Monday, October 31, 2016

From Roll Call: Minnesota Blue Dog Isn't Ready to Give Up His District - Collin Peterson’s seat will almost certainly flip when he retires

Not that many Blue Dog Democrats can be found anymore - these were brought in one of my classes recently. This is one of the last of a dying breed of conservative Democrats.

- Click here for the article.


Collin C. Peterson is the last thing keeping Minnesota’s 7th District blue.
Democrats are always worried that the 13-term congressman is going to retire. Because if he does, his heavily agricultural district will almost certainly send a Republican to Congress.
But Peterson, one of the original and last surviving Blue Dog Democrats in the House, is giving no hints of slowing down. In fact, the 72-year-old says he’s enjoying Congress more these days, which likely comes as good news to Democrats already looking to minimize House losses in the 2018 midterms.
“As long as I think I’m making a difference, I’ll probably keep going,” Peterson said in an interview last week at a fish fry for his Democratic-Farmer-Labor colleague, 8th District Rep. Rick Nolan.
Peterson said he’s had a better time in Congress the last couple of years because his attitude has changed slightly.
“I lightened up a little bit,” Peterson said. “I just figured there’s so much stuff I can’t do anything about anyway, so I just pay attention to what I can do something about and don’t worry about the rest of it.”

For more on Blue Dogs:

- A BRIEF HISTORY OF: Blue Dog Democrats.
- What is a Blue Dog Democrat?
- Yellow Dog and Blue Dog Democrats.
- Bye-bye, blue dog “Democrats”: What the end of conservative Dems means for America.

The Comey Letter

Image result for comey letter

From Politifact: Clinton campaign says Comey letter violates Justice Department protocols

I'll hunt around for more on the FBI's protocol involving elections.

- Click here for the article.

. . . the Justice Department — which oversees the FBI — not only explicitly prohibits employees from interfering with elections but urges employees avoid the appearance of interfering with elections.
In August 2008, President George W. Bush’s attorney general, Michael Mukasey, sent an internal memo entitled "election year sensitivities" to employees on the department’s policies on political activities. Part of it reads:
"Simply put, politics must play no role in the decisions of federal investigators or prosecutors regarding any investigations or criminal charges. Law enforcement officers and prosecutors may never select the timing of investigative steps or criminal charges for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party. Such a purpose is inconsistent with the Department's mission and with the Principles of Federal Prosecution."
Attorney General Eric Holder resent the memo in March 2012.
While the memos don’t discuss limitation of timing specifically, former U.S. attorneys have alluded to an unwritten guideline about not filing cases or commenting on investigations in the 60 days before an election.
Citing the policy, several former prosecutors and department employees have aired concerns and criticisms.
Two former deputy attorney generals under the Clinton and Bush administrations called Comey’s actions a departure from the department’s traditions and "real-time, raw-take transparency taken to its illogical limit."
Conservative Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, a former prosecutor and New York county court judge, said Comey’s letter "disgraces and politicizes" the bureau.

"You know I support Donald Trump and want him to win, but whether it's Hillary Clinton or anyone else, Comey's actions violate not only longstanding Justice Department policy … but the most fundamental rules of fairness and impartiality," Pirro said.

Daniel Richman, a former prosecutor and current Columbia Law School professor, noted that while the Justice Department’s election sensitivities policy does stand, Comey also had different obligations to consider.
Department policies "are subject to judgments by the highest officials in extraordinary circumstances," Richman said. "Less flexible is the FBI’s directors duty of absolute candor to Congress, requiring the correction of statements when new facts arise."

Sunday, October 30, 2016

From Lawfare: James Comey, Hillary Clinton, and the Email Investigation: A Guide for the Perplexed

In case you need it - I do.

- Click here for the article.
Yesterday, FBI Director James Comey threw the presidential election campaign into turmoil with a letter to Congress declaring that the Clinton email matter was, perhaps, not entirely done after all.

Ben
analyzed this disclosure yesterday, and a great deal of digital ink has been spilled both blasting Comey’s decision and trying to figure out what it means.

The Clinton forces are furious, with the candidate
declaring that “we are 11 days out from perhaps the most important national election of our lifetimes, voting is already underway in our country, so the American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately,” and campaign chairman John Podesta saying, “It is extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election.”

The Trump forces, meanwhile, are triumphant, with Trump—who only recently was calling the FBI corrupt—
saying, “I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the Department of Justice are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made. This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understood, and it is everybody’s hope that it is about to be corrected.” The chant from Trump’s crowd yesterday: “Lock Her Up!”

Below are eighteen questions on the subject of the campaign, the email investigation, and the actions taken by Comey and the FBI, along with our views as to the answers.

Full disclosure: We know Director Comey personally and one of us has worked with him in prior government service. Of course, we are writing this on our own behalf, not his, and stating only our own views of these matters.


We are also writing it based on the information we have as of 2:30 pm on Saturday afternoon. Our views may change as further facts emerge.

From CNN: What is the Hatch Act -- and did James Comey break it?

We discussed the Hatch Act in the section on campaign finance.

- Click here for the article.
Congress passed the Hatch Act in response to concerns that federal employees had been used to support candidates during the 1938 congressional elections. Its general intent is to greatly restrict the ability of most federal employees to engage in political campaign activities (such as soliciting campaign donations or actively working on behalf of individual candidates), especially while on the job -- or to otherwise "use [their] official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election."
And as its text suggests, the law does not require that the employee's wrongful conduct actually interfere with or affect the result of an election.
Of course, laws that restrict speech will often implicate the First Amendment. But the Supreme Court has twice rejected First Amendment challenges to the Hatch Act, and it has, more recently, taken a narrower view of the First Amendment rights of government employees -- especially when speaking in their official capacity.And although the law is 77 years old, it has been repeatedly amended by Congress, most recently in 2012 to, among other things, clarify the available penalties for violations of the Act and allow a broader class of employees to run for political office without resigning.

For more:

- Wikipedia: Hatch Act.

From Vox: The debate over FBI director James Comey's new Clinton email letter, explained

The latest.

- Click here for the article.
On Friday, FBI Director James Comey sent a three-paragraph letter to several members of Congress, in which he said that new emails related to the Hillary Clinton email investigation had been discovered.

The timing of Comey’s letter — sent just 11 days before the presidential election — created a media and political firestorm, and seemed to pose the prospect of some sort of smoking gun deeply implicating Clinton that could swing the election.

But as more facts have emerged after hours of leaks from anonymous government officials
to various media outlets, it’s become pretty clear that what actually happened is not necessarily all that earth-shaking. Namely: 
- The new batch of emails is from a laptop that Clinton aide Huma Abedin shared with her husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner.
- The FBI came upon them because they’re investigating Weiner’s reported sexting of an underage girl, not anything related to the Clintons.
- The FBI doesn’t seem to even really know what’s on the new emails yet. They could well be duplicative of emails the bureau has already examined.
- And there are
conflicting reports about whether any of them are even from Hillary Clinton.

As a result, Comey has fallen under intense criticism for his handling of this public disclosure.

Who is James Comey anyway?

- Wikipedia: James Comey.
- Wikipedia: Director of the FBI.

Saturday, October 29, 2016

My Statesman: Greg Abbott presses Texas Supreme Court to limit gay-marriage ruling

More - expected - conflict between Texas and the U.S.

