Dig Deeper Texas

Yesterday, I was just too shell-shocked to post about this. I will talk a little bit about that in a while but right now–election day. I got to my polling place around 10:30. There were 6 machines and 4 workers, two behind desks, one in the line and one setting up machines. There was quite a line and it took about 30 minutes to vote. This doesn’t seem odd to me. I live in a mostly blue part of town and my voting experiences have always been like this. The voters I was walking out with even mentioned the 30 minute wait was great compared to other elections. I wasn’t so impressed given what I knew was happening in other parts of town but if I didn’t know I would have been over the moon that it was so quick.

In 2004, I voted early and stood in line for about an hour and a half with 100+ people. We were in a building without air conditioning and it was really bad (this is San Antonio, it is hot even in November), but all the people in line were upbeat and so help us, we were all going to stand there to cast our votes.

In 2005 we decided to vote on election day and showed up at our polling place and we weren’t surprised there was 30 to 40 people in front of us. There were 2 workers behind a table and one starting the machines.  When we got to the table they had to shuffle through the precinct books to find our precinct, there were 8 precincts voting there that day. My husband and I were really happy about it because it was such a short wait. Again, the people in line with us were more than happy to stand there because that is what we know.

Again, this didn’t surprise me very much because voting in my area is always like this. What amazed me was when I was telling Techdigger about it and she was surprised and told me they never have more than 2 precincts at a polling place in her side of town. We live in the same city, she is a good thirty minute drive from me but we live in the same city. Why would her voting experience be so different from mine? The obvious differences between her area and mine are economical. I live in a high minority area, she doesn’t, precincts in my area range from bright blue democrat to half and half purple but you would be hard pressed to find a totally republican red precinct in my area. Her area is bright red throughout.

I don’t know what I think about this. I want to believe it has nothing to do with race or political affiliation because I am an optimist at heart and my mind doesn’t immediately think of malicious intent on anyones part but it is an anomoly that needs to be looked into. We decided no one else was doing it so we would spend our election night going to different precincts and seeing for ourselves how San Antonio votes.

San Antonio and Bexar County as a whole leans red with small bastions of blue. We chose to focus on those small blue islands in the sea of red. We got a late start, around 4:30 or so and including our own personal polling places and the one I sent my husband to late on Tuesday we have data from 7 polling places that includes 23 precincts, 21 of which are various shades of blue and purple and 2 red. Next time out we will have a better plan. We will hit at least 1 red and one blue polling location within each of San Antonio’s 4 districts but this year was spur of the moment.

The first polling location we went to that evening was in district 4.

They had 6 precincts voting there and only 2 workers with 6 machines. There were 10 to 15 people in line and not all the machines were in use because of lack of workers. The John Courage volunteer in the parking lot told us the man in charge inside was paying $8.25 an hour and desperate for anyone to work. We did find parking, but we also went the wrong way once inside the school because the signs weren’t prominent.

The next place we went was in district 2. We chose it because it had the most precincts voting at the same place. To be fair, from their posted voter numbers it looked like only 3 of the 7 precincts that polled there had voters. I am not sure how correct that sheet is since we found historical voting data on 4 of the 7 precincts, mostly purple some pink. There was no parking at all, we parked down a side street and walked about a block or so. There were 4 workers and 6 machines with 25 to 30 people in line. It wasn’t climate controlled at all and I just felt very bad for everyone there. As we were leaving a voter with a cane was walking out and told another voter with a cane that one of their voting machines was portable and they could let him sit down and vote.

Then we went to dinner, I know, bad poll watchers, but we were hungry and the traffic was mad.

The next place we went was a lone blue precinct in the mostly red 3rd district. They had 3 precincts voting there with 4 working machines and 1 broken machine. There were 40 people in line and only 4 workers. The parking was horrible but it did exist so that was a step up from the last place we were at and it was inside a climate controlled building. There was something off about the numbers on their voter tally, they were filled out but one of the precincts at 9:30, 11:30, 1:30, and 5:30 just happened to all have counts ending in zero. At 3:30 their voter count was 145 which given the rest of the numbers ending in zero almost seemed like the worker realized what they did and so knocked it back so they wouldn’t all end in 0. I would have to believe that the odds against there having been 50 voters by 9:30, 100 by 11:30, 120 by 1:30, 145 by 3:30 and 230 by 5:30 would be astronomical and so I will follow up with a call.

The last place we made it to was by far the saddest. It was 2 very blue precincts in a very red part of district 4 and there were more than 100 people in line. They did have 8 machines and the voter we talked to said they probably had 6 workers. He was walking out at 7:02 and had gotten there at 5:15.

More later….

Filed under: 2006 general election, Elections Administrator, November 7th, San Antonio, bexar county, election, electronic voting, politics, voter fraud, voting methods, voting precinct