already cast ballots since early voting began on Oct. 13.
“Texas is on track to smash its prior turnout record, even during the pandemic and in counties with large minority populations,” the state’s filing said.
After the court voided Abbott's exemption, in effect requiring masks at polls, the plaintiffs said it was a "tremendous victory for democracy."
"The Judge has already been vindicated, as last night we received reports of polling officials in Texas testing positive for the coronavirus, and other polling places being required to close down because of sick poll workers," said Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas NAACP in a statement. "And, this past weekend, we received reports of poll watchers who were using their maskless presence to approach and intimidate minority voters."
Disclosure: The Texas secretary of state's office has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/28/texas-voting-mask-abbott/.
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Only one Drop-off location for Mail-in Ballots, State Supreme Court Rules
The court upheld Gov. Greg Abbott's authority under state law to limit ballot drop-off locations, issuing what is expected to be the final ruling in numerous lawsuits that challenged his order.
By Jolie McCullough - October 27, 2020
In what’s expected to be the final ruling on the matter, the Texas Supreme Court has upheld Gov. Greg Abbott’s order limiting Texas counties to only one drop-off location for voters to hand deliver their absentee ballots during the pandemic.
The ruling, issued Tuesday by the all-Republican court, is the final outcome in one of a handful of lawsuits in state and federal courts that challenged Abbott’s order from early this month. A federal appeals court also sided with the Republican governor in an earlier ruling, overturning a lower court’s decision.
The state lawsuit argued that the governor doesn’t have authority under state law to limit absentee ballot hand-delivery locations, and that his order violates voters’ equal protection rights under the state constitution. The suit was first filed in Travis County by a Texas-based Anti-Defamation League, a voting rights advocacy group and a voter.
In their opinion, the justices wrote that Abbott's order "provides Texas voters more ways to vote in the November 3 election than does the Election Code. It does not disenfranchise anyone."
A Travis County state district judge had sided with the plaintiffs pushing to allow multiple drop-off sites, and that ruling was upheld by an intermediate appeals court Friday. No additional sites had been allowed to open during the appeals process, however.
As the coronavirus continued to endanger Texans, counties — often more populous, largely Democratic ones — began to look for ways to expand voting access in the fall election. Such expansions, like loosening Texas’ strict restrictions on who can vote by mail or allowing for drive-thru voting, have repeatedly been challenged in court by Republicans. The Texas Supreme Court has kept Texas’ limitations on mail-in voting, but allowed drive-thru voting in Harris County to continue.
Abbott did issue an emergency order in July that lengthened the early voting period and extended the time voters have to deliver completed absentee ballots in person to county clerk offices. In typical elections, Texas voters who wish to deliver their absentee ballots in person can only do so on Election Day. That order, too, was unsuccessfully challenged by some Republicans, but ultimately Abbott rolled back his expansion for hand delivery of absentee ballots.
After Harris and Travis counties opened 12 and four drop-off sites at county clerk offices, respectively, the governor issued a new order on Oct. 1 allowing counties just one drop-off location each. Abbott and Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs said the limiting order was enacted after Hughs learned that at least one county planned to accept hand-delivered absentee ballot applications at invalid county offices. The state also wanted poll watchers at each site accepting such ballots.
Texas does not have drop-off boxes for absentee ballots, as do some other states. Instead, to drop off a mail-in ballot in person at any location, voters must present an approved form of identification to a poll worker, and voters may not turn in any one else’s ballot.
Multiple voting right groups quickly challenged the governor's limiting order, and three Democratic chairs of high-profile congressional committees called the move an apparent "last-ditch effort to suppress Texans’ ability to vote."
The litigation, one of a plethora on voting access in Texas during the fall election, was settled Tuesday evening with three full days left of early voting. Election Day is Nov. 3.
Immigrants Hope the Courts or the election Will Save Their Protected Status
Temporary Protective Status for immigrants from several countries is now before the courts. Tens of thousands of TPS recipients live in Texas.
By Julián Aguilar - October 26, 2020
Despite knowing that everything he’s worked for over the past three decades could be wiped out within months, Gerson Bonilla hasn't started thinking about coming up with a Plan B.
Bonilla, 49, fled his native El Salvador in 1989 during that country's violent civil war and received permission to legally stay under a humanitarian program called Temporary Protective Status, which allows citizens of countries experiencing conflict, natural disasters or other emergencies to take temporary refuge in the U.S.
The program was established in 1990 under President George H.W. Bush and currently offers protection for more than 300,000 immigrants living in the U.S. In 2017, about 45,000 people from El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti lived in Texas under the program, according to a report by the Center for American Progress. Those families had a combined 53,800 U.S. citizen children, according to the report.
Bonilla's journey took him to Houston, where he found work and got married. He now has four U.S. citizen children, a mortgage and owns an HVAC installation and repair business.
But in a victory for the Trump administration and its immigration hardliners, an appellate court last month ruled the White House could end the program for recipients from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan.
The 2-1 decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will also apply to TPS recipients from Honduras and Nepal who are part of a separate lawsuit, Ahilan Arulanantham, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, told the Associated Press last month.
Arulanantham said his team is preparing to seek a review of the case, Ramos v Nielsen, by a larger group of 11 judges. Of the 9th Circuit's 29 members, 16 were appointed by Democrats and 13 by Republicans. A timeline on a final decision is unclear.
Some conservative groups argue that TPS holders only been allowed to remain in country for decades because of biased judges. They have cheered the court’s decision to end the program.
Bonilla fled El Salvador in 1989 and received permission to legally stay under Temporary Protective Status.
Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune
“The fact that the legal and justifiable termination of TPS has been delayed for this long is further evidence that pernicious judicial activism must be reined in,” Dan Stein, the president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in a statement after last month's ruling. “This ruling represents a win for the idea that the American people should be able to provide needed and appropriate temporary humanitarian relief, with the full expectation that their generosity will not be taken advantage of when the emergency is over."
If the appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't reverse the earlier ruling, Bonilla could be sent back to a country he has only visited once in more than 30 years.
“We have to keep working, we have to survive the pandemic," he said. "We’re going to keep moving forward, one way or another, life continues. We’ll see if there is a change in the administration” on Election Day.
