Posted on 01/02/2009 11:50:48 AM PST by weegee
The departure of Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt has opened the door for some discussion of whether his successor should inherit the job of maintaining Harris County's voter rolls...
...73 of Texas' 254 counties have established separate elections offices... 19 other counties have assigned the voter registration role to the county clerk.
...Emmett said he would be open to shifting those duties to the county clerk but opposed the creation of a new elections administration office. Garcia said she prefers the idea of an elections administrator because that person would be prohibited by law from making political contributions or endorsing candidates or ballot measures...
..An elections administrator would be appointed by a county elections commission composed of the county judge, the tax assessor-collector, the county clerk and the chairmen of both political parties.
...Bettencourt was a lightning rod for criticism from the left during his decade in office as he used the post to champion conservative causes, including property tax relief and reduced government. He also has been accused in recent years of overzealously purging the voter rolls and blocking new registrations.
The Harris County Democratic Party sued Bettencourt last month, complaining of his handling of 7,000 provisional ballots cast in the Nov. 4 election and accusing him of illegally rejecting voter registration applications.
...He dismissed the lawsuit as a political ploy, arguing he had a valid reason to reject the four applications listed in the petition.
Bettencourt said the fact that only 7,000 of the 1.18 million people who voted in Harris County had to fill out provisional ballots because their registrations could not be verified immediately shows the system is working.
Moving the voter rolls to another office could actually result in more provisional ballots, he said....
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Houston PING
The dimocrats’ answer to every “crisis” (both real and imagined): Create yet another bureaucracy and throw more tax money at it.
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