- Click here for the article.

Ratcheting up pressure on the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court, Gov. Greg Abbott and other leading GOP officials Friday urged the court to revive efforts to abolish employee benefits the city of Houston provides to married same-sex couples.

The case has become a
rallying point for the state’s social conservatives, with the stakes growing larger now that Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and state Attorney General Ken Paxton have weighed in — telling the court that the Houston lawsuit provides an opportunity to limit the impact of last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down the state’s ban on gay marriage.

“This court should take this opportunity to remind the lower courts that all disputes involving the right to same-sex marriage have not been resolved,” Abbott, Patrick and Paxton said in a friend-of-the-court brief.

The Houston case presents a particular challenge for a court that strives to appear above politics while its justices are forced to run every six years as members of a particular political party.

Opponents of same-sex marriage have peppered the court with
dozens of emails asking justices to strike down the Houston benefits or face a voter backlash in future Republican primaries. The barrage makes it clear that some GOP voters view the case as a litmus test for party loyalty and adherence to Christian values.

From the Washington Post: Supreme Court takes up school bathroom rules for transgender students

This happened much quicker than I thought it would.

- Click here for the article.

The Supreme Court said Friday that it will decide whether the Obama administration may require public school systems to let transgender students use bathrooms that align with their gender identity, putting the court once again at the center of a divisive social issue.

School districts across the country are split on how to accommodate transgender students amid conflicting guidance from courts, the federal government and, in some cases, state legislatures that have passed laws requiring people to use public restrooms that match the sex on their birth certificates.

The justices accepted a petition from the School Board of Gloucester County, Va., seeking to overturn a lower court’s order that 17-year-old Gavin Grimm, who was born female but identifies as male, be allowed to use the boys’ restroom during his senior year of high school.

In August, the Supreme Court voted 5 to 3 to temporarily stay that lower court’s ruling while it remained on appeal. In that order granting the stay, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said he was joining the conservative justices as a “courtesy” that would preserve the status quo while the court considered whether to accept the case.


From the NYT: Emails in Anthony Weiner Inquiry Jolt Hillary Clinton’s Campaign

Yet another October surprise.

- Click here for the article.

The presidential campaign was rocked on Friday after federal law enforcement officials said that emails pertinent to the closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server were discovered on a computer belonging to Anthony D. Weiner, the estranged husband of a top Clinton aide.
In a letter to Congress, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said the emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, which law enforcement officials said was an F.B.I. investigation into illicit text messages from Mr. Weiner to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. Mr. Weiner, a former Democratic congressman from New York, is married to Huma Abedin, the top aide.

Mr. Comey's letter said that the F.B.I. would review the emails to determine if they improperly contained classified information, which is tightly controlled by the government. Senior law enforcement officials said that it was unclear if any of the emails were from Mrs. Clinton’s private server. And while Mr. Comey said in his letter that the emails “appear to be pertinent,” the F.B.I. had not yet examined them.

By the end of a day that brought stinging criticism of Mr. Comey from both Democrats and Republicans, he appeared on the defensive, saying in an internal email to bureau employees that he had felt obligated to inform Congress, and “we don’t know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails.’’

Thursday, October 27, 2016

From the Washington Post: How incumbency, not gerrymandering, may protect the Republican House majority

While the chances that Democrats win the majority of House seats has increased, it's still unlikely./

Here's analysis.

- Click here for the story.

As we enter the final stretch of the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump’s struggles have led to speculation about serious consequences for House and Senate Republicans. Some are even suggesting that control of the House is up for grabs.
The counterargument, however, is that House Republicans are protected by the Republican-led gerrymandering after the 2010 Census. As the story goes, this redistricting simultaneously increased the size of the Republican House majority and made those districts incredibly safe for the GOP legislators who represent them.
But how much is gerrymandering really helping House Republicans? My analysis suggests only a little bit. Incumbency appears to be the more important factor.

From NPR: Why Texas Is Closer To Turning Blue Than It Has Been In Decades

No one is predicting a Clinton victory, but the race is tighter than it would normally be.

We would not be having this conversation if Senator Cruz was the Republican nominee.

- Click here for the story.

Polls show the presidential race in Texas is closer than it's been in decades. Some even show the two candidates within the margin of error.
Does Hillary Clinton actually stand a chance in Texas? It's unlikely, but it could be closer than at any time in the past 20 years. The reason for how competitive the race looks lies in two demographic groups — Republican-leaning suburban women offended by Trump's comments about women, and Latinos, who are fired up to vote against him.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: Ballot Pox - It's time to stop pretending that there's such a thing as a rational voter

This supplements recent conversations we've been having about what drives people to vote.

It also suggests that Trump's success will not only have an impact on the parties, but on a key aspect of political science research.

Do we expect too much from voters?

- Click here for the article.

Perhaps it is finally time to stop pretending there is such a thing as a rational voter who seeks information to vote based on the issues alone, as decades of political-science research has assumed. Instead, Achen and Bartels argue, we can only progress by accepting that most voters are deeply uninformed and lack meaningful preferences, and even those who do know and care about politics are all just partisan loyalists. Can we acknowledge that social-group identities are the most important structuring force in politics, and politics is really at heart just identity politics? And can we build new theories around the undeniable evidence that politics is and always will be based on emotion and conflict, not logic and consensus?
It's time to make peace with a simple fact of political life: Rationality is a chimera.
For political science, this argument actually amounts to a rediscovery of old truths about group conflict being the center of politics. A half century ago, these were the mainstream views in the discipline. At that time, political science was also much more qualitative — for example, congressional scholars actually hung out in Washington and spent hours talking to people who worked there, instead of only staring at computers analyzing data — and sociological, in that scholars focused more on norms and cultures and folkways than they did on modeling individual incentives.
But sometime in the 1960s, political science took a turn away from groups and toward "rational individualism." Scholars began to treat both voters and politicians as utility-maximizing actors who had consistent and externally determined preferences along some unidimensional left-right spectrum. (Where these preferences came from, it was never clear.) And scholars also assumed these voters knew enough to adequately express these preferences meaningfully. Voters and officeholders and groups all existed in a "game" in which they tried to move policy to their "ideal point." Voters tried to hold politicians "accountable" for their performance, while politicians "maximized" their utility from office holding. Economics, not sociology, became the model discipline. Incentives replaced norms and cultures.
These assumptions were popular in the academy because they made both formal modeling and fancy statistical analysis more tractable, and therefore made political science more "scientific." Plus, there was plenty of easily accessible data on elections, roll-call votes, and public-opinion surveys to be tilled into publishable journal articles. "The result," Achen and Bartels write, "was a body of work that was simultaneously advanced in its methods and antiquated in its ideas."
They were also popular because they fit with the prevailing good-government idea, what Achen and Bartels dismissively call "the folk theory of democracy." Under the folk theory, "Democracy makes the people the rulers, and legitimacy derives from their consent." Elections should and can be meaningful events that truly empower the people. Therefore, if democracy has gone wrong, it’s merely because our voters are too uninformed, our candidates are too corrupt, our political discourse is too awash in lies. Like political science, good-government reformers pursued an idealized world of informed voters making meaningful independent choices that could give them actual power.
For Achen and Bartels, all this reformist moral exhortation is an exercise in futility. All the standard bromides of good-government reformers — more participation, better civic education, a more responsible media — represent mountains of wasted good intention that will never lead to more responsive government.
The most obvious flaw of the folk theory is that it expects far too much out of citizens: "Can ordinary people, busy with their lives and with no firsthand experience of policy making or public administration, do what the theory expects them to do?" Of course not. "Mostly," Achen and Bartels write, "they identify with ethnic, racial, occupation, religious or other sorts of groups, and often — whether through group ties or hereditary loyalties — with a political party."

