New York’s CD-20: A Toss-Up Salad

Well with an off-off year congressional special election in New York, America in a deep recession, and a new Democratic government in start up mode, the mood is just right for the spin doctors to come out a-whirling and a-twirling.

Especially if we have another toss-up election as our main course today.

In the days running up to the special election in New York’s CD-20, the Washington Post was reporting a statistical dead heat in the polling.

And now, with the polls closed in New York, that is exactly what we have on our hands.

Again.

The Democratic and Republican spin doctors are all out there pointing out how this is a vindication for Barack Obama’s program, or how this is an early indication that the country is turning against the Obama plan for economic recovery.

I have a spin as well, but before we go there, I need to lay some groundwork.

First, if CD-20 sounds oddly familiar, it should be if you read this blog regularly, as six of you do, or read about congressional scandal in general. CD-20 was in this blog last year with speculation that former the New York CD-20 congressman, Republican John Sweeney, was being tapped to sing like a canary over his dealings with my former congressman’s dealings with judged and jailed former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. It was in the news in 2006 as well, because he was narrowly defeated by moderate Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, mainly because of his various and newsworthy encounters with the law.

By tradition, New York’s 20^th congressional district is Republican leaning. Gillibrand, a moderate Democrat, was able to be elected by a 53% to 47% margin, ostensibly because of the incredibly bad press that the congressman got that year.

But after Senator Hillary Clinton was confirmed as the new SecState, Gillibrand was tapped to take her place by New York’s Governor Patterson, throwing an open seat out to be filled in a special election, an open seat in a Republican leaning district.

An opportunity, some say, for Republicans to start their long fingernail-scraping crawl out of the hole they have dug themselves into.

So now we have a toss-up. At the end of the day, the Democratic candidate, businessman/entrepreneur Scott Murphy had a 65 vote lead over the Republican, State Assemblyman John Tedesco.

With over 10,000 absentee votes to count, the race is anyone’s.

Not if you ask the Democrats, however. Democrats have Murphy winning by 210 votes, using statistics and models of the voter trends in the counties covered by CD 20.

Not if you ask the Republicans, however. Republicans cite a “Republican advantage among the absentee and military ballots that exceed the current Murphy lead”. This, advantage, they say, is not statistical, but based on “raw data.”

Raw data? The only raw data I know of are the ballots themselves, which have not been counted.

All of that notwithstanding, this has not prevented the Republican spin machine to show this race as the American electorate’s negative judgment on the performance of the Obama Administration (which, polls show, has a 66% voter approval these days). A district that went to a Democrat by 6% in 2006 is being retaken by a Republican in a squeaker. That, they say, is a definitive trend.

Whatever.

What it is, is a statistical toss-up. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com fame not only predicted the toss-up, but his numbers show that New York CD 20 is a “Republican +2” district between the 2004 and 2008 elections.

Republican leaning.

But, Silver continues, a “Republican +2” district in a Democrat-advantage year, like 2008, predicts a toss-up election. Indeed of the 11 R +2 congressional district races in 2008, 5 went to Democrats, and 6 went to Republicans.

So the nonsense will continue to be spun until April 15^th when the final vote will be certified with the counting of the absentee ballots.

What happens after that, we will see what we will see. But what do you suppose the odds are that should Tedesco lose narrowly, the Republicans will go to court?

It is, after all, their standard operating procedure in these days when they just can’t buy an election any more.

Chairman Boyd Richie: Vote Now! Vote Bell!

I was going to make one more final post on the SD 17 special election with a reiteration of the essential information, but now I find that Boyd Richie has done my work for me. Here is what I found in my email inbox from TDP Chairman Richie

Dear fellow Democrats,

Election Day for the Senate District 17 runoff between Chris Bell and his Republican opponent is TOMORROW, Tuesday, December 16th. Chris and his supporters have been working tirelessly by knocking on doors, making phone calls and talking to voters across the district. Chris can win this race, and we can return responsible leadership to Senate District 17, but only if we get each and every one of Chris's supporters gets to the polls on Election Day. Below is information about voting in the runoff election.

Election Day for the District 17 runoff is Tuesday, Dec. 16.

Where to Vote
Click on your county to find a list of polling places, by precinct and by Zip Code:
Brazoria
Fort Bend
Galveston
Harris
Jefferson

When to Vote
On Election Day, Dec. 16, polling places are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Problems?
Report problems immediately at (713) 667-8990

Need A Ride?
Call (713) 667-8990 or Email lindsay@chrisbell.com

Have a Ride to Share?
If you would like to volunteer or help get people to their voting place, call (713) 667-8990 or Email lindsay@chrisbell.com

For more information visit the Chris Bell Website or call (713) 667-8990

Let's help Chris finish strong. Working together, we can overcome Republican cronyism and take back this State Senate seat. Thank you for your continued support, and thank you for being a Texas Democrat.