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign said that if elected, the Democratic presidential candidate would protect TPS recipients.
Meanwhile, many immigrants with protected status are turning to civic activism to put pressure on elected officials. The National TPS Alliance announced a 54-city bus tour in response to last month’s decision that includes visits to 32 states where TPS holders will engage with voters and teach them about the program and the benefits its recipients bring to the country.
Gloria Soto, a 32-year-old TPS recipient who arrived in the United States from Honduras when she was 8 years old, said she can’t just sit and dwell anymore.
“At the beginning [after the court ruling] it was sad and disappointing and the anxiety came,” she said. “But at this moment I am really of a strong mind that I am going to fight for my status.”
Like Bonilla, Soto also has a mortgage and U.S. citizen children, including a 14-year-old special needs daughter who was born prematurely. She’s worked at a finance company in the Dallas area for four years and has few connections to her native Honduras, where she said medical care for her daughter would be hard to find.
She said people like her deserve a shot at living in the country without worrying if their TPS benefits will be extended once again.
“There are always going to be people who have taken advantage of the TPS, but what about the ones who have been really good residents of this country? Why not give that option to become a [permanent] resident to those who have a business, those who have property, those who have kids and that have been filing their taxes?”
TPS recipients and their allies are pushing for legislation to allow some TPS recipients the opportunity to apply for legally residency. TPS protection doesn't automatically lead to permanent residency, but recipients can apply for other forms of relief like a nonimmigrant visa or an adjustment of immigration status, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
And while she waits for better news, Soto said she has faith things will ultimately work out for people like her and Bonilla.
“We are fine and we’re going to get through,” she said. “How many times have they tried to cancel TPS before?”
Failure Rates Among Students Fuel Calls for Face to Face Teaching
Most schools hoped this fall would see students make up academic ground lost last spring when the pandemic hit. Instead, districts are looking for ways to reverse plummeting grades and attendance among students learning at home.
Alarming failure rates among Texas students fuel
calls to get them back into classrooms
By Aliyya Swaby - October 23, 2020
As fall progresses, Texas public school superintendents are realizing that virtual instruction simply is not working for thousands of students across the state.
Report cards from the first weeks of the school year show more students than last year failing at least one class. Students are turning in assignments late, if at all; skipping days to weeks of virtual school; and falling behind on reading, educators and parents report. Many parents say they’re exhausted from playing the role of at-home teacher, and some students without support at home are struggling to keep track of their daily workload with limited outside help.
The problems are concentrated among students trying to learn from home, more than 3 million of the state’s 5.5 million public school students, according to administrators’ accounts. The trends are adding urgency to calls for getting more students back into classrooms as quickly as possible.
By now, many school districts hoped their students would be making up academic ground lost last spring, when the pandemic caused them to shut down classrooms. Texas is mandating that districts get back to normal this fall and prepare students for upcoming state standardized tests. Schools dialed up the intensity of their classes — and then an alarming number of students began failing.
As the first grading period came to a close, some administrators began temporarily backpedaling from their initial insistence on academic rigor. They gave teachers the message: Do what you can to make sure kids pass.
Judson Independent School District, in San Antonio, added a note to its grading handbook allowing principals to “grant any exceptions” and “extend grace” to students, letting them make up late work or drop assignments. “We understand that connectivity issues, lack of devices, technological issues with the Student Portal, Canvas, and electronic books may impede a student from submitting their assignments in a timely manner,” the handbook now reads.
Cathryn Mitchell, principal of Austin ISD’s Gorzycki Middle School, sent an email in early October, obtained by The Texas Tribune, alerting all staff to a “campus-wide dilemma.” Almost 25% of students were failing at least one class, including 200 failing more than one subject. She attributed the failures to steep technology learning curves, lack of access to devices and Wi-Fi, shifting reopening guidelines and anxiety over the health risks of on-campus learning.
The email implored teachers to exhaust “all measures to assist the student before failing them,” including working with them one on one, emailing or calling parents, and setting up Zoom parent conferences. For teachers unable to do everything to help a failing student before the grading deadline, Mitchell wrote, “we would ask that you gift the student with a 70.” Texas’ “no pass, no play” rule prohibits students pulling less than a 70 in one or more classes in a marking period from playing sports or participating in extracurricular activities for three weeks.
“We know that some students are taking advantage of the situation or have procrastinated to get themselves into this position. There is no question about that,” Mitchell wrote. “But we also know that we have asked a great deal of them these first five weeks. ...This will not be the norm every six-weeks."
Austin ISD officials told the Tribune that school leaders are “committed to high standards of academic rigor” and working to “better serve” students with low averages or incomplete grades based on their individual needs. They did not respond to questions about whether Mitchell’s approach was supported by the district or whether 25% is an average failure number across the district this marking period. According to KVUE-TV, about 11,700 Austin ISD students are failing at least one class this year, a 70% increase from last year.
As the extent of students’ struggles become clear, parents and superintendents are increasingly determined to get students back to school, the pendulum of their worries swinging away from health risks and toward the risks of students not learning at all. “Districts are starting to feel some real internal pressure as educators,” said Joy Baskin, legal services director at the Texas Association of School Boards. “If they feel that there’s enough momentum around getting everyone back, I think that’s their preference.”
State data on COVID-19 in schools is limited and full of gaps, but it points toward low student infection rates, encouraging some experts. Experts say layering policies such as sanitization, social distancing and masks is needed to reduce the risk of transmission. Despite outcries from some teachers and parents, dozens of school districts have nixed their virtual learning options altogether and brought nearly all students back to classrooms.
According to the San Antonio Express-News, at least one of those districts is attempting to require all remote learners with failing grades to return in person — violating recently updated state guidance. “Discontinuing remote instruction in a way that only targets struggling students is not permitted,” the updated guidance reads.
Texas school districts don’t have much time to get students back on track. This academic year, the Texas Education Agency will resume strict sanctions on schools and districts with consistently low student standardized test scores after pausing those penalties last spring. And there are dollars at stake, with state funding tied to student attendance. Districts have reported losing track of thousands of students, including some of their most vulnerable, who haven’t logged into virtual classes or responded to phone calls and door knocks. According to state leaders, schools that are open for in-person instruction have seen higher levels of enrollment than those with only virtual education.