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

From the Hill: Vulnerable House freshmen passed most bills in decades, analysis finds

The list includes the Republican now holding Texas' only competitive congressional district.

- Click here for the article.

Three House Republicans facing competitive reelection races this year have gotten more of their bills passed than any other freshmen in decades, according to a new analysis.
Quorum, a D.C.-based data tracking firm, found that of all freshman lawmakers since 1989, Reps. John Katko (N.Y.), Martha McSally (Ariz.) and Will Hurd (Texas) were the top three for sponsoring the most bills that passed the House in their first terms.
Katko’s name was featured on 13 bills to pass the House in his first 20 months in office, the highest of any freshman lawmaker in Quorum’s analysis provided to The Hill.
McSally came in second with nine sponsored bills. Two of those measures became law, most prominently a bill to make former female World War II pilots eligible for inurnment at Arlington Cemetery.

Hurd, with eight bills to pass the House, is tied for the third-most bills with former Reps. Bobby Jindal (R), the ex-Louisiana governor, in the session of Congress that began in 2005, and Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) for the session that began in 2003.
House and Senate leadership frequently grant floor time to legislation authored by lawmakers in tough races for reelection. Those lawmakers can then tout the passage of those bills while campaigning back in their districts.
. . . Hurd is considered the most vulnerable of the three House lawmakers. He faces a rematch against former Democratic Rep. Pete Gallego in the southwestern, Hispanic-majority Texas district that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates as a “toss-up.”
Katko and McSally both hold an edge to win reelection despite representing districts that have swung toward Democrats in recent years.
One reason these freshmen have managed to get more of their bills passed may be a result of House GOP leaders granting them all subcommittee chairmanships at the start of this Congress.

Many of Hurd’s bills that made it to the House floor have dealt with information technology and cybersecurity, likely because of chairing a House Oversight subcommittee on information technology.
. . . GOP leaders promoted McSally and Hurd, in particular, as two of their best recruits during the 2014 election cycle. Both lawmakers add racial and gender diversity to the overwhelmingly white and male House GOP: Hurd is one of two African-Americans and McSally is one of 23 women in the 246-member conference.

For more on Hurd:

- Wikipedia.
- House website.
- GovTrack.

From 538: What Went Wrong For Gary Johnson

Winner-take-all elections are brutal for minor parties.

- Click here for the article.

Johnson’s decline isn’t shocking. Third-party candidates usually lose steamthe closer we get to the election. But Johnson is faltering even against that standard. Based on his polling in late August, FiveThirtyEight’s polls-plus model, which accounts for the drop-off third-party candidates usually experience, projected Johnson to get around 7 percent of the vote. The same model has him down to just 5.6 percent now.
What went wrong? You could point to Johnson’s missing the debates. He has lost about 1.5 percentage points from his national poll numbers since late September (when the first debate took place). However, he may have already been on a downward trajectory before the debates took place; on Sept. 25, the day before the first debate, he had 7.3 percent, on average, in national polls, compared with 9 percent a month before. So, it’s quite possible Johnson’s numbers would have continued to dip even if he appeared on the debate stage. Johnson, of course, has committed some policy-related gaffes— not knowing basic facts about the Syrian War or being able to name a foreign leader he admires — that suggest perhaps the debates would have been rough on him.
Another plausible explanation is that Johnson was simply a “protest” choice. Perhaps many voters who said they were going to vote for him weren’t really interested in Johnson specifically but were merely voicing frustration with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton instead. There’s evidence for this. In August, when Johnson was flying high, a majority of voters had no opinion of him. In addition, many younger voters who as a group voted heavily for Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary said they were going to vote for Johnson, even though Johnson and Sanders have very different ideologies. That seemed at least a little unsustainable. Indeed, as the campaign has taken shape and Sanders stumps for Clinton, Johnson’s numbers seem to be falling with young voters as Clinton’s rise.

From 538: Nearly All Of Silicon Valley’s Political Dollars Are Going To Hillary Clinton

Most went to Obama in 08 and 12 also.

In return they got one of their own put in charge of the FCC.

- Click here for the article.

. . . while many technology companies have shared policy interests, they don’t yet see themselves as a political cohort, which “makes it quite hard to organize them in any sort of politically effective way.”
“Until just a few years ago, the perspective in Silicon Valley was to have nothing to do with Washington,” he said. “It’s only in the last few years that tech companies have really established a significant lobbying presence in Washington.”
Becky Tallent, the head of U.S. government relations for Dropbox and a former immigration assistant to former House Speaker John Boehner, also sees technology’s relationship to government as just starting to grow.
“There is a generational gap between the people who are running our government right now and the people who are using the technology and creating the technology,” she said.
The big political concerns for the tech industry this election cycle include trade and the status of high-tech H-1B visas. In 2015, the U.S. exported nearly $205 billion worth of computer and electronic products, constituting 13.6 percent of total U.S. exports, the second-largest category of exports. That’s why many tech executives have been alarmed by Trump’s opposition to free trade and trade agreements. Clinton now opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership but is much more supportive of free trade than Trump is. In addition, Clinton wants to continue the H-1B visa program, while Trump has criticized it and said he will severely limit it. The program is designed to supply workers in specialty fields when Americans are in short supply, though one pending lawsuit alleges it has been used improperly, with Americans training their cheaper replacements.
The H-1B program, along with various post-student work visas, have been gateways into American entrepreneurship for some of America’s biggest tech companies. A 2016 report by the National Foundation for American Policy, a business-oriented research group that supports immigration, found that more than half of America’s billion-dollar startups were founded or co-founded by immigrants.

Please Re-Elect Gerald



A couple sources flagged this as the funniest political ad of the year.

You be the judge.

From Grits for Breakfast: Indulging despair over degraded state of TX high criminal court elections

Grits comments on an article I linked to last week where candidates to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals discussed alternative - non criminal - ways to handle drug and mental health cases.

He;s critical of the superficiality of the article - as well as the fact that these judges are elected - which makes them inherently political, despite what we expect from the courts.

- Click here for the article.


It's hard to blame reporter Jonathan Silver too much. Nobody really covers the CCA as a beat anymore in the Austin press corps. So a layperson finds it difficult to nuance questions in such a way that the answers both give readers a sense of how the candidates would behave as judges but don't require them to opine on issues on which they'll later have to rule. It's a tricky line to walk. But instead of walking it, Silver's story retreated from it, asking questions which were either irrelevant to the court or too vague to matter.
It's not just reporters who don't know much about the court. Even the candidates don't really know what they're getting into. Judge Keel had a comment she thought was critical of Meyers, declaring "judges should not advocate for policy changes." I thought that was cute. It's the sort of thing trial judges think until they get on the court and discover how political the appellate process really is. Wait till she starts to show up at conference and finds that the Government Always Wins faction near constantly wants to rewrite the statutes to reach a desired outcome instead of interpret them on their face. The open question is whether Keel will join them and give Judge Keller and Co. a working majority, and this story provides nary a clue.

