Travis County Democratic and Republican Parties Narrowly Avoid Litigation Over Primary Voting

Line for voting at the South Austin Rec Center November 6, 2022 (photo by Jana Birchum)

On Monday, the Travis County Democratic Party came perilously close to suing the Travis County Republican Party over its efforts to make it harder to vote in the March 5 presidential primary. Instead, they struck a last-minute deal to secure a joint primary with shared voting locations, which the Travis County Commissioners Court approved Tuesday.

Negotiations had been stalled for over a month after TCRP refused to sign a contract, instead pushing for an end to countywide voting and a new hand-counting process. Last year, the contract was approved in November. The delay this year, had it gone past Tuesday, Dec. 19 – the last Commissioners Court meeting of the year – would have made Jan. 9 the next possible date for an approved contract to begin preparation for the primary. This would have significantly rushed key election procedures such as testing voting machines, training volunteer poll workers, and mailing out ballots to overseas voters. Last week the TCDP announced that if there was no contract by that deadline, they were prepared to take legal action.

TCRP declined to give the Chronicle reasoning for their requested changes to the March primary. In a press conference last week, TCDP Chair Katie Naranjo characterized it as "a group of election deniers within the Republican party who are holding their party's as well as our party's primary hostage." The changes would have discouraged already disenfranchised groups from voting: Requiring people to vote in their precinct would adversely impact those with a long commute, as well as disproportionately impacting disabled voters, as "we're necessarily going to have to use places that aren't going to have curbside available," said Jenna Royal, voter protection director for the Texas Democratic Party.

Had hand-counting gone forward, it would have also cost the county and secretary of state more, due to the significant time added to poll workers' schedules. Royal noted that in other counties under similar threats "the cost of these elections are doubling, tripling, quadrupling ... We're not talking a couple of extra hours, we're talking weeks." The change would have also required more volunteer slots, which Republicans traditionally do not fill, "and in fact, in many cases, Democrats fill the slots of the Republicans," said Naranjo. "So it's even more ironic when we already supplement the Republican party's lack of resources."

Travis County was the last large county in Texas waiting to have a contract in place, but this was not an isolated threat – more than a dozen counties across the state were facing similar attacks from county GOPs ahead of the primaries. "Texas has long been ground zero for voter suppression," said Congressman Lloyd Doggett in the press conference. "January 6 is one way to steal an election and disenfranchise voters. But there are other ways to do it, like throwing up bureaucratic hurdles, like last-minute changes to how, when, and where you can vote."

On Tuesday, TCDP issued a statement that "Republicans have made their intent clear: to erode trust in our election process, and disenfranchise voters – not just Democratic voters, but Republican voters too. While the joint primary contract up for approval today does not infringe upon Democrats' right to hold our own primary election, the process and results of the Republican Primary are still very uncertain." According to a press release from TCRP, all Republican primary ballots will be hand-counted, summarized by location, with a redundant paper process for voter check-in, pending a Secretary of State decision, which TCRP Chair Matt Mackowiak calls "provisions that enable election audits and improve transparency and accuracy." Shared locations and countywide voting are intact.