San Antonio’s Northside ISD has not changed its expectations for virtual students, despite seeing higher failure rates, said Superintendent Brian Woods. Since many students learning from home are low income, Black and Hispanic, lowering academic standards for those students could end up deepening existing inequities, he said.
Instead, the district has put together a call team to reach out to low-performing virtual learners and urge them to come back to campus. Just under 45% of students are learning from classrooms in the second grading period, up from less than 25% earlier in the fall, when the district slowly phased students in. “We’re not going to fix it by only taking the good grades or dropping half the grades,” Woods said. “We’ve got to dig in and look more at the root cause. We know what it is: There’s kids who need to be in the building, period.”
In Brazosport ISD, where 78% of students are learning in classrooms, a quarter of virtual learners are failing two or more classes, compared with 8% of at-school students. The district is “not dropping our expectations for at-home students,” said Superintendent Danny Massey. But with coronavirus cases dropping in Brazoria County and district officials being transparent about COVID-19 cases on campuses, more parents are gradually choosing to send their students back. Some Austin ISD parents are considering sending their children back later this fall, once the district returns to in-person instruction that more closely resembles a regular classroom. When the district reopened, it had students sitting in classrooms but learning virtually. The state halted that approach. Rosemary Wynn, an Austin ISD parent, thinks her eighth and ninth grade sons may get more out of learning in person once it includes more face-to-face instruction.
She and her husband had a stern talk with their O. Henry Middle School eighth grader earlier this fall after realizing he had not opened about 100 emails from his teachers, except one from his football coach. He was previously a straight-A student, but at one point his grade in one class had fallen to 29, she said. “Children don’t know how to read email. That is not part of their repertoire,” she said, with exasperation. “I haven’t had a single teacher reach out to say, ‘your kids’ grades this, your kids’ grades that.’ I think the whole way this is set up is a recipe for disaster.”
Kelly Sanders and her son Bizuayehu Crouther, a 14-year-old at Austin High School in Austin ISD, regularly debate whether he should return later this fall. Bizuayehu has dyslexia and dysgraphia, which impacts his ability to write clearly by hand, and he’s found virtual learning much easier. “I do not want to go back,” he said.
Sanders is concerned that the second grading period will be even more academically rigorous and that her son will not be able to keep up virtually. “I’m happy that [he is] making really good grades right now, but I’m concerned that it still isn’t as rigorous as the classes would be if it were in person. If at some point he has to take a standardized test on the material, I don’t know what that looks like,” she said.
But for other parents, the decision is easy. Single parent Renee Schalk chose to keep her 17-year-old son and 2-year-old triplets home from Georgetown schools and doesn’t regret it. “My children are children of color,” said Schalk, who is Black. “I don’t want them subjected to COVID-19. … We’re not doing enough in this state, we’re not doing anything in this country to make it safe.”
Angelina Allegrini, a 14-year-old ninth grader in San Antonio’s North East ISD, said her grades suffered in the beginning of the year as she got accustomed to the variety of programs teachers used for online learning and the exhaustion of staring at a screen for three to four hours a day. After a few weeks, and a little leniency from teachers, she pulled them back up.
But the social, extroverted teenager still felt she was missing something. “I wanted to try to get to know people in my class. I saw some of them on the screen, but that’s not the same,” she said.
On Monday, after several weeks of learning from home, Angelina walked into her high school for the first time this year. Her mother, Cherise Rohr Allegrini, a prominent epidemiologist in San Antonio, said she was “not thrilled” about her daughter’s decision but predicted it wouldn’t last long, with a surge in COVID-19 cases likely on the horizon. “I think they’re probably going to change and close schools in a couple of weeks or so,” she said. “We’re going to start seeing outbreaks on campuses.”
Last Day to Apply for a Ballot by Mail
The last day to apply to vote by mail is Friday, October 23.
STCN Staff - October 22, 2020
The last day to apply to vote early by mail for the November 3, 2020 General Election is Friday, October 23, 2020.
To apply for a ballot by mail in Nueces County, voters may print the application online from the Nueces County website or request to have an application mailed to them by e-mailing VoteByMail@nuecesco.com or by calling (361) 888-0385.
To apply by mail for Kleberg County, voters may go to Kleberg County Election website, download the application or call (361) 595-8548 for more information.
Click here for Nueces County or Kleberg County voting times and locations.
Mail-in Ballots can be Rejected if Signatures Don't Match
A federal judge had ordered the state to give voters a chance to resolve signature questions in time for their ballots to be counted. Now that won't happen unless counties do it voluntarily.
Texas can reject mail-in ballots over mismatched signatures without giving
voters a chance to appeal, court rules
By Karen Brooks Harper - October 19, 2020
If they decide the signature on the ballot can't be verified, Texas election officials may continue rejecting mail-in ballots without notifying voters until after the election that their ballot wasn't counted, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday.
The appeals court halted a lower court’s injunction, which had not gone into effect, that would have required the Texas secretary of state to either advise local election officials that mail-in ballots may not be rejected using the existing signature-comparison process, or require them to set up a notification system giving voters a chance to challenge a rejection while their vote still counts.
Requiring such a process would compromise the integrity of the mail-in ballots “as Texas officials are preparing for a dramatic increase of mail-in voting, driven by a global pandemic,” reads the Monday opinion issued by Judge Jerry E. Smith.
“Texas’s strong interest in safeguarding the integrity of its elections from voter fraud far outweighs any burden the state’s voting procedures place on the right to vote,” Smith wrote.
Before mail-in ballots are counted, a committee of local election officials reviews them to ensure that a voter’s endorsement on the flap of a ballot envelope matches the signature that voter used on their application to vote by mail. They can also compare it to signatures on file with the county clerk or voter registrar that were made within the last six years.
The state election code does not establish any standards for signature review, which is conducted by local election officials who seldom have training in signature verification.
Voters must be notified within 10 days after the election that their ballot was rejected, but state election law does not require affording them an opportunity to challenge the rejection, the appeals court ruling noted.
In August 2019, two voters, George Richardson of Brazos County and Rosalie Weisfeld of McAllen, filed suit after their mail-in ballots were rejected by local officials who decided the signatures on the envelopes in which their ballots were returned were not theirs.