Regardless of the article's shortcomings, this is perhaps the most in-depth coverage of the CCA election we've seen beyond the various newspaper endorsements. Not that it matters. Voters don't know anything about these races and don't care. The odds are overwhelming that all the Republicans win.
The only outlier is the Donald Trump factor: If he continues to melt down and Republicans stay home in sufficient numbers to spur a Hillary Clinton victory in Texas, all the Ds in this race likely get elected. (What a twist it would be if Larry Meyers was the incumbent reelected instead of Mike Keasler!) But CCA elections aren't about who's the best judge or the issues facing the court. The primary season proved that. Court of Criminal Appeals races are either unassailable bastions for GOP incumbents or complete free-for-alls in which the unqualified and qualified are mixed together in a hat and then seemingly chosen at random by a blindfolded chimp.
This is fundamentally why Grits favors merging the CCA with the Texas Supreme Court. Electing judges is a bad idea, but it's even worse when candidates have no money to communicate with voters and the results are effectively random. The Texas CCA represents basically the worst-case scenario for electing instead of appointing judges. So Grits' support for a merger is more of a backup position. I'd rather not elect them at all, but if we must, combining Texas' high courts might at least improve this prostrated process.


From the Brazoria County Elections Department: Election Results 2012 to present

For perusal in 2305 and 2306 today.

There's an argument that voter turnout is low in the Unites States - and especially Texas - because we have so many elections, and so many elected offices.

Here's evidence.

- Click here for the page.

Early voting begins in Texas

Yesterday anyway - I'm a tad tardy on this.

A few items:

- Houston Public Media: Big Turnout On First Day Of Early Voting In Harris County.

Early voting is under way in Texas and turnout has been strong across greater Houston, including Harris County.
The office of Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart calculated that, on average, 6,000 people were voting per hour during the morning of October 24th, the first day designated for early voting.
“That’s higher than what we’ve ever done before in Harris County’s history. So, the turnout is strong and, with the expanded hours that we have this, you know, first week, it will even be a higher turnout this week,” Stanart commented as he visited the polling place located at the Metropolitan Multi Service Center, on West Gray Street, near the Montrose Area.
Several voters who went to that location said they had never seen such a long line.

- KPRC: Record turnout expected for early voting.

Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart says he’s expecting a record turnout as early voting begins Monday for the two weeks prior to the Nov. 8 Election Day.
As the possibility of cheating continues to be a national topic, Stanart says voting fraud is rare but is a possibility, especially with the ballot by mail process.
”We do have many cases where we suspect voter fraud in our ballot by mail process but to get to where we can get an indictment is a whole different case,” he said. “You’ve got to actually find the exact person that’s doing it because it’s obvious there’s something going on, but to be able to prove it so we can get the conviction, that’s where the difficult part is.”
Stanart has heard Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's claims that the election is rigged and that there is a chance for him to lose the election because of fraud. Stanart says while it is not perfect, the Harris County system will not be easily compromised and he sought to allay people's concerns that their votes will not be counted.

- The Facts: Brazoria County prepares for higher turnouts with new equipment, extra polling locations.

In a presidential election season where anything can, and will, happen, the Brazoria County Elections Department plans to make sure voters have no surprises at the polls.
“I keep telling everybody I want to go out with a bang, but I want it to be a good bang,” joked Janice Evans, the county’s outgoing elections director.
Elections officials spent $162,000 for 56 new voting machines from Hart InterCivic Inc. to brace themselves for a voter rush at the polls, as well as accommodate the 10 extra polling locations added for the Nov. 8 election to stem the flow in certain areas.

“We were waiting for the big turnout so we want to be prepared,” Assistant Elections Director Lisa Mujica said. “We have about 800 pieces of equipment back here.
“We’ve already brought them in and set them up and labeled them and tested them. We’re ready to go.”
Voter turnout is historically paltry both statewide and locally, with only 30.46 percent of registered Brazoria County voters showing up to the polls last year. However, the most contentious presidential election in recent memory has primed election officials for higher numbers.
“It’s the intensity of it,” Mujica said.

From the Texas Tribune: Record early voting numbers reported across Texas.

After the first day of early voting, Williamson, Bastrop and Hays counties all report having a record-breaking number of people showing up to the polls, the Austin American-Statesman reports.
The lines at various polling places were particularly long, and some voters said they had to wait for hours before casting their ballot. “I usually vote early for the very reason for escaping the lines, and this year that didn’t happen, so we’ll try again,” Amanda Stephens of Corpus Christi told the Tribune. She said she didn’t recall having trouble voting during previous election seasons.
As the Tribune’s Jim Malewitz reports, the Harris County Clerk’s Office said about 53,000 people had cast ballots by 4:30 p.m., which surpassed the roughly 47,000 votes cast on the first day of early voting during the 2012 presidential election. Denton County also saw a large turnout, although voting at 11 places started late because some machines needed to be reprogrammed.
According to Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for Texas Secretary of State Carlos Cascos, it’s difficult to say whether the high polling turnout will continue throughout early voting, which continues until Nov. 4. “Historically, presidential elections tend to attract more voters, especially when there is not an incumbent in the White House,” Pierce said.

From the Houston Chronicle: Harris County breaks record for first day of early voting.

After more than 18 months of exhaustive media coverage, two grueling nomination fights and three combative debates, voters in Harris County and across Texas lined up in record numbers Monday to cast early ballots in the presidential election.
Monday's turnout of 67,471 in-person voters shattered the county record of 47,093 set in 2012 for the first day of early voting. Another 61,543 mail ballots had been returned as of Monday, bringing the total number of early voters so far to 129,014 in Texas' most populous county.

From the Fiscal Times: $1.7 Trillion in Unfunded State Pensions Is Squeezing Vital Public Programs

A key issue on the state and local level.

- Click here for the article.

Governments across the country are facing down at least $1.7 trillion in unpaid pension costs for public workers. As these growing commitments squeeze local budgets and crowd out essential services, taxpayers are being asked to cover a larger bill—and get less in return.
Public education is the largest and potentially the most important sector to be affected by pension crowd-out. Almost every state increased teachers’ retirement benefits in the booming 1990’s, but those increases were not accompanied by responsible funding plans. By 2003 teachers’ plans were short by $235 billion, and by 2009, pension debt had more than doubled to $584 billion.
Market growth since the Great Recession has barely put a dent in the shortfall, which still totals around $500 billion. Carrying such a sizable debt is expensive and has resulted in large cost increases.
These costs inevitably cut into education spending. Between 2000 and 2013, pension contributions per pupil increased at a rate five times higher than total education expenditures. This did little to halt the growth in debt: Pension debt per pupil increased by $9,588 over this period, more than nine times larger than the increase in total annual education expenditures per pupil.

Monday, October 24, 2016

From the Houston Bar Association: Results for 2016 Judicial Preference Poll

Here's how lawyers and Houston plan to vote for judicial positions.

Just info on Harris County unfortunately.

From the Gallup Vault (1941): Lining Up Against Poll Taxes

Southerns states with poll taxes wanted to keep them.

- Click here for the article.

