Bettencourt or no, Dems press forward with voter suit in Harris County, TX
December 13, 2008
Bettencourt or no, Dems press forward with voter suit
By Alan Bernstein
Houston Chronicle
Dec. 10, 2008
The presidential election is in the history books and Harris County voter registrar Paul Bettencourt is quitting, but the Texas Democratic Party is expanding its lawsuit claiming the county illegally has blocked thousands of residents from registering to vote.
"Mr. Bettencourt's late-night resignation announcement is his attempt to avoid bringing to light the inner workings of his office over the past several years and still does not ensure that the problems surrounding Harris County voter registration will be resolved," the state party said Wednesday in a statement distributed by Houston lawyer Chad Dunn.
Republican Bettencourt, the tax assessor-collector, said it was ridiculous to suggest he and his staff purposely foiled voter registrations or that his resignation was triggered by the lawsuit.
Bettencourt acknowledged last Friday night that he had given a resignation letter to County Judge Ed Emmett the day before — a month after both Republicans won their elections. Emmett and the four county commissioners will pick Bettencourt's replacement.
Attractive job offer
Bettencourt repeated on Wednesday that he is walking away from another four-year term only because he received an attractive job offer in private business.
He refused to describe his new job. His last day in office probably will be Dec. 23, he said.
Dunn, the Democrats' lawyer, said the lawsuit was expanded to, among other things, include as plaintiffs four people whose voter registration applications were stymied by what the party calls the county's "unlawful and hyper-technical voters registration activities." The lawsuit alleges Bettencourt's staff has disenfranchised voters by using unwarranted technical reasons for rejecting their registration applications.
Bettencourt said the four were rejected for routine, justifiable reasons involving their paperwork, and that the registration system in the county works well.
"You are going to have mistakes made," he said. "What you do is fix them."
Some decisions reversed
The bipartisan ballot board that decided whether to accept provisional ballots cast by voters whose names were missing from the Nov. 4 rolls accepted some that Bettencourt's staff had classified as incomplete. His staff was unable to get thousands of registrations onto the rolls before early voting.
Bettencourt apparently still will have to give pre-trial testimony in the lawsuit after this month and will be represented by the new county attorney, Democrat Vince Ryan.
The majority-Republican Commissioners Court is expected to pick a Republican to handle Bettencourt's tax collection and voter registrar operations.
Contact: alan.bernstein@chron.com
Source: Houston Chronicle
Candidate's suit claims voting problems cost him race
By Alan Bernstein
Houston Chronicle
Dec. 11, 2008
The Democratic candidate who lost a Harris County judicial race by 230 votes last month is asking a court to make him the winner, saying a variety of alleged vote count and voter registration failures by the county cost him a victory.
Democrat J. Goodwille Pierre, a lawyer who manages small business programs for the Houston airport system, is no stranger to voting rights lawsuits; he said he worked on such issues in Texas for the liberal group People For The American Way, particularly on behalf of Prairie View A&M University students registering in Waller County.
Now the first-time candidate is filing suit on behalf of his own campaign against Republican civil court Judge Joseph "Tad" Halbach of the 333rd District Court.
A spokeswoman for Pierre said the lawsuit was filed in state district court this morning. Halbach said he could not comment because he had not seen the lawsuit.
Halbach's winning margin of 230 votes in the Nov. 4 election was the smallest in more than two dozen countywide judicial elections, most of which were won by Democratic challengers.
Pierre was among four challengers who lost, each of whom have unusual first or last names.
But his lawsuit focuses instead on Harris County voting controversies being aired in a separate federal lawsuit brought against the county by the Texas Democratic Party.
Both suits now allege that outgoing Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt, a Republican who also serves as voter registrar, rejected legitimate voter registration applications.
Pierre's lawsuit also cites a non-partisan ballots board's rejection of about 5,800 ballots cast by voters who, according to records from Bettencourt's office and other agencies, had not been properly registered. The ballot board chairman said some of the ballots, after being processed by Bettencourt's staff, had information obscured by correction fluid.
"Had all persons who cast a vote in this race been allowed to have their vote counted; it would have changed the outcome of the election by providing Pierre with more votes than Joseph "Tad" Halbach," the suit said. "Moreover, various irregularities make it impossible to ascertain the true outcome of the election."
Contact: alan.bernstein@chron.com
Source: Houston Chronicle