Your friend and fellow Democrat,

Boyd L. Richie

Chairman

Texas Democratic Party

Low Voter Turnout in SD 17 Special Election

You have to give them credit. When the Republican deciders who still plague Texas government at every level decide to run an election that will guarantee a low voter turnout, they generally get their wish.

It’s such an easy task. All you have to do is schedule the election within two weeks of Christmas, hold early voting for 5 days only and none of those days a weekend day, and have the polls open on three of those 5 days only between 8 AM and 5 PM, when most people have to work.

And then on top of that, have one of the polling locations located outside the district’s own boundaries.

That last one was a nice little touch courtesy of Fort Bend County government.

The early vote numbers are in at the Fort Bend County elections website, all except for the final day, today.

As of yesterday, Thursday, 2242 voters have cast their ballot in the SD 17 special election runoff, and 919 requested mail in ballots have been returned. That’s a grand total of 3161 voters out of approximately 95,000 Fort Bend County voters eligible to vote in the SD 17 election.

That’s a 3.33% turnout so far.

Now it’s beyond the data predict what would have happened had the runoff election taken place on December 2nd, as it did in Georgia for their US Senator, where they had a 57% voter turnout. There was a lot at stake in that election, what with the magic number of 60 being approached. But I am willing to bet that had they held that election on the 16th instead of the 2nd their turnout numbers would have been considerably less.

The attention span of the average voter is about one month. That’s all the politics they can stand.

So while the late election date does its expected damage, what effect, I wonder, are all of the other machinations that our deciders have decided on, doing to voter turnout in Fort Bend County?

So for your edification, or for my sheer love of asking “what if?” I’ve crunched some numbers to see the effects of what the curtailed hours and the poor choice of a polling location did to the totals.

It is clear that the early vote poll hours for Monday through Wednesday, when the polls were open only during 8 to 5 business hours did do a number on turnout. Witness the huge jump in the number of votes cast between Wednesday and Thursday. An across the board jump of between 42% and 62%. Had the polls been open from 7 to 7 for all 5 days, using Thursday as the go-by, the early vote totals as of yesterday could have easily been 65% higher than what they are as of now.

And a slightly improved 4.6% turnout.

If you look at who is showing up to vote where, you see that the Rosenberg Annex, a location found squarely within the SD 18 state senatorial boundaries, you see that this singularly poor choice for a location performed by far below par compared to the 4 other polling locations that are all located within SD 17’s district boundaries.

A grand total of 88 voters appeared at the Rosenberg Annex location in the 4 days we have data. That’s 3.9% of the total turnout. Compare that to the 4 other locations which accounted for between 18 and 32% of the turnout (24% per location on average). If the Fort Bend deciders picked a fifth location within SD 17’s boundaries, and it performed as well as the least performing polling location among the other 4, an additional 316 votes might have been cast, increasing turnout from 3.33% to 3.6%.

Imagine that. The Annex doing so poorly, when during the General Election early voting, it was among the top performers in terms of voter attendance.

What if I combine the effects of both voting hours and poor choice of a polling location? The combined effect of both together might have meant an additional 1500 or so votes by yesterday, or a turnout rate of 4.8%.

The Bell campaign is engaged in a Herculean effort to get voters out. The campaign office in Fort Bend is abuzz every day and volunteers are using their virtual phone bank system to call from their homes. It’s still not to late to get in on this action.

There is still an effort to get out the vote on Election Day.

What else were you planning on doing this weekend? Go Christmas shopping? I hear it’s best to wait until December 18th and go shop online where the vendors will offer free shipping.

So save your Christmas fund and go make calls for Chris.

Joan Huffman Pulls a Shelley

And here I was moping around the Half Empty Hovel because we didn’t have Shelley Sekula “Draculac__t” Gibbs to kick around any more. Out comes Joan Huffman, the often unnamed opponent (on this blog) to former Congressman Chris Bell in his heroic effort to take one more Texas Senate seat in a low-turnout special election.

Huffman, a district court judge, by the way, purposely held a barbecue luncheon at the Tracey Gee Community Center in west Houston. The Tracey Gee Community Center is a voting location for early voting in Harris County. This is a violation of Texas Election Code Chapter 61.001, and is punishable by a 500 dollar fine. It's a class C misdemeanor.