In February 1941, Gallup found more than six in 10 Americans in favor of abolishing the poll taxes still prevalent in the American South. A majority of adults in the five southern states that had no poll tax at that time also wanted to abolish them. However, across the eight southern states where poll taxes were still in force -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia -- the majority of residents wanted to keep them.

Poll taxes, which charged voters $1 to $2 ($7 to $15 today) to register to vote, emerged in the South after the Civil War as a way to prevent the poor, and particularly African Americans, from participating in elections. In combination with literacy tests, "whites-only Democratic Party primaries," and onerous rules about when and how to pay the poll tax, these laws resulted in a sharp drop-off in voter registration among the target groups.
Gallup's April 2, 1941, news release presented the unvarnished views of several southern poll respondents about the poll tax. A 76-year-old Arkansas farmer who favored abolishing the tax said, "You can't find a man in this whole country that voted for the poll tax in the first place -- it was just put on and run over the people." Another Arkansas farmer said, "It's gotten so rotten the way they purchase those poll taxes that the whole poll tax system ought to be done away with."
But respondents in favor of retaining the poll tax expressed very different perspectives. A 40-year-old farm wife in Mississippi plainly said, "Poll taxes help pay for the schools and keep the Negroes from voting." An insurance agent from Virginia expressed a more civic-minded view, saying, "We ought to keep the poll tax because when you pay a tax you're more interested in the results of an election." And then there was the "poor white farmer in the deep South" who said, "Better keep the poll tax because if we don't have it some people will just vote 'cause somebody gives 'em a bottle of whiskey or a dollar bill."

Saturday, October 22, 2016

From the NYT: Are Detroit’s Most Terrible Schools Unconstitutional?

The author thinks that the Supreme Court might have the chance to overturn it's 1973 decision in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez that education is not a fundamental right, and that the equal protection clause was not violated by unequal funding.

- Click here for the article.

At one Detroit school, just 4 percent of third graders scored proficient on Michigan’s English assessment test. At another, 9.5 percent did. Those students are among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed last month that asserts that children have a federal constitutional right to the opportunity to learn to read and write.

Illiteracy is the norm at those “slumlike” schools and others in Michigan’s biggest city, according to the plaintiffs. The facilities are decrepit and unsafe. The first thing some teachers do each morning is clean up rodent feces before their students arrive. In some cases, teachers buy the books and school supplies, even the toilet paper.

Lawyers for the students are arguing, in effect, that Michigan is denying their clients the right to a minimally adequate education, an issue that has been raised over the years in courts in other states under their state constitutions.

In Connecticut, a state judge last month ordered sweeping changes to reshape the state’s public schools after concluding that “Connecticut is defaulting on its constitutional duty” to provide all students with an adequate education. The judge concluded that the state’s funding system had “left rich school districts to flourish and poor school districts to flounder.”

Now the litigation in Detroit is raising this issue under the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court has never addressed whether disparities among schools would be constitutionally permissible if, as the court put it in 1973, a state failed “to provide each child with an opportunity to acquire the basic minimal skills necessary” for success in life.

In that bitterly divided 5-4 decision, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, the court upheld a Texas law that produced unequal levels of education to students living in different school districts based on the property tax revenues of each district.

The majority maintained that the law was constitutional because it served a rational policy of permitting each school district to decide for itself how much money to spend on education. Whether the level of education was at least minimally adequate in the state’s poorest schools was not at issue in the case.

In what is likely to be the opening chapter in a long legal saga, a federal district judge in Michigan must determine if a state can constitutionally provide a vast majority of its students with an excellent or at least adequate education while a minority of students receive an education that denies them the chance to acquire the minimum skills the court spoke of 43 years ago in Rodriguez.

From the New York Times: Fly Fishing and the Art of Criminal Defense

For this coming week in 2306, and out look at the criminal justice process.

An inside look.

- Click here for the article.

In the earliest stages of a criminal case, defense attorneys and prosecutors will congregate in courtroom lobbies and attempt to resolve their cases. A handful of the prosecutors, Sean explained, were fishermen as well. Before discussing the merits of our pending cases — drug offenses, child pornography, domestic abuse — I began chatting with these men about where they had fished the weekend before, what lures they had used and how cold the water had been. We’d take out our phones to show one another pictures of fish we’d landed, and we’d congratulate or rib one another, call over other lawyers to admire the photographs of the mottled bodies quivering in our hands.

In retrospect, I understand the problems of privilege that came with this informal brotherhood — just pick up an issue of American Angler, tell me how many women or minorities you come across. A female defense attorney I worked with would often send me to negotiate with the prosecutors on behalf of our team. “Go talk dude to them,” she’d say.

The notion that a personal rapport between prosecutors and defense attorneys can affect the outcome of a client’s case — might in fact shape the rest of his life — is an uncomfortable one. It is, however, a reality. And it can be argued that a defense attorney is ethically obligated to nurture good relationships with prosecutors, as unpleasant as it can feel to do so. If two opposing attorneys get along, the negotiations tend to go better for the defendant. In a weak case, an afternoon fishing trip might be the difference between a conviction and a dismissal, between a misdemeanor and a felony, between a year of probation and a year of prison.

Friday, October 21, 2016

From the Washington Post: When the facts don’t matter, how can democracy survive?

This fits an ongoing question we raise in class.

- Click here for the article.



Americans — or, at least, a particular subset of Americans — have had enough of experts, facts, math, data. They distrust them all.
This rising cynicism, sown recklessly by opportunistic politicians, will not only make it increasingly difficult for policymakers to make good choices and govern peacefully; it could also become a significant economic challenge.
The latest evidence of this anti-evidence trend comes from a Marketplace-Edison Research Poll released last week.
The survey found that more than 4 in 10 Americans somewhat or completely distrust the economic data reported by the federal government. Among Donald Trump voters, the share is 68 percent, with nearly half saying they don’t trust government economic data “at all.”

From the Texas Tribune: Analysis: Rising local school property taxes ease state budget woes

This is good news, I guess.

- Click here for the story.

It would not be completely accurate to say billions in local school tax money is being used for general state spending.
But it wouldn’t exactly be wrong, either.
Property-rich school districts in Texas hate sending money to the state to help property-poor school districts. But the state has little incentive to change that system: Every dollar the rich districts send in is a dollar the state itself doesn’t have to spend.
The money coming in from those property-rich districts is quite a pile, too. For lawmakers writing the 2018-19 budget, that “recapture” money will increase by an estimated $1.44 billion, freeing that much state money for other general spending.
The richer school districts (“richer” here refers to the value of their real estate and not to the incomes of the residents) are sending $3.69 billion to the state in the 2016-17 budget period. The state has to use that money on public education; it’s an effort to level out the differences in how much money is available to educate kids from different parts of the state.
That said, any money that comes in from the rich districts allows the state to spend the dollars it would have spent on education on other programs and services. The numbers are rising, too. The Texas Education Agency estimates it will “recapture” $5.13 billion during the next budget period, up from $3.69 billion in the current budget.
At the same time the agency’s official budget request to state lawmakers would require the state to spend 8.4 percent less from general revenue than the current budget a drop that’s partly attributable to the increase in recapture money available to the state.
Intentionally or not, it’s a great political deal for state lawmakers. They can squawk at local school districts for high property tax rates at the same time they’re using some of that money to lower the state’s expenses for public education.
The locally raised taxes recaptured from property-wealthy districts lower the amount of state-raised money — sales taxes and so on — that have to be spent on schools. Local taxpayers, in this case, are saving state taxpayers some money.
Intentionally or not, it’s a great political deal for state lawmakers. They can squawk at local school districts for high property tax rates at the same time they’re using some of that money to lower the state’s expenses for public education. The state budget is easier to balance because of the local tax money marbled into school spending.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Grits for Breakfast: Pop Quiz on Fourth Amendment and the criminalization of the normal

For our look at due process in both 2305 and 2306, and especially for out look at appellate courts in Texas in 2306.

