ALCS 5&6
Early voting in person starts on Monday. Are you ready?
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There wasn’t a vote yesterday to elect a U.S. House Speaker. What a joke.
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By now, folks know how Commentary feels about how the Harris County Elections Division has been run since 2020. Harris County officials have pretty much shot themselves in the feet continuously. We sent a gold-plated invitation to the GOP controlled state government to get involved in our elections. Now see this from the Trib today:
A preliminary report from the Texas Secretary of State’s office found the Harris County’s 2022 election administration had “multiple failures” that could have prevented some voters from casting a ballot, but the report stopped short of suggesting the outcome of any race was affected.
The first draft of the audit, which was released Thursday afternoon, days before early voting for constitutional amendments is set to start across the state, reaffirmed the county failed to supply its voting centers with enough paper ballots. It also found its voter registration system listed 9,000 more voters than were recorded with the state and that 3,600 mail ballots were sent to voters that were not reported to the state.
The county — the nation’s third most populous — also failed to adequately train election workers, the audit stated.
“Harris County clearly had multiple failures conducting the election and violated election law for estimating needed ballot paper. Mistakes like these led to a poorly executed election which left many Harris County residents frustrated and may have prevented them from voting,” Secretary of State Jane Nelson said in a statement. “It is important to talk about these issues now in order to address them before the 2024 election cycle.”
Harris County officials declined to immediately comment.
Former Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum previously acknowledged there were insufficient ballots at certain polling locations and failures by the technical team on the field.
The county’s mishandling of the 2022 election — which has faced several lawsuits, many of them that have already been dropped or dismissed — sparked a series of legislative debates earlier this year.
Among them, Republican lawmakers forced the county to dissolve its recently established elections administration office, splitting election duties among the county clerk and tax assessor. The fall election will be the first election since the law took effect.
Harris County is suing the state to reverse the law. Oral arguments at the state Supreme Court are expected later this year.
Nelson, in her statement, said she was thankful for the cooperation from Harris County officials and that a repeat of these problems “is unacceptable.”
All this audit does is undermine the public’s confidence in how the elections are conducted in Harris County. That is what the GOP wants. If we had not switched to an Elections Administrator during the pandemic, we would not be going through this exercise.
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The dumbsh_t lawyer who said the 2020 election was stolen changed her mind and pleaded guilty in Georgia to election interference. Too bad she won’t get jail time. I mean a good chunk of the country has not accepted the 2020 election results because Sidney Powell and others promoted the big lie.
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The price of my Chron subscription went up again. It was $85 every four weeks. Now it is $91.95 every four weeks.
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It’s here and started. From now until the end of the Christmas season the Hallmark Channel and the Hallmark Movies and Mysteries Channel will be airing their Christmas flicks. Old ones and new. The featured photo is the Hallmark wine that is available during the Christmas holiday season.
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One of my favorites of all time, Hall of Fame great Mickey Mantle was born 92 years ago today. Let’s see. 7 World Series rings. Triple Crown winner. 536 career dingers. 18 World Series dingers. Selected to 20 MLB All Star games. He left us in 1995.
Today is a good day for MLB birthdays. Texas Rangers great and two-time AL MVP Juan González is 54. Cardinals and Mets great, two-time World Series Champ, NL MVP Keith Hernandez is 70. Hall of Fame great Juan Marichal is 86. Happy Birthday y’all!
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What a game last night. We jumped to a 3 zip lead. The Rangers came right back to tie it. We ended up winning thanks to a three-run dinger by Jose Abreau and a two-run dinger by Chas McCormick. There was a double play replay that we got thanks to a batting glove finger. A 10-3 win.
Tags tweeted this last night after the game:
Ryne Stanek threw one pitch, got two outs and is the winning pitcher.
There will be baseball at The Yard Sunday evening.
We play this afternoon at 4 pm.
#Ready2Reign!
