Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Voting’

Election day as a state holiday

Posted in Global Warming, tagged on March 6, 2019 |

By Adrian Shelley, Director of the Texas office of Public Citizen

Today, Public Citizen supported, in the Texas House State Affairs Committee hearing, HB 935. A bill that would designate certain election days as state holidays. We are supportive because this bill would offer Texas voters more opportunity to vote and participate in elections.

Texas has the worst voter turnout in the nation.[1] I have personally experienced the difficulty of encouraging civic participation in Texas through my participation in the Houston in Action Coalition, which works to increase participation in voting and civic life in Harris County. Voter apathy and barriers to participation depress voter turnout in Texas. Texas’ population is increasingly young and diverse. The legislature should do everything possible to encourage civic participation among all Texans. When more Texans participate in elections, and in turn become more civically active, the democratic process benefits. Making election day a state holiday will surely increase voter turnout and participation in elections. And it comes with no fiscal impact to the state.

[1] See, e.g., https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Voter-turnout-in-Texas-is-dead-last-in-America-13241845.php.

Read Full Post »

Public Citizen joins League of Women Voters, denounces voter intimidation in Texas at Moody Park, Houston, event

Posted in Campaign Finance, Good Government, Privacy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 25, 2010 |

Howdy folks.  We’re doing a press conference at 2pm with the League of Women Voters in Houston at the Moody Park Community Center (3725 Fulton, Houston, TX), one of the early voting locations with the most complaints of voter intimidation.  These activities must stop, and this highlights how Houston is ground zero for the creep of illegal, corporate money into our elections.  Here’s an early taste of our press statement we are making.  We hope to have some video available later this afternoon, possibly also video of other early voting activities.

I early voted on Friday at Buda City Hall, standing in a line that snaked around City Hall for 40 minutes.  Have you voted yet?  Get out!  Do it now!

Here’s our press release:

October 25, 2010

don't let voter intimidation sway the election

 

 

 

 

Last week as early voting for the Nov. 2 General Election got under way, there were complaints of poll watchers interfering with or intimidating voters and other potential election violations in Harris and Bexar Counties.  Our organizations–LWV-Texas, Public Citizen, and Common Cause–condemn any and all attempts to sway this election by controlling who gets to vote.

The right to vote is sacred. People have died for this right, both in our nation’s past and even in our recent history.   Registered citizens should never be turned away from being able to vote.  Our greatest patriots, such as Washington and Lincoln, waged war to insure that taxation without representation did not occur and to protect the notion of government for, of, and by the people. It was a Texan, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who pushed through Congress and then signed the Voting Rights Act which protects the rights of all citizens to register and to vote.

We want to encourage everyone, in Harris County, Bexar County, and across the state, to come out and vote, regardless of ideology, gender, race, income, whether your community is urban, suburban, or rural, and whether your preferred party is Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, or Tea.  Do not let tales of intimidation frighten you away.  Instead, let these concerns be a call to action and a reminder of the importance of every citizen’s right to participate.
(more…)

Read Full Post »