- Click here for the article.

Pop Quiz from the Texas Seventh Court of Appeals: Which of the following are NOT an indicia of drug trafficking under Texas law?
  • Breathing.
  • Having two hands.
  • Driving a clean vehicle.
  • Looking at a peace officer.
  • Looking away from a peace officer.
  • A young person driving a newer vehicle.
  • Driving in a car with meal wrappers.
  • Driving carefully.
  • Driving on an interstate.
The answer, according to a majority opinion from the Seventh Court of Appeals written by Chief Justice Brian Quinn, is that only the first two cannot be considered suspicious behavior that justifies an investigative detention, according to Texas courts. A dissent by Justice Campbell scolded his colleagues for failing to defer to the trial judge and "assume the court made implicit findings of fact supporting its ruling that are supported by the record." But the majority opinion is quite a read, lamenting that "most anything can be considered indicia of drug trafficking to law enforcement personnel."

Apparently if the police want to search you for drug possession for any reason, the Texas Courts say they can.

Fact Checking the Third Debate

- NPR: Fact Check And Full Transcript Of The Final 2016 Presidential Debate.
- NYT: Fact Checks of the Third Presidential Debate.
- Politifact: Live fact-checking the third Trump, Clinton presidential debate.
- Washington Post: Fact-checking the third Clinton-Trump presidential debate.

FULL: Final Presidential Debate 2016 - Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton -...

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

1987 60 Minutes Is Justice For Sale in Texas



I just added this to some of the slides for 2306. It's an oldie, but it points out the problems with an elected judiciary.

Not so tough on crime

One way to reduce crime is to not define every problem as a criminal act subject to law enforcement. Two Texas Tribune stories touch on this idea.

- Most embrace some reforms in Court of Criminal Appeals races.

Regardless of party, most of the candidates for the state's highest criminal court say they want to see more cases involving drug addiction and mental illness moved out of the criminal justice system.

. . . Keasler and Meyers – a conservative and progressive, respectively, and two of the longest-serving judges on the court – said people dealing with drug addiction and mental illness don't belong in the criminal justice system. Walker said he's faced the issue with his clients.
"I see people all the time – I've had several cases recently where my clients are competent to stand trial, but they're not really capable of keeping up with probation. They honestly can't," Walker said. "And they need a very intensive type of probation with a whole lot of help. The system can't just put those kind of people out on the street and expect them to show up when they're supposed to show up and do all the programs they're supposed to do without some very intensive help."
Burns, who has presided over a diversion program for more than four years, said helping these offenders instead of punishing them works out in the long run.
"When it comes to drug offenses, I'm a big believer in diversionary programs," Burns said. "I really think that treatment works much better than incarceration because if you don't treat people who have drug problems, they're going to fail on probation and then they're going to end up in prison. It really starts a cycle of failure and criminality."

- Two school districts accused of violating new truancy law.


Two Texas school districts are not following a new law designed to reduce the number of students who end up in truancy courts, an alliance of advocacy groups claimed on Monday.
In complaints filed with the Texas Education Agency, Disability Rights Texas, Texas Appleseed and the National Center for Youth Law accused the El Paso and Mesquite independent school districts of violating provisions of House Bill 2398, a measure designed to decriminalize multiple absences and encourage schools to intervene before court action is taken.

Under the new law, school districts are no longer able to send students with three unexcused absences within a four-week period to truancy courts. School officials must instead notify parents of the absences and warn them of the penalties, which include a fine or loss of driving privileges if the student acquires more absences. A criminal complaint against the parents may eventually be filed as well.

The bill also requires public schools to implement truancy prevention programs and develop new methods of punishing students are punished after multiple absences. It also mandates that parents and educators have face-to-face meetings, and that students be enrolled in a truancy prevention program.

From the Washington Post: Can you rig a U.S. presidential election? Experts say it’s basically impossible.

This is topical.

Expect much more on the subject.

- Click here for the article.

What would rigging an election actually entail?
Rigging an election would require a widespread, nationwide effort with the two major parties colluding at every level. This is why election law experts say it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to “rig” an election. In this country, voting is an open, multi-step process with scores of witnesses from both parties each step of the way.
Chris Ashby, campaign finance and election lawyer at Virginia-based Ashby Law, points out that American elections are held in open, public rooms, such as school gyms, community centers and community centers.
“There are no back rooms, secret doors or hidden hallways,” Ashby wrote recently. The ballots, voting machines and election materials are locked and sealed when they arrive in the voting place, and when they are removed after the election is over, they are locked and sealed again.
In most states, there are “poll observers” in each county who have been chosen and trained by both the Republican and Democratic parties to watch for problems or efforts to disenfranchise voters during the voting process. The poll observers are allowed to watch the poll workers and other election officials, who have also undergone training to run the polling places and help conduct the election.
Voters use equipment that is publicly tested and observed by party representatives and representatives of the campaigns, Ashby said. After it’s tested, voting equipment is locked and sealed. 
“Rigging” an election would require the cooperation of the Republicans and Democrats who are the polling place election officials, along with the poll watchers from each party who are watching the election officials conduct the election, Ashby said. It would also require, he points out, the cooperation of the another group of Republicans and Democrats after the election who are watching the counting of ballots.

From the Pew Research Center: The Parties on the Eve of the 2016 Election: Two Coalitions, Moving Further Apart

More on the shifts in party identification that seem to be underway this electoral cycle, but in greater detail.

Also some detail on what's driving party polarization.

- Click here for the report.

Ahead of the presidential election, the demographic profiles of the Republican and Democratic parties are strikingly different. On key characteristics – especially race and ethnicity and religious affiliation – the two parties look less alike today than at any point over the last quarter-century.
The fundamental demographic changes taking place in the country – an aging population, growing racial and ethnic diversity and rising levels of education – have reshaped both party coalitions. But these changes, coupled with patterns of partisan affiliation among demographic groups, have influenced the composition of the two parties in different ways. The Democratic Party is becoming less white, less religious and better-educated at a faster rate than the country as a whole, while aging at a slower rate. Within the GOP the pattern is the reverse: Republican voters are becoming more diverse, better-educated and less religious at a slower rate than the country generally, while the age profile of the GOP is growing older more quickly than that of the country.

From the Texas Tribune: Odd Texas voting law on interpreters scuttled before November election

More voting rights conflict between Texas and the U.S.

And more adjustments to election law in Texas.

- Click here for the article.

Mallika Das, a U.S. citizen who was born in India, walked into a Williamson County polling place in 2014 eager to cast her ballot.

