I am running my county party's voter protection boiler room on Tuesday and will be meeting this morning with the Harris County Democratic Party team for their shakedown. I am biased toward to partisan voter protection versus non-partisan voter protection. Working with your party, one can do more to protect the vote than with a non-partisan group.

1. The single best way to protect the vote is to be an election worker inside the polls. As an election worker, you can make sure that the procedures and the law is followed. I serve as an election judge once or twice a cycle just to make sure that I know how the procedures work. My youngest child is the head election judge for our precinct and my future son in law is an alternative judge for another tough precinct. They can do more inside the polling location than you can as a poll monitor. The party gets to appoint or nominate election workers and non-partisan groups do not have this right.

2 The next best thing that you can do to protect the vote is be a poll watchers. Only candidates and political parties get to appoint poll watchers in most states. As a poll watcher, you are inside the polling place and can report violations directly to the local or regional boiler rooms.

3. Candidates and political parties have automatic standing to bring a lawsuit. Non-partisan groups have a harder time bringing a lawsuit because of the standing issues. The Texas Democratic Party will have lawyers standing by in Austin and other key areas with draft petitions ready and there will be no issue of having standing to sue.

4. Poll monitors have to stand outside the electioneering zone in most states and it is harder to monitor what is going on.

I have good friends at big firms who do the non-partisan voter protection. I simply do not think that these efforts are as effective as partisan voter protection.