The voters — joined by groups representing Texans with disabilities, veterans and young voters — argued the state law allowing local election officials to reject mail-in ballots based on perceived mismatching signatures violates the 14th Amendment.
The lawsuit claims at least 1,873 mail-in ballots were rejected on the basis of mismatched signatures during the 2018 general election; at least 1,567 were rejected in 2016.
On Sept. 8, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia ruled that the state’s process for matching signatures “plainly violates certain voters’ constitutional rights,” and ordered the state to either abandon the practice or come up with some mechanism that lets voters get their ballots counted.
The injunction has been under an administrative stay by the 5th Circuit since Sept. 11, three days after it was issued, and will now remain on hold while the state challenges the underpinnings of Garcia's decision.
Plaintiffs said they will now push counties to voluntarily give early notice to voters whose ballots are rejected for signature-match issues, allowing them a chance to rectify the situation and let their vote count.
“It will affect this 2020 election, so voters will not be notified in time, and so I think the main thing we’re trying to do now is notify counties that ballot boards are not required to give pre-election day notice, but they can,” said H. Drew Galloway, executive director of MOVE Texas, a plaintiff. “We encourage them to follow the original intent of the lower courts here so folks (whose ballots were rejected) can go vote in person, or contest that decision.”
Texas offers voting by mail to people with disabilities, Texans who are 65 and older, voters who will be outside of the county during an election, and those in jail during an election.
Texas Schools Tell Teachers They Must Return to Classrooms
Several school districts are trying to accommodate teachers with health conditions who want to work from home, but many are being called back in as more students return to classrooms.
Texas schools tell teachers with medical risks they must return to classrooms
during the pandemic
By Aliyya Swaby and Emma Platoff - October 20, 2020
After several miscarriages over the last few years, Joy Tucker is finally pregnant with her third child at the age of 37.
A school counselor at the Houston-based Windmill Lakes campus at the International Leadership of Texas charter school, Tucker talked to her doctor about the risks she and her child would face if she were to contract COVID-19 from students or other employees. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that pregnant people may be at an increased risk of severe COVID-19 illness, or even preterm birth. At her doctor’s recommendation, Tucker turned in a note asking her school if she could work remotely.
School leaders denied that request, saying she would have to return to work in person in September. If not, Tucker would have to use the rest of her paid leave to remain home, leaving her no time to recover after the baby’s birth. Her options quickly dwindling and her baby due in January, Tucker lawyered up and filed a grievance with the school district.
“I want nothing more than to go back to work and be with my kids,” said Tucker, who chose to use paid leave instead of returning in September. “If I have to choose between mine and my baby’s life, or going to work in a situation where we could get sick or we could die, there’s no choice to make — I have to stay home.”
Caitlin Madison, a spokesperson for the charter school, declined to comment on Tucker’s case but said, “since this school year started, the ILTexas policy has been that if we have students on campus, then we need to have our employees on campus as well.” About 28% of students in the district have chosen to return to campus.
“The only work-from-home exception for campus staff has been if they are sick with COVID or were potentially exposed to COVID and require a 14-day quarantine,” she added.
International Leadership of Texas is one of a number of Texas schools denying some teachers’ requests to work from home, as they balance staffing against often-fluctuating student enrollment. Federal disability law allows employees to ask their bosses for reasonable accommodations, such as temporary schedule changes, shift changes or working remotely, if an illness puts them at higher risk for COVID-19.
School districts must grant those requests unless they would pose an “undue hardship,” including costing too much or impeding their ability to run the school. With Texas largely requiring school districts to bring back all students who want to return, administrators like those at International Leadership of Texas argue they cannot run their school campuses properly if too many teachers stay at home. More than 2 million of 5.5 million Texas students were attending school in person as of late September, according to a state estimate, an increase from 1 million earlier this fall.
Experts say that school districts should layer safety requirements such as masks, social distancing and sanitizing to keep COVID-19 from spreading. In other countries, transmission in schools has been extremely low. But few of those countries had the same level of uncontrolled community spread as Texas, which has failed to contain the virus in many regions and is seeing regional surges in cases. State data on transmission in public schools shows almost 6,500 teachers reported positive COVID-19 cases, but the data is limited and full of gaps.
Given the unclear picture of COVID-19’s spread in Texas schools, teachers say school administrators are unfairly expecting them to put their lives in danger, in some cases requiring all staff to return to campuses even when most students have chosen virtual learning. Texas teachers have little leverage, given the state’s strict labor laws: Any teachers who strike could be stripped of their jobs, teaching certificates and pension benefits.
“You don’t need to be in an office to do your job,” said Tony Conners, who is representing Tucker and has exclusively represented teachers for more than 30 years. “Since spring break, when COVID-19 hit, everyone was working from home and [school districts] were taking the money from the government and they were telling the communities and parents that they were being well served.”
Conners said he’s heard from more teachers than ever before wanting counsel on how to get accommodations to stay home. The toughest cases, he said, are in charter schools and suburban districts. By law the process is individualized, requiring school leaders to talk with employees about how to meet their needs.
But districts do not have to hire new staff or create new positions to accommodate someone under the law, said Joy Baskin, director of legal services for the Texas Association of School Boards. “If more than half of students are coming back, you have to create social distancing in the physical environment, which may mean you need smaller class sizes and therefore you need all hands on deck,” she said. “A lot of districts responded to that by saying, ‘We don’t have remote-only positions.’”
Even districts currently providing teachers with accommodations cannot guarantee them for the entire year, since many are allowing parents to decide each marking period whether to enroll their students in virtual or in-person education.
“If we can provide some of those accommodations without creating a hardship on a campus where they wouldn’t be able to serve their students safely, then I wanted to be able to proudly say that we had valued both students and staff,” said Austin Independent School District Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde. About 700 of 5,000 total Austin ISD teachers have received permission to work virtually at least through December. But as more students return in person, “we will be challenged to keep all of those accommodations for a long time …... There is of course fine print that says, if it becomes necessary to rescind the approval for school student needs, then we would have to do so,” she said.
Some teachers have already had that rug pulled out from under them. In August, Gina Morreale, an Eanes ISD middle school history teacher, was approved to work remotely after turning in a note from her doctor explaining her chronic bronchitis and susceptibility to pneumonia. She even got an email from administrators asking her not to come on campus to do her work sponsoring the cheerleading team. Lean on the cheer moms, she was told.