Because she was not proficient in English and had found it difficult to vote in the past, Das brought her son, Saurabh, to help her. They both spoke Bengali, an Asian dialect. But when Saurabh told poll workers he was there to interpret the English ballot for his mother, the duo ran into an unexpected requirement.
By law, a poll official determined, Saurabh could not serve as an interpreter for his mother because he was not registered to vote in the county. Saurabh was registered to vote in neighboring Travis County.
Das proceeded to vote without her son’s assistance but was unable to “vote properly” for all of the electoral measures because she could not “sufficiently comprehend the ballot,” according to a lawsuit she later filed.
Das died before the lawsuit was resolved, but her dilemma, laid out in court filings, is part of an ongoing legal battle over a little-noticed provision of Texas election requiring interpreters to be registered voters in the same county in which they are providing help. Ahead of the November election, a federal district judge has blocked Texas from enforcing that provision, ruling it violates the federal Voting Rights Act. Texas is appealing that ruling to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The requirement will not be in effect during the upcoming election. The Secretary of State’s office has updated poll worker training material to be consistent with the ruling, said spokeswoman Alicia Pierce. And voter education groups that focus on language-minority voters like Asian Texans are working to ensure that voters get the word they can bring just about anyone, including their minor children, to help them vote.
But the case has highlighted a provision of Texas election law that appears to be at odds with federal protections for voters unable to read or write in English. At the heart of the case is whether voters are expected to know the difference between an “interpreter” and an “assistor” in the eyes of Texas election law.
The federal Voting Rights Act requires that any voter who requires assistance because of visual impairments, disabilities or literacy skills can be helped in casting a ballot by the person of their choice, as long as it’s not their employer or a union leader.

From the Austin American Statesman: Why only 1 Texas congressional race is competitive

Texas does gerrymandering right.

And despite all this talk of kicking the bums out, it seems we are completely happy with the bum we have.

- Click here for the article.

Texas has 36 congressional districts, second only to California, but only one seat appears to be competitive heading into early voting next week — District 23, a vast West Texas seat that has switched between Republican and Democratic hands in each of the last three elections.
Elsewhere, 23 Republicans and 10 Democrats are likely to win re-election, by dint of gerrymandering and the power of incumbency. Only two Texas districts are open seats — District 15, a predominantly Hispanic and Democratic-leaning district in South Texas, and District 19, a largely rural and heavily Republican district in parts of West Texas and the Panhandle where no Democrat is on the ballot.
In Central Texas, all six members of Congress who represent a slice of Austin are sitting on large war chests but running light campaigns. Each Austin incumbent had more than $200,000 on hand as of Sept. 30, with Democrat Lloyd Doggett topping the list with more than $3 million on hand. No challenger in those races has more than $30,000, and many have no money on hand.
“We know for a fact incumbency is powerful,” said Chad Long, an associate professor of political science at St. Edward’s University. “It’s the single most powerful predictor of congressional elections, even more than the money. If you have an incumbent in the election, you pretty much know who’s going to win.”
According to Long, a district is considered competitive when the winning candidate garners no more than 55 percent of the vote. Under this definition, only two of the six U.S. House members representing the Austin area have ever experienced a competitive race — Doggett and Republican Michael McCaul.

Here is the only competitive U.S. House race in Texas

Its the 23rd District

Texas's 23rd congressional district - since January 3, 2013.


For info on the district:

- GovTrack.
- BallotPedia.
- The Texas Tribune.

And on the current race:

- Hurd raises almost twice as much as Gallego in latest report.
- Trump Haunts Hurd, Gallego Congressional Rematch.

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

From the Houston Chronicle: State to HISD officials: Get leadership training or face punishment

It has a large number of low performing schools - and a dysfunctional board.

- Click here for the article.

The Texas Education Agency has directed the Houston school board and superintendent to undergo leadership training or face serious sanctions. Those could include trustees being forced from their elected positions and the closing of schools.
The order comes as the state takes a hard line on districts with chronically low-performing schools.
A.J. Crabill, a deputy commissioner at the state education agency, sent letters this week to the Houston Independent School District and 10 other districts, citing concerns with the plans they submitted to improve their low-performing campuses. Because of that, he wanted the boards and superintendents to agree to "agency-directed governance training."
If the districts reject the training, Crabill said, he would not approve their school improvement plans, which means the agency would be required under state law to take major action. It could send in a state-appointed board to run the district, close the schools or assign an outside manager to oversee those campuses.
The board has been particularly divided since January. Two new trustees, Diana Davila and Jolanda Jones, took office, and at their first meeting then-board President Rhonda Skillern-Jones surprised some veteran trustees by bringing forward several controversial proposals, including renaming campuses named after Confederate loyalists and banning suspensions of young elementary school students.

The board, however, united over the summer to hire Superintendent Richard Carranza, the former schools superintendent in San Francisco.

For more:

Surprise announcement: HISD Trustee Mike Lunceford is resigning

From Off The Kuff: Two point of view on the HISD ballot proposal.

Yes - Interview with Jay Aiyer.
No - Interview with David Thompson.

From the Houston Chronicle: Robbing HISD - Voters should say 'no' to putting district under the Robin Hood recapture plan.

Voters who live in the boundaries of HISD have the chance to approve or disapprove subjecting itself to recapture - otherwise known as the Robin Hood plan.

The paper argues that voters should vote against the referendum.

- Click here for the article.

Voters will face a test on Election Day, and whether they answer correctly will determine the future of the Houston Independent School District. It should be a simple question, but it's written in the obtuse vernacular of lawmakers who really don't want voters to understand it.
The ballot provision will ask voters to authorize the board of trustees of HISD to purchase attendance credits from the state with local tax revenue. That sounds like a good, progressive measure, but be warned - it is a trick question.
The ballot is really asking whether HISD should submit itself to state recapture and send $162  million in local property tax dollars to Austin. The correct answer is "NO," or "AGAINST."
If this misleading ballot provision passes, HISD will not only be required to send $162 million in local property tax dollars to the state next year. The district will also likely face higher annual payments for the foreseeable future under the state's broken school finance system.
The mandate comes about because rising property values have made HISD subject to "Robin Hood" provisions under the Texas Education Code. All those skyscrapers and rapidly appreciating homes have apparently pushed HISD over the top.
As Texas schools are financed through property taxes, the recapture provisions (what we know as Robin Hood) were supposed to provide a way to equalize school funding across the state - for poor and wealthy schools alike.
In May, the Texas Supreme Court held that this system of school finance is marginally constitutional. Consider that assessment a D-minus grade. The fact of the matter is that the state's school funding formula fails to accomplish its intended goals of helping poor school districts.
Technically these recaptured funds are supposed to help schools that need the resources. If the provision worked like a true Robin Hood, it would "rob" from the rich and "give" to the poor. But in reality, the system robs from the poor and gives to legislators so that they don't have to raise state taxes. There's no guarantee that poor schools will receive a single extra dime if HISD pays up.
How does this work? Simply put, the state keeps two bank accounts: one for general revenue and one for the recaptured Robin Hood sums. Every dollar that the state pays from Robin Hood frees up general revenue money that the state otherwise would have to spend to help poor schools. So instead of giving extra money to needy districts, any HISD money will essentially be spent on highways, border security or some other appropriation besides education.
If this passes, then HISD is projected to send more than $1 billion of our local property taxes to the state over the next four years. Not only does that hurt HISD, but it looks an awful lot like a state property tax - which is prohibited in the Texas Constitution.

For the relevant statutes: TEA: Chapter 41: Wealth Equalization.

