Got some work to do....

But how about this - Travis, the county the repukes love to call "The People's Republic of Texas" because of our liberal/progressive bent. Well the repukes out voted the Democrats. And at 13.95% we have nothing to crow about here either.


Travis County

Reg. Voters 594,254
Total Votes 82,915
Turnout 13.95%


Early Votes
Republican 17,644
Democrat 17,572
Combined 35,216


Election Day
Votes
Republican 24,081
Democrat 23,618
Combined 47,699

All Votes
Republican 41,725
Democrat 41,190
Combined 82,915

We will never know with those Hart machines. It will just become the new Travis county pattern.

But either way - truthful results or not. They certainly bode badly for us.

Clearly, we can't afford to be complacent about November, we need to really get out our vote to retain control in Precinct Three and win in the appeals court and SBOE races that include so much of our unenlightened drive-thru counties. But let's face it,the Republicans had big races with big advertising bucks to spend that drove their turnout. Outside of HD-35, we didn't really have that much to get excited about. At least I think that most of our voters were somewhat informed about the races on the ballot... although I know a lot of them in South Austin wondered where Lloyd Doggett's name was.

On Edit: I also think that Ron Paul played a bit of a factor in increasing R numbers. When you had young stoner-looking kids asking for Republican ballots, I doubt they were there to decide who was the truest conservatie running for the US Senate.

I appreciate the reminder about the Ron Paul infusion/bleed off of voters.

He got a lot of the young Republican vote here.

Every voter is first checked in on a laptop that checks to see that the person actually is registered and is at the correct precinct. Then each qualified voter signs the yellow combo form for the party primary they have chosen to vote in. After that the Judge's Ballot Control issues code number to operate the E-Slate.

At the end of the day, the laptop prints out the list of voters who've voted that day. The totals on the combo forms are added up. And the JBC has kept a running total of how many codes have been issued since the polls opened. And gosh darn it, those totals match. So unless you think that the E-Slate can change the totals on another machine to which it has no connection, as well as add or erase signatures on a physical sheet of paper, I just cannot fathom why you would be skeptical about the number of people who have voted.

except for the vote flipping which I saw before my own eyes as I was voting, but in aggregate that there are likely to be problems.

I truly appreciate all the great work that election workers do[- esp in our own Travis County. Eslate machines do have documented problems with straight ticket voting and vote flipping.

I had problems with both having a vote flip and in that last election getting a vote to record. The last was probably partly my fault but took 3 fixes to get my vote recorded correctly and not everyone is as picky as I am about going over summary pages. A reason among many that I am not fond of the machines.

I'll dig up links if you want, but you may know as much or more as I do about all this and that's why you are such a great judge.

Here is one link http://static.usenix.org/event/evt07/tech/full_papers/proebstel/proebstel_html/

4.1.8 Printing Extra Barcodes
Disrupting communication between the eSlate and the VBO could cause the VBO to print unauthorized data. Specifically, communication is disrupted (for example, by the eSlate being rocked slightly in its casing) immediately after the VBO has printed a ''Ballot Accepted'' message and accompanying barcode, but before the VBO has begun to scroll this page out of sight, the VBO will print a second ''Ballot Accepted'' message and barcode. Disrupting the communication again repeats the printing. The result is a paper trail with a ballot followed by several ''Ballot Accepted'' messages and barcodes.

If election officials read the human-readable ballots from the VBO records, this string of barcodes will be baffling (and, perhaps, suggest either machine failure or malicious activity) but will not likely affect the tally. However, in counties which use barcode-scanners to read the VBO records, these repeated barcodes (if undetected) effectively allow a voter to cast an indeterminate number of identical ballots--the electronic equivalent of ballot box stuffing.

There was more excitement for the GOP races in Fort Bend. We had several contested races including the sheriff's race where Craig Brady spent $550,000 to lose. This and the GOP Senate primary caused higher turnout for the GOP compared to the Democrat. The only interesting race on the Democratic side in Fort Bend was Kesha vs. KP and that race had no money behind it. The FEC filing for early May show that neither KP nor Kesha has spent more $25,000 each on this race. KP did not have enough signs to get signs out at all voting locations on primary day. If he had put out some signs KP may have won in that KP won the early vote.