FORT WORTH -- The Tarrant County Elections Office home page has a space reserved for details of the next election. Last week, Elections Administrator Steve Raborn stopped trying to guess when that election might be.
"We just took all the April 3 dates off of our website," Raborn said. "Now it just says '2012 Primary Elections.' No date."Between the constantly shifting schedules and maps from redistricting lawsuits and the do-we-enforce-it-or-not limbo over a new state law requiring voters to show photo identification, Texas election administrators have had their hands full planning for primaries that remain moving targets.For Raborn, it's been the weirdest, most tumultuous election cycle of his 28-year career, but he's learned to roll with the punches.A federal judge said last week that May 29 was the most likely day for this year's primaries but warned that it could end up even later."If the election is May 29 and we get maps within the next week or two, it should all flow right along pretty smoothly," Raborn said last week. "It looks like it's going to be just about the right amount of time."To get a full sense of what a wild ride it's been for election officials, consider this: If Texas had stuck with the schedule in place just six months ago, the primaries would be March 6 and early voting would have started this week. By now, the Tarrant County Elections Office and its counterparts statewide would have updated databases, mailed out new voter registration certificates, programmed voting machines and printed ballots.None of those things have happened yet.The source of the delay has been legal fights over new election maps approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature last year. The case has wound through two federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court, yet a final deal remains out of reach.The primaries have been pushed from early March to early April, then to late May. With every date change, Raborn's office has had to cancel reservations for hundreds of polling places and check whether the sites were available on the new day. Last week, his staff began the work of canceling the April 3 reservations and seeing about May 29.Election workers are already planning for municipal and school district elections May 12. If the primaries are May 29, early voting could start two days after the local elections.Raborn predicted that the tight schedule will require hiring more temporary workers than usual.The workers most affected probably will be "our warehouse people who will be picking up the machines from the polling places, getting them ready for the next election and then redelivering them," he said.Long, involved processUntil last week, many state officials were still pushing for an April primary in hopes that Texas might play kingmaker in the Republican presidential race, but that's all but impossible because of the ongoing redistricting battles