And there's this:

- Wikipedia: Robin Hood Plan.

From the Austin American-Statesman: Why only 1 Texas congressional race is competitive

Texas does gerrymandering right.

And despite all the talk of throwing the bums out - we keep them in. All the other guys are bum,s apparently, our's is perfectly fine.

- Click here for the article.

Texas has 36 congressional districts, second only to California, but only one seat appears to be competitive heading into early voting next week — District 23, a vast West Texas seat that has switched between Republican and Democratic hands in each of the last three elections.
Elsewhere, 23 Republicans and 10 Democrats are likely to win re-election, by dint of gerrymandering and the power of incumbency. Only two Texas districts are open seats — District 15, a predominantly Hispanic and Democratic-leaning district in South Texas, and District 19, a largely rural and heavily Republican district in parts of West Texas and the Panhandle where no Democrat is on the ballot.
In Central Texas, all six members of Congress who represent a slice of Austin are sitting on large war chests but running light campaigns. Each Austin incumbent had more than $200,000 on hand as of Sept. 30, with Democrat Lloyd Doggett topping the list with more than $3 million on hand. No challenger in those races has more than $30,000, and many have no money on hand.

“We know for a fact incumbency is powerful,” said Chad Long, an associate professor of political science at St. Edward’s University. “It’s the single most powerful predictor of congressional elections, even more than the money. If you have an incumbent in the election, you pretty much know who’s going to win.”

- Click here for the 2016 Texas Primary results.
- Click here for the general election races.

From 538: How Evan McMullin Could Win Utah And The Presidency It’s unlikely, but far from impossible.

Lot's of strange things have been predicted for this electoral cycle - brokered conventions, splintered parties - but none have happened. This might not happen either, but that's no reason to not speculate about it.

- Click here for the article.

With the election only weeks away, Hillary Clinton appears to have the lead and the momentum. As of this writing, the FiveThirtyEight polls-only forecast gives her around an 87 percent chance of winning — up from around 55 percent in late September – and that may not have fully absorbed the fallout of Trump’s lewd video, debatable debate performance or the daily deluge of fresh scandal jeopardizing his candidacy.
But if Clinton doesn’t run away with this, there is another candidate who may also have seen his chances of becoming president skyrocket. The third-most likely person to be the next president of the United States: Evan McMullin.
It would take a fascinating scenario — in which much of the technical detail of how we select presidents comes into play — for McMullin to be sworn in as the 45th president, but the chances of its happening are slim, not none.

. . . According to the bio on his website, he served in the CIA for about a decade, and spent time in investment banking, as an adviser for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and as policy director for the House Republican Conference. On the issues, McMullin has taken fairly orthodox Republican positions, including supporting free trade. He has been critical of Trump on immigration, refugees, anti-Muslim rhetoric and on temperament and fitness to be president.
The idea that an independent candidate could swoop in to win has been largely dismissed, on the grounds that any conservative-leaning third-party candidate would be more likely to hurt Trump than Clinton, thus making a Clinton victory more likely. But McMullin may have one advantage that other second-tier candidates do not: Utah.
His path to the presidency basically looks like this:
  1. Win Utah
  2. Deadlock the Electoral College
  3. Win in the House

An Update: Here’s How We’re Forecasting The 4-Way Presidential Race In Utah.

From Politico: The People Who Pick the President

This is sweet!

Background on the handful of people who will cast the actual votes for the president on the real election day: December 19.

They might not vote as expected - see this link to faithless electors.

- Click here for the complete calendar.

- Click here for the article.

Tear up your countdown calendar: The 2016 election will not end on Nov. 8. In fact, it'll carry on until mid-December, when 538 members of the Electoral College huddle in their respective state capitals and cast the only ballots with the power to formally elect the next president.

Because they have rarely deviated from the will of the voters—and never changed the outcome of an election—this constitutional process remains an obscure and anonymous relic of the Founding Fathers. But for six weeks, this assortment of party insiders, donors and, in some cases, fringe activists will be the most powerful force in American democracy. And most Americans will never know who they are.

They include people like Tim Dreste, who was convicted of inciting violence against abortion providers in the 1990s and still wants them to fear him, and Monica Acosta-Zamora, the Texas Democrat who despises Hillary Clinton but became an elector to help a jailed friend. They also include Sybrina Fulton—Trayvon Martin’s mother—and Chris Christie’s dad, Wilbur. There’s a 93-year-old granddaughter of slaves and a 19-year-old Republican activist. Others still are Bernie Sanders supporters and political trailblazers, a motorcycle lobbyist and a Powerball winner.

Though voters will cast ballots for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and several third-party candidates on Election Day, their votes will actually elect partisan slates of Electoral College members. The smallest have just three, and the largest, California, has 55. Republicans and Democrats in each state choose a set of electors—and if their candidate wins the popular vote on Election Day, their slate of electors gets picked to cast ballots in December.

These members are largely bound—by law and by oath—to uphold the will of the voters. And throughout history, few have deviated from that path.

But 2016 is an upside-down year featuring deeply unpopular candidates. A few electors have already threatened to break from Trump or Clinton and vote their conscience—even if that means bucking the will of their state's voters.

From Politico: Obama, Holder to lead post-Trump redistricting campaign The former attorney general heads up a new Democratic effort to challenge the GOP's supremacy in state legislatures and the U.S. House.

We are two years away from the next census - which apportions House seats to the states - and six year away from the next redistricting, which will be done by state legislatures. Democrats seek to undo what Republicans were able to accomplish the last go around.

- Click here for the article.

As Democrats aim to capitalize on this year’s Republican turmoil and start building back their own decimated bench, former Attorney General Eric Holder will chair a new umbrella group focused on redistricting reform—with the aim of taking on the gerrymandering that’s left the party behind in statehouses and made winning a House majority far more difficult.
The new group, called the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, was developed in close consultation with the White House. President Barack Obama himself has now identified the group—which will coordinate campaign strategy, direct fundraising, organize ballot initiatives and put together legal challenges to state redistricting maps—as the main focus of his political activity once he leaves office.
Though initial plans to be active in this year’s elections fell short, the group has been incorporated as a 527, with Democratic Governors Association executive director Elizabeth Pearson as its president and House Majority PAC executive director Ali Lapp as its vice president. They’ve been pitching donors and aiming to put together its first phase action plan for December, moving first in the Virginia and New Jersey state elections next year and with an eye toward coordination across gubernatorial, state legislative and House races going into the 2018 midterms.
“American voters deserve fair maps that represent our diverse communities—and we need a coordinated strategy to make that happen,” Holder said. “This unprecedented new effort will ensure Democrats have a seat at the table to create fairer maps after 2020."
Obama strongly endorsed Holder’s selection, and is planning more involvement in state races this year. But it’s in his post-presidency that redistricting will be a priority for his fundraising and campaigning.
“Where he will be most politically engaged will be at the state legislative level, with an eye on redistricting after 2020,” said White House political director David Simas, who’s been briefing Obama on the group’s progress since it started coming together at the beginning of the summer.
The group’s incorporation follows a pitch made to major donors in Philadelphia during the Democratic convention in July, led by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, along with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Ben Ray Luján. The group hasn’t filed any financial reports as of yet and isn’t releasing figures for money raised, but operatives say that several organizations have donated initial funds in its early stages of fundraising.