A month later, Eanes administrators decided to bring back all students who wanted to come in person, instead of phasing them in slowly. Unfortunately for Morreale, that meant also bringing all staff back to campus.
“This can’t apply to me,” she remembers thinking. “Maybe this applies to someone who is in a walking boot — someone that wasn’t high risk.” She started to think through her options — Could she quit and move in with her parents? Did she need to look for a new job?
She asked her doctor for another letter with more detail, and said she is still working with district leaders, hoping they can agree on an accommodation.
Eanes ISD was forced to call its staff back to ensure there were enough personnel, said spokesperson Claudia McWhorter. The human resources department is working with concerned educators on a case-by-case basis. “Even when we were at 25% capacity, our campuses were short-staffed; some campuses have been forced to have an all-hands approach and even have principals serving as teachers in classrooms,” McWhorter said in an email. “Simply put: with more students returning, we need staff in the buildings.”
For now, Morreale has been able to work remotely, but she’s not sure how long the district will allow it.
“I hope I can until it is safe for me,” she said.
Administrators that deny teachers' requests to stay at home are offering other options. Baskin said the school board association is training human resources directors to get creative in thinking about accommodations that could help teachers with health risks safely work from school buildings. That might mean offering a more remote office away from students and teachers or extra safety equipment.
Six years after finishing multiple rounds of chemotherapy for breast cancer, Pasadena ISD high school English teacher Elizabeth Alanis asked if she could work from home. Her white blood cell count, which determines the health of her immune system, still yo-yos every several months.
To her horror, after a conversation with school leaders, she received a letter denying her request to stay home long term. The district instead offered to minimize her direct contact with students, provide her with plexiglass dividers and protective equipment, set up student desk shields or move her classroom to an external portable building so she didn’t have to pass many people in the halls.
“Your job duties and responsibilities require your physical presence on campus as of September 8, 2020,” they wrote in a letter Alanis provided to The Texas Tribune. “Consequently, the District does not believe allowing you to telework after the short-term program has ended and after students have returned to campus, is a reasonable accommodation based on your job duties and responsibilities as a classroom teacher.”
According to the district, she is one of 59 teachers who have formally requested to work from home through the federal disability accommodations process, of about 3,700 teachers total. None of them were allowed to work from home past Sept. 8, when students returned to campus. “Pasadena ISD must provide students attending in-person instruction with a safe, supervised school/campus environment, and that effort is supported by all of our staff being physically present,” said Arturo Del Barrio, spokesperson for Pasadena ISD. The percentage of students on campus is gradually increasing, from about 40% in September to almost half by mid-October.
Alanis used her personal leave days to remain at home until mid-October, but decided to return Tuesday, unable to afford unpaid leave for months. “I've spoken to my oncologist on this matter and he knows it's a tough place to be in. My white blood cell count is still low, so that just means I'll have to take extra precautions,” she said. “I am going to invest in a medical grade mask and I am going to also invest in an air purifier with a UV light.”
Sitting out of classes for even part of a semester is heartbreaking for Alanis, who has been a teacher for 16 years, most of them in Pasadena ISD. “There’s not much they can take from me at this point. They’ve already kind of taken who I am,” she said, her voice over the phone showing she was close to tears. “I’ve had such huge ties to my students, to my community. And oh my God, I love those kids.”
Texans with Criminal Records Face Limited Housing Options
The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs is proposing that people with certain criminal convictions be temporarily or permanently blocked from living in tax-supported developments that provide support services.
Texans with criminal records face increasingly limited housing options.
Homeless advocates say a new rule could leave them with even fewer choices.
By Juan Pablo Garnham - October 16, 2020
Homeless Texans with certain criminal records could be blocked from one of the few paths they have to social services and a stable home if Gov. Greg Abbott approves a proposed new rule for residents in some subsidized housing units.
The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs is proposing that people with certain criminal convictions be temporarily or permanently blocked from living in tax-supported “supportive housing” developments.
Such housing is funded through Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, which give developers tax benefits in exchange for building homes that are leased at below-market rates. Once they're built, developers and local providers coordinate to connect tenants that were previously homeless with support services like mental health or substance abuse programs. Either the developer or external agencies provide these services in order to help the tenant get back on their feet. Supportive housing is only one kind of the housing created by the housing program, but advocates said it is key to fighting homelessness.
“People experiencing homelessness already have more barriers than those housed to access housing,” said Eric Samuels, president of the Texas Homeless Network, a statewide nonprofit that coordinates homelessness efforts. “This adds barriers and makes our job more difficult.”
According to a TDHCA spokesperson, the proposed rule was added after Austin residents complained about a now-canceled supportive housing project in the West Campus neighborhood near the University of Texas at Austin. An employee from the agency explained in a September board meeting that groups complained about the possibility of having a supportive housing project without a “safety check.” The rule requires all new subsidized buildings to have a screening process, but only supportive housing projects would be required to have precise bans for certain kinds of crimes.
Advocates say there is no data that shows that supportive housing projects increase crime in neighborhoods.
The rule mandates that developers deny applicants for at least two years if they have been convicted of nonviolent felonies, which can include a third offense of driving while intoxicated or credit card abuse. For people convicted of Class A misdemeanors, like possession of over 2 ounces of marijuana or criminal trespass of a habitation, the ban would last at least one year. Some gun-related violent crimes could also get a person banned for at least three years.
People convicted of more serious crimes, like murder, sexual assault, kidnapping and arson, would be banned permanently from these developments.
TDHCA said the proposed rule would guarantee a “minimum requirement” for screening tenants and that many developments already have similar rules in place, including “almost all affordable housing developments” and “a vast majority of supportive housing developments.” But advocates say developers have freedom to create their screening rules, leaving flexibility to negotiate individual cases with homeless organizations.
According to a 2019 homelessness count, in Texas there were more than 3,500 people who were chronically homeless, which means that they’ve remained unhoused for more than a year and many times have added challenges, like a disability, mental illnesses or a history of substance use disorders. Organizations don’t count how many of them have been convicted of crimes, but Samuels said it is not uncommon for homeless people to have criminal records.