According to this article by Alan Bernstein of the Houston Chronicle, the political event took place in a room in the same building that a vote was being conducted. An event where Joan Huffman along with Harris County Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve “Toilet Plunger” Radack, urged attendees to vote for her.

Now Shelley Sekula Gibbs did exactly the same thing in 2006 when she entered an early voting location in Sugar Land in her successful run to finish Tom DeLay’s unexpired term in the Texas CD 22 seat. Well not exactly the same thing. She was electioneering outside the limits set by chapter 61.001 of the Texas Election Code, when, it was reported she felt the need to relieve the pressure building up in her bladder. However, on her way to the restroom, inside the First Colony Conference Center, she stopped by several voters and introduced herself to them.

This isn’t exactly what Huffman did. What Huffman did was a 1000 times worse. It was calculated electioneering on the premises of an early vote location. Sekula Gibbs was, at least, sneaky and sly about it as a good Republican, Huffman was in deliberate violation of the law, and quite frankly, didn’t care.

Is this the kind of person we need in public office? One who violates the law whenever it suits his or her needs? Haven’t we after all had just about enough of this?

The Bernstein article reports that one voter complained about the rally to a poll worker, but the poll worker simply told the voter that it would be up to him to complain.

In the 2006 crime, a complaint was lodged but the County Elections administrator of the time, J.R. Perez, declined to follow up on the complaint, and there it sat. With a Harris County Republican DA coming into office, I doubt we will have a better result this year, and Huffman’s crime will probably go unpunished. Should this happen, then it will be clear that in Harris County it is still a place where your Republican political affiliation allows you to violate the law at will.

Special Election Early Voting Begins Tomorrow

My guess is if you are reading this blog and have not stumbled over this site by Googling “Giving Head” or “Class C Misdemeanor” (my two most common Google hits) you well-know that the early vote for the special election runoff to get a 13th Democratic state senator to Austin begins tomorrow, and Chris Bell could sorely use your vote.

This election has been engineered to be a low turnout election. Early voting hours on Monday through Wednesday are 8 AM to 5 PM, eliminating everyone in SD 17 who still has a job and has to be at work during those times. No weekend early voting days have been scheduled. And Election Day is December 16th. Nine days before Christmas.

However today the Houston Chronicle gave the Chris Bell campaign a big lift. They endorsed this Democratic candidate over his Republican opponent. Again.

“With the 81st legislative session looming next month in a weakening economic climate, residents of District 17 need an experienced public servant with a firm grasp of spending priorities. With his commitment to bolstering public education, reining in college tuition increases, and controlling skyrocketing insurance premiums, the Chronicle believes that Chris Bell is the best candidate to represent the diverse district in the Texas Senate.”

There may be those out there that don’t know if they live in Senate District 17. The answer to that is simple. Just think back to the General Election. You live in SD 17 if the first thing you saw on your ballot was the SD 17 Special Election with a field of 6 candidates running. If you don’t recall, then there is another way. Go to this Texas Secretary of State website and fill in your home address in the boxes and click the “submit” button. You will get a list of all of your government representatives, from US Senator to School Board member.

But then again, my 6 readers are fairly well-informed and know what to do. The thing to do then is to make sure that others know to go out and vote. It will come down to just a few hundred votes to decide the victor, I think, if the turnout is as low as the Republicans who have fixed the election times and dates hope. It is critical to get Democratic voters back to the polls. So plan to help out this week. Help Chris Bell get to Austin. Help to remind Democrats that there is one more election this year. One more victory to be had.

And the campaign has made it very easy for you to help. You don’t even have to go to a campaign headquarters. You can call from your own home via their “Virtual Phone Bank.” Click here to sign up.

Chris Bell: One More Vote for Reform

Have you seen what our choices are in the SD 17 special runoff election? Well, if you haven’t yet, it’s in a new You Tube video on Chris Bell and education reform.

Chris Bell’s Republican opponent is clueless on education issues.

Clueless.

A Republican judge may be great at throwing the book at accused felons, but you really have to question whether that is a really good background when the issue is improving the quality of education in Texas. When I briefly discussed with him the looming issues in science education a couple of weeks ago, Bell demonstrated to me a depth of knowledge and an appreciation for what will lie ahead for Texas public schools.

The Republican opponent has gone on record as saying that Texas is “very generous in our funding of public education.” No, not really. If you want to know which state is “very generous” toward public education, you need look no further than the state of New York. At $14,119 spent per student per year, New York is very generous. Not Texas, which spends $7,267 per student per year, or roughly half of what would be considered “very generous.”

The video speaks for itself. A vote for Chris Bell is a vote for education reform in Texas.

