Name: It’s the season of long hours, long voter lines, big stacks of mail-in ballots
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It’s the season of long hours, long voter lines, big stacks of mail-in ballots

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When Joaquin Gonzalez got up to speak before the Commissioners Court on Aug. 6, 2019, he offered words of praise. But there was a warning tucked into that message.Gonzalez, a civil-rights attorney who is the great-nephew of the legendary Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez, commended county officials for adopting a new “vote center” system that would let residents cast their ballots at any polling site in the county on Election Day, as they had long been able to do for early voting.Gonzalez called the new system a “great boon for the voters of Bexar County.” But he urged the Elections Department not to use it as an excuse to reduce the number of Election Day polling sites in the county.More for youFourteen months after expressing that concern, Gonzalez, on behalf of the Texas Civil Rights Project, filed a lawsuit in Bexar County District Court, contending that the Elections Department had disenfranchised voters by reducing the number of polling sites for the Nov. 3 election.The plaintiffs in the lawsuit were MOVE Texas, the Texas Organizing Project (TOP) and community activist Jennifer Falcon.On Tuesday, District Judge Karen Pozza granted the plaintiffs a temporary injunction, ordering the Elections Department to operate at least 302 Election Day polling sites, 18 more than the county had planned on providing. The judge required the county to identify those additional sites by Oct. 22.Map:“Voter turnout is negatively impacted by increasing the time and distance it takes to get to a polling place, as well as voter confusion when locations are closed,” Pozza wrote. “Evidence shows that an increase of .25 miles to a polling location can lead to a decrease in turnout of up to 5 percent.”So the Elections Department is lining up additional voting locations, while waiting to see if the county decides to contest the verdict. For the sake of clarity and voter enfranchisement, I’m hoping the county accepts the judge’s ruling and acts accordingly.From the inception of the “vote center” system in Bexar County, we’ve heard two diametrically opposed theories about its practical impact.When the county initially planned to reduce its Election Day polling sites from 287 to 275 for last year’s constitutional-amendment election, Republican County Commissioner Kevin Wolff pushed back against any objections from community activists. From Wolff’s perspective, voters had gone from having one Election Day polling option to 275. What could be wrong with that?From the perspective of MOVE Texas and TOP, countywide voting was welcome, but not a justification for making some members of this community travel farther to vote. The issue is particularly sensitive because voting-rights activists believe the Elections Department has established a pattern of shortchanging county voters on the number of available polling sites.On ExpressNews.com:“We were really excited to see the county go to countywide polling and we’ve been pushing other counties to adopt that same system,” said H. Drew Galloway, the executive director of MOVE Texas. “But one of the things that we were concerned about with countywide polling is that the statute allows a shrinkage of polling locations.“So when we saw this shrinkage of the list for November, we knew this enthusiasm was out in the field and people were excited to vote and we were going to see long lines. Those were the first sort of alarm bells.”The case came down to some arcane technical issues. The state’s Countywide Polling Place Program allows counties to get by with only 50 percent of the number of precinct polling locations “that would otherwise be located in the county for that election.”From the perspective of the plaintiffs (and Pozza), Bexar County has 734 precincts and therefore the county should have been required to provide 367 polling sites (50 percent of 734) rather than the 284 it settled on.The Elections Department, however, cites state law which allows larger counties to combine precincts with fewer than 750 registered voters.State law requires any combining of precincts to be ordered by the Commissioners Court and stipulates that such combinations should not discourage “participation by a group covered by the Voting Rights Act.”While the commissioners did approve a list of polling sites presented to them by Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen, Pozza concluded that they did not order the combining of specific precincts.For the Elections Department, this is just the latest in a series of legal curveballs they’ve encountered over the past few months:Gov. Greg Abbott adding a week to early voting; Abbott’s fellow Republicans suing to block those extra voting days; questions about how to handle mail-in ballot requests during the COVID-19 pandemic; and a court ruling requiring that three Green Party candidates be added to the ballot at the last minute.It’s the season of long hours, long voter lines, big stacks of mail-in ballots — and the urgent need to find 18 new polling sites.Gilbert Garcia is a columnist covering the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Gilbert, . | Twitter:

When Joaquin Gonzalez got up to speak before the Commissioners Court on Aug. 6, 2019, he offered words of praise. But there was a warning tucked into that message.Gonzalez, a civil-rights attorney who is the great-nephew of the legendary Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez, commended county officials for adopting a new “vote center” system that would let residents cast their ballots at any polling site in the county on Election Day, as they had long been able to do for early voting.Gonzalez called the new system a “great boon for the voters of Bexar County.” But he urged the Elections Department...

It’s the season of long hours, long voter lines, big stacks of mail-in ballots

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