“Most of these are nuisance crimes,” said Samuels. “People experiencing homelessness are victims of crime far more than they are perpetrators.” In the last five years, about 1,000 units of subsidized supportive housing have been approved in Texas using Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, according to TDCHA data. Some of these homes are built for people experiencing chronic homelessness who, without supportive services, won't be able to get back on their feet.
Right now, if a potential tenant has a criminal record, case workers can try to negotiate with the developer and find conditions in which that person would be approved. The proposed new rule would allow landlords to review mitigating factors, like letters of recommendation from case managers and health professionals, and still lease to someone with certain criminal convictions. But when asked how the process would work, TDHCA spokesperson Kristina Tirloni said that would be left to the property owners.
Homeless service providers said that the requirement will limit their ability to find homes with support services for some of the state’s most vulnerable people. “The proposed mandate prohibits the ability to match folks with their best option,” said Bree Williams, director of community housing at Austin ECHO, a coalition of nonprofits that provide homeless services. “These developments are service enriched, and they are amazing with folks with specific needs. This takes some folks out of the run for that.”
Homeless service providers and advocates said that their clients are already having a hard time finding housing because of the screening that landlords do. But with a state-mandated ban like this, their chances of negotiating placement with landlords and developers will diminish.
“One of our community’s greatest barriers to ending homelessness is the disqualification of people with criminal histories from obtaining a lease,” said Thao Costis, CEO of SEARCH Homeless Service, a service provider in Houston, in a letter to TDHCA.
TDHCA will be responding to the comments that it has received and proposing possible changes in a board meeting on Nov. 5. After that, Abbott will have to make a decision on whether to support the proposal by Dec. 1. His office did not respond to a request for comment.
The housing tax-credit program is a federal initiative that is managed by the states. In Texas, developers and nonprofits can compete for the tax benefits in exchange for building, renewing or preserving homes for low-income people and other groups in need of affordable housing.
According to Costis, housing and supporting someone with services costs $17,000 a year. But when that person is on the streets, the cost in policing and health resources can average $91,000 a year in Harris County.
“They remain stuck living under freeway overpasses and in businesses’ entryways,” she said. “Their languishing on the streets costs the community extraordinary policing and medical expenses.”
Advocates are also concerned about limiting who can find a tax-supported housing unit during a pandemic.
“We're serving folks that many of which are living with multiple medical vulnerabilities,” Williams said. “Now more than ever, we need to find a way to bring those folks home and have them in a safe space where they can protect themselves from the virus.”
Early Voting is up in Texas
First-day turnout was up just under a percentage point in Texas' 10 biggest counties, but it's unclear whether that trend will continue through Election Day.
Early voting appears up in Texas. It’s too early to know what that means.
By Alex Samuels and Mandi Cai - October 14, 2020
The lines were long at polling locations across Texas on the first day of early voting Tuesday, and some of the state’s biggest counties reported record first-day turnout.
But with reliable data from the state still limited on who is showing up to vote so far, it remains too soon to tell whether the trend will continue through Election Day or what it means for Democrats’ hopes to turn the state blue.
According to the state Democratic Party, over 1 million Texans cast ballots on the first day of early voting. Using data from county election supervisors in the state’s largest 10 counties, home to 57% of registered voters in Texas, The Texas Tribune found that at least 425,028 ballots were cast in-person Tuesday, while at least 224,122 had been sent in by mail. The number of absentee ballots is likely to be higher this year than in previous years because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
In 2016, by comparison, 340,006 Texans cast in-person ballots in those 10 counties on the first day of early voting, and 157,277 had cast ballots by mail. That year, the early voting period was shorter by about one week.
From 2016-20, there was a slight increase in the first-day turnout rate in the 10 biggest counties — 5.82% to 6.71%. As of Wednesday, there are 9,678,017 registered voters in those 10 counties. The number is subject to change as counties continue to report registered voters to the state.
The available totals for this year have split observers along party lines: Democrats, who count turning out new voters as their best hope for victory this year, take it as a sign Texas might flip. Republicans say it is par for the course in a competitive election year.
“Right now all we have is one day of early voting under our belts, and we have many more to go, so I’d equate it to a horse race,” said Derek Ryan, a Republican voter data expert. “The Democrats got a good start out the gate, but we’ve still got a whole race to run.”
Harris County, the state’s most populous, had the biggest first-day turnout out of the state’s top 10 counties, according to a Tribune analysis. Nearly 170,000 of the county’s nearly 2.5 million registered voters had cast ballots in person or through mail-in voting as of Wednesday morning. In 2016, by comparison, Harris County had just under 130,000 ballots submitted on the first day.
In Dallas County, nearly 60,000 people had cast in-person ballots, according to a county report. In addition, more than 33,000 submitted their ballots by mail, according to the Texas secretary of state.
But what that means about who will win Texas remains an open question. High first-day turnout can be a sign of new voters going to the polls — or it can be a sign of shifting habits. Are more people voting? Or are the people who would normally be expected to vote simply showing up earlier? Those questions are difficult to answer so early in the process.
The state’s voting numbers were incomplete Wednesday, meaning it was also difficult to tell whether high first-day turnout was being replicated in smaller counties across Texas. The state’s urban centers tend to lean more Democratic, and it’s not immediately clear to what extent there are similar trends in the state’s more rural counties that lean Republican.
Still, Wednesday’s numbers had Democrats excited.
In a statement, the Texas Democratic Party cheered the sheer number of Texans going to the polls and took it as a sign that the state may be in play later this fall.
“Across our state, Texas Democrats are fired up, voting, and ready to win,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, the party’s chair. “The first day of early voting was great but we still know that there is a lot of work to do and plenty of votes to be cast.”
The 10 most populous counties in the state are Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar, Travis, Collin, Denton, El Paso, Fort Bend and Hidalgo. Mail ballot data for Dallas and Fort Bend counties came from the secretary of state. Other data came directly from the counties.
Early voting runs through Oct. 30. Election Day is Nov. 3.
Nueces County May Allow Bars to Open
If approved, bars or similar establishments in Nueces County may operate for in-person service up to 50% of the total listed occupancy.
By Menda Eulenfeld - October 14, 2020
Nueces County Judge Barbara Canales will “opt-in” to allow bars to open in Nueces County.
In a press release today, Canales said that she “understand the importance of the Department of State Health Services (DSHS) minimum standard health protocols and will assist in enforcing them at reopened bars and similar establishments in the County.”
The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) will announce the state’s approval if it is granted.
In the Governor’s order, businesses who do not comply with the new operation guidelines can be fined and TABC is allowed to suspend a business’s license for 30 days for a first offense, and for up to 60 days for a second offense.
The official guidance can be found at:
https://www.dshs.state.tx.us/coronavirus/docs/opentx/Bars.pdf
These new protocols are for the bars which are currently closed.
Bars or similar establishments may operate for in-person service up to 50% of the total listed occupancy inside.
There is no occupancy limit outdoors.
According to the DSHS guidelines, alcohol can only be served until 11:00 PM each day.
All employees and customers must wear a face covering wherever it is not feasible to maintain 6 feet of social distancing from another individual not in the same household, except when seated at the bar or similar establishment to eat or drink.
Bar Patrons guidance can be found at:
https://www.dshs.state.tx.us/coronavirus/docs/opentx/Bar-Patrons.pdf
Voters Disagree on Top Issues
Texas voters' disagreements on candidates are mirrored by differences over top priorities and problems, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.
Texas voters disagree on top issues, as well as candidates, UT/TT Poll finds
By Ross Ramsey - October 14, 2020
Texas voters are casting their ballots with widely different opinions about the most important problems facing the country and the state of Texas, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.
The most important issue facing the country right now is the coronavirus/COVID-19, chosen by 18% of registered voters, followed by political corruption/leadership (14%) and the economy (10%).
What’s most important depends on who’s talking, however. Among Democrats, the most important issues facing the U.S. are coronavirus/COVID-19 (29%), political corruption/leadership (20%) and health care (11%). Republicans rank problems differently: moral decline (18%), the economy (13%) and political corruption/leadership (11%).
When it comes to problems facing the state, voters’ top items are coronavirus/COVID-19 (22%) and immigration/border security (16%). But the partisan differences are great. Immigration/border security top the list for 30% of Republicans, followed by coronavirus/COVID (13%). The pandemic is the top item for 33% of Democrats, followed by political corruption/leadership (10%).
Likely voters were also asked what issue was most important to them in choosing who to support for president, an open-ended question that let voters name any issue. The resulting list was led by the economy (11%) and “removing Trump from office” (8%). Among Republicans, the economy (15%) led the list, followed by “socialism and/or communism” (12%). Democrats topped their list with removing the president (19%), followed by coronavirus/COVID-19 (11%) and health care (9%).
That informed their choices for president. The poll found that 50% support President Donald Trump, the Republican, while 45% support former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrat.
How’s it going?
Texas voters are more negative about the way things are going for the country and the state than they were a year ago, the poll found.
Only 29% said the country is going in the right direction; 41% said the state is on the right track. A year ago, 37% liked the direction of the U.S. and 47% said Texas was on the right track.
Voters’ negative assessments have risen at the same time, with 62% now saying the country is on the wrong track, up from 54% in October 2019. The state’s grades are better, but not good: 44% of voters said Texas is on the wrong track, up from 35% a year ago.
Republican voters in Texas like the direction of things better than Democrats do. While 54% of Republicans think the country is on the right track, only 5% of Democrats do. A larger majority of Republicans — 70% — said Texas is on the right track; only 13% of Democrats agreed.
The economy
Most voters said either that they and their families are economically better off than a year ago (23%) or about the same (44%). But 31% said they are worse off now than then, a circumstance reported by 37% of Hispanic voters, 31% of Black voters and 30% of white voters. More Democrats (41%) said their family economics had worsened than Republicans (19%).
In an October 2019 UT/TT Poll, 77% of Texas voters said they were economically better off or in the same place compared with the year before, and 16% said they were worse off.
“You still see partisan differences, but those partisan differences can’t erase the intensity of what people are experiencing with both the pandemic and the economy,” said James Henson, co-director of the poll and head of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “It doesn’t mean the partisan filters go away, but they’ve got a lot more to contend with now.”
The same drops are repeated in economic assessments of the country and the state.
Most registered voters in Texas — 67% — said the national economy is in worse shape than it was a year ago. Another 17% said it has improved and 13% said it’s about the same. The Republican view of things is rosier than the Democratic one. Among Republicans, 28% said the U.S. economy is better than it was a year ago, while 16% said it’s about the same and 54% said it has worsened. Only 8% of Democrats said the national economy is better, while 9% said it’s unchanged and 82% said it is worse off than it was a year ago.
The state economy has improved, according to 15% of Texas voters, while 24% said it’s about the same as it was a year ago and 56% said it has worsened. Among Republicans, 25% said it’s better, 31% said it’s about the same and 40% said it has worsened. Democrats were harsher in their assessment: 6% said the economy is better than a year ago, 18% said it’s about the same and 73% said Texas is in worse shape economically than it was a year ago.
The University of Texas/Texas Tribune internet survey of 1,200 registered voters was conducted from Sept. 25 to Oct. 4 and has an overall margin of error of +/- 2.83 percentage points. The margin of error for results from 908 likely voters is +/- 3.25 percentage points. Numbers in charts might not add up to 100% because of rounding.
Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
Reference UT/TT Poll, October 2020, Summary/Methodology (277.9 KB) Reference UT/TT Poll, October 2020, Crosstabs (1.5 MB)
"Texas voters disagree on top issues, as well as candidates, UT/TT Poll finds" was first published at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/14/politics-issues-texas/ by The Texas Tribune.
The Texas Tribune is proud to celebrate 10 years of exceptional journalism for an exceptional state.
Texas Counties can Offer Only one drop-off Ballot Location
Civil rights groups and voting advocates had argued the restriction would disproportionately impact low-income voters, voters with disabilities, older voters and voters of color in Democratic counties.
Texas counties can offer only one drop-off ballot location, federal appeals
court rules, upholding Gov. Greg Abbott’s order
By Emma Platoff - October 13, 2020
Texas counties may collect mail-in ballots at only one location, a federal appeals court ruled late Monday, once again upholding an order from Gov. Greg Abbott that restricts voting options.