SD 17 Special Election Early Voting Locations Are Up

Well, not up at the county elections office website, anyway. Not yet anyway. But I got a call this evening advising me that the commissioners court was indeed apprised of the voting locations – my previous informer was misinformed by the elections office worker – and it actually appears on yesterday’s agenda, Item 30 on yesterday’s agenda.

On viewing the meeting video, I could see some of the thoughts that went into assigning voting and early voting locations. The county reports that there are 95,000 active voters in Fort Bend County who may vote in the special election. They are spread over 54 precincts, however due to the fact that “customary locations are unavailable due to holiday scheduling” total Election Day voting locations were “clustered down” to 27 locations. So, yes, voters need to know where their polling locations are going to be because maybe half of them will be going to a new location.

For early voting, 4 early voting sites were originally allocated, one in each precinct, but 1st Methodist Church on Eldridge was added yesterday due to anticipated heavy traffic from holiday shoppers who are expected to flock to the nearby Sugar Land mall.

Anyway, here is the list of five, yes you read that correctly, five early voting locations in Fort Bend County for the SD 17 special election.

• Fort Bend County Rosenberg Annex (that’s right, centrally located in SD 18) 4520 Reading Road Rosenberg [map]
• Meadow Creek Clubhouse 2410 La Quinta Dr. Missouri City [map]
• Meadows Place City Hall One Troyan Dr. Meadows Place [map]
• Sugar Land City Hall 2700 Town Center Blvd North, Sugar Land [map]
• Sugar Land 1st United Methodist Church 431 Eldridge Rd., Sugar Land [map]

Early voting locations will be open between 8 AM and 5 PM from Monday December 8th until Friday December 12th.

These convenient voting hours courtesy of your Fort Bend County Commissioners Court and the Fort Bend County Elections office.

Does A Low Voter Turnout in Special Elections Favor Republicans?

Common wisdom has said yes. So I was interested to see an analysis by Matt Glazer on Burnt Orange Report that gave facts that belied this so-called truth.

And I was not convinced.

Yes, I was also interested in the HD 97 results that had the same two opponents with opposite results, favoring the Democrat in the low voter turnout special election, as opposed to favoring the Republican in a general election. But thanks to Elbridge Gerry the patron saint of district boundary manipulation, districts vary in their affinities to one party or another.

So what I decided to do was to look at nearly every state house or senate special election or special election runoff held since 2000 and look for central tendencies. Nearly every special election because some of these are held in lopsided districts where no member of the minority party would bother running.

And by my count, there are about 13 special election races between then and now, with 7 of them, or just over half, classified as low turnout. Low voter turnout, by my definition, is any election where total voter participation is 12% or less.

And of these 7 races, 5 were won by Republicans and 2 were won by Democrats.

If voter turnout is moderate (20-30%) or high to very high (35% and greater) it doesn’t seem to matter. 3 races with moderate turnout favored Democrats 2 to 1, and 3 races with high turnout favored Republicans 2 to 1.

It’s only the low voter turnout elections that seem to be anomalously tilted toward Republicans.

Glazer also cited the extremely low turnout in HD 29, pointing out that “House District 29 hasn't elected a Democrat since 2000” which is absolutely true. However, HD 29 is a consistent R:D 60:40 district, even when a dead woman is the R. However, in 2006, Democrat Anthony DiNovo could only scrape together 22.5% of the vote in a district that by all rights should have delivered 40% of its votes to him.

So I am still pessimistic about Democratic chances in low turnout special elections.

Which is why it is more important than ever that Texas Democrats should band together in SD 17 and help deliver the upcoming special election to Chris Bell.

The trouble is, and has been pointed out here, that, in Fort Bend County at least, there is no information on where a voter is to go and vote in next month’s runoff election. And it’s obvious that this is some basic information that a phone banker or a block walker would want to have to better inform the voters.

It’s one thing to tell voters to go and vote. It’s yet another that they know where to go when it’s time.

Now, in reaction to my posting from yesterday, I was contacted by a reader who went ahead and phoned the Fort Bend County elections office and got some information. That yes, they had settled on a list of voting locations, and no they would not be making that list public anytime soon. The voting locations, it turns out, need to be approved by the County Commissioners, and they only meet on Tuesdays.

And, oops, Tuesday was yesterday.

Oh, wait, they don’t meet on the third Tuesday of any given month.

And, oops, that was the Tuesday of last week.

So the earliest we get an idea of the special election voting locations is Tuesday December 2nd.

What better way to keep the vote totals low than to have a special election 9 days before Christmas, and withhold the voting locations until a less than a week before early voting starts?