Abbott in July acted to lengthen the early voting period and allow voters to deliver completed absentee ballots in person for longer than the normal period. But after large Democratic counties including Harris and Travis established several sites where voters could deliver their ballots, Abbott ordered Oct. 1 that they would be limited to one.
A number of civil rights groups sued in at least four lawsuits, calling the order an act of voter suppression that would disproportionately impact low-income voters, voters with disabilities, older voters and voters of color in Democratic counties. A federal judge on Friday sided with those groups, blocking Texas from enforcing the ruling.
But a three-judge panel on the conservative U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily halted that ruling on Saturday and on Monday gave a more formal word on the matter in a written opinion.
“Leaving the Governor’s October 1 Proclamation in place still gives Texas absentee voters many ways to cast their ballots in the November 3 election. These methods for remote voting outstrip what Texas law previously permitted in a pre-COVID world,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan for the panel of three judges all appointed by President Donald Trump. “The October 1 Proclamation abridges no one’s right to vote.”
Travis County had designated four locations and Harris County — home to 2.4 million registered voters and spanning a greater distance than the state of Rhode Island — had designated a dozen before Abbott’s order forced them to close most sites. Fort Bend and Galveston counties also planned to use multiple locations, according to court documents.
Voting rights advocates and local election administrators said the extra sites were critical for helping voters cast their ballots safely during the coronavirus pandemic. Texas is set to receive an unprecedented number of absentee ballots this year, and amid concerns over U.S. Postal Service delays, advocates say, in-person drop-off locations are critical.
Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins has not hesitated to say the governor’s decision amounts to voter suppression.
“To force hundreds of thousands of seniors and voters with disabilities to use a single drop-off location in a county that stretches over nearly 2,000 square miles is prejudicial and dangerous,” Hollins said earlier this month.
In some states, voters can simply leave their ballots in boxes outside town halls or local churches. Not in Texas, where voters must show an election worker an approved form of identification and can only bring their own ballot.
Abbott had argued that the measure was necessary to ensure election integrity, but he did not provide any evidence and his office did not answer questions about how limiting the highly regulated drop-off locations would do so. In court filings, lawyers for the Texas attorney general’s office wrote that some counties wouldn’t provide “adequate election security, including poll watchers” — “inconsistencies” that the state argued “introduced a risk to ballot integrity.”
Abbott said that poll watchers must be allowed at the drop-off sites, as they are at in-person voting sites. Experts say voter fraud is rare, but Republican officials in Texas and nationally have sought to cast doubt on the security of absentee ballots even as their political party calls on its own voters to use them.
The appeals court ruled Monday that Texas did not need to show evidence of voter fraud to justify its decision to limit counties to one location.
“Such evidence has never been required to justify a state’s prophylactic measures to decrease occasions for vote fraud or to increase the uniformity and predictability of election administration,” Duncan wrote for the court.
One voter who sued the state over the order, 82-year-old Ralph Edelbach, said in court documents that closing the site nearest his Cypress home will mean he adds an extra 20 miles each way to his trip to deliver his ballot, forcing him to spend nearly 90 minutes round trip.
That inconvenience will only be greater, advocates say, for voters with disabilities or those without reliable access to transportation.
The groups that sued the governor include the Texas and National Leagues of United Latin American Citizens, the League of Women Voters of Texas, the Mexican American Legislative Caucus of the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Legislative Black Caucus.
"Texas counties can offer only one drop-off ballot location, federal appeals court rules, upholding Gov. Greg Abbott’s order" was first published at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/13/texas-election-ballot-drop-off/ by The Texas Tribune.
The Texas Tribune is proud to celebrate 10 years of exceptional journalism for an exceptional state.
Polling Locations for Kleberg County
Early voting will be held at the Annex Building located at 720 E. King Ave. in Kingsville from 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. except on Monday, October 26 and Tuesday, October 27, early voting will be from 7 a.m. - 7 p.m.
South Texas Community News - October 12, 2020
Early voting for Kleberg County will take place on Tuesday, October 13th and will end on Friday, October 30th. Early voting will be held at the Annex Building located at 720 E. King Ave. in Kingsville from 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. except on Monday, October 26 and Tuesday, October 27, early voting will be from 7 a.m. - 7 p.m.
Kleberg County Polling Locations for November 3, 2020
Joint General and Special Election Polling locations will be open from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Precinct # 11 - Wild Horse Mall - Main Entrance, 1601 S. Highway 77
Precinct # 12 - H. M. King High School, 2210 Brahma Blvd
Precinct # 13 - Coastal Bend Fellowship Church, 1500 E. Caesar Street
Precinct # 14 - Harvey Elementary School, 1301 E. Kenedy Ave.
Precinct # 21 - Kleberg Elementary School, 900 N 6th St. & Nettie
Precinct # 22 - Henrietta Memorial Center, 405 N. 6th Street
Precinct # 23 - University Baptist Church, 1324 N. Armstrong
Precinct # 24 - Santa Gertrudis School, 803 Santa Rosa Road
Precinct # 31 - Knights of Columbus Hall Council 3389, 320 Gen Cavazos Blvd.
Precinct # 32 - Memorial Middle School, 915 S. Armstrong
Precinct # 33/34 - Riviera County Building, 103 N. 7th Street (Riviera)
Precinct # 35 - Ricardo Community Senior Center, 109 N. Nix Street (Ricardo)
Precinct # 41 - Romeo L. Lomas Human Services Building, 1109 E. Santa Gertrudis
Precinct # 42 - Gillett Intermediate School, 1007 N. 17th Street
Early Morning Fire Outside of Corpus Christi
Upon arrival at 6:20 a.m., a residential home was fully engulfed. No occupants were inside.
By Menda Eulenfeld, South Texas Community News - October 10, 2020
Photo by Constable Jimmy Rivera, Pct. 3
Corpus Christi Fire Department and Emergency Service District #2 was dispatched to an early morning fire at 2021 and County Road 55 outside of Corpus Christi. Upon arrival at 6:20 a.m., a residential home was fully engulfed. No occupants were inside. An investigation by Nueces County Sheriff Office and Corpus Christi Fire Department fire marshal concluded that it was arson and a female suspect has been arrested.