This is your Republican-dominated county government, playing those 5 to 2 odds, 24/7.

Governor Proclaims SD 17 Special Election Runoff Date

Well you could have knocked me over with a feather. Three minutes after I uploaded last night’s posting, out comes the announcement that the SD 17 runoff election was set for December 16.

This is what I thought it would be, but not hearing of any proclamation at 30 days out I figured Perry was going to take this election up to the ridiculous date of Christmas Eve Eve.

Don’t get me wrong, December 16 might as well be Christmas Eve for all of the damage it is going to do to voter turnout.

Anyway, also shown on the proclamation, found here, are the early voting dates. Early voting for the special election runoff will begin on Monday December 8th, and extend to Friday, December 12th (sorry, no weekend voters need apply). There is yet no information at the Fort Bend County Elections website on which polling locations will be open for early voting, but there is a notice that the ballot position drawing on the Fort Bend County ballot will be held at 4 PM on November 20th at the Election Administrator’s office.

What, at this point, would be the Get Out the Vote strategy? Well, it’s obvious to me. First and foremost, get out the base. This will not be a race over whether there are more Democrats in SD 17 or Republicans. This race will have such a low turnout that the race will be over who can best rouse their base.

And the challenge could not be more difficult.

Democrats have been lulled into a sense of accomplishment. We elected the top of the ticket. That’s all that has been in the news. It is going to be very hard getting Democrats to go back to the polls after all of that excitement.

This is in contrast to Republican voters who have been shown the door. What I cannot fathom, though is whether being shown the door is something that will give Republicans impetus to come back and try for another local smackdown, or whether the whole thing has dispirited them, and Joan Huffman won’t be able to buy a vote.

So the challenge is difficult and the outcome is uncertain.

At least we have the uncertainty this time.

In SD 17, that’s saying something.

Chris Bell Opens a Fort Bend County Campaign Office

Keeping a high profile as we zero in on a yet undesignated special election runoff date, Chris Bell has opened a campaign office in a strip mall in Stafford, Texas this week. I was just there myself this afternoon delivering yard signs that formerly bedecked the walls of the Fort Bend Democrats Rosenberg headquarters.

It’s a classic campaign HQ. Bare walls, folding tables and chairs, computers in various states of set up.

If you want to go down there to volunteer on their phone bank, here is the address.

869 Dulles Avenue, Suite E
Stafford, TX 77477

Here’s a map.

Here’s what the strip mall looks like from Dulles Ave as you are passing it and completely missing the single driveway entrance.

When you do get into the parking lot, keep going toward the back, past the coffee shop and look for the glass door with the Chris Bell campaign sign on it.

Better still, why not go down this Saturday for the Grand Opening? The event begins at 1 PM Saturday November 22nd, and goes until 3 PM. They tell me that they are getting several elected officials in the area to come and show their support, including Commissioner-Elect Richard Morrison and State Rep. Dora Olivo. Former congressman Chris Bell will be there to whip up the crowd.

And the word is, they even want to feed you.

If you have questions, call the headquarters at (281) 208-1990, or email Garrett Graham at Garrett@chrisbell.com.

While we are on the topic, what is your pick for the day that Governor Perry will proclaim the special election runoff? There is no guarantee that it will occur this year. Last time there was a special election runoff it occurred on January 16, 2007, several days after the 80th Legislature convened.

If past performance is any measure, Governor Perry will select an election date that will guarantee a low voter turnout. This is the ultimate in voter suppression tools, but it has served Republicans well in the past.

Example, in 2006 Perry called for a special election to fill the vacant seat resulting from the death of Glenda Dawson. That election was called for on December 19th.

Six days before Christmas.

As a result, the one Democrat who was running in the four-candidate field, Anthony DiNovo, got just 22.4% of the vote in a district that usually draws 40% of the vote for the Democratic candidate.

So how about December 23rd?

It would not surprise me.

Chris Bell: Why I Am Running For Texas Senate - Part 2

Here is Part 2 of Chris Bell’s conversation with the assembled masses at the Fort Bend Democrats’ Labor Day campaign kickoff fundraiser. Here Chris stresses his views on health care, calling it a “moral crisis,” and stem cell research which Bell supports both personally and politically. On ethics reform. Bell emphasized that “we have got to get rid of the ‘Pay to Play’ atmosphere that currently exists.”

Then you get to hear the campaign’s amazing recent poll results.

You have got to hear this.



Lastly remember that this is a special election. Chris Bell will appear with 5 other candidates for SD 17 at the top of the ballot in all counties. So you can vote for Chris, and THEN for Barack Obama and Rick Noriega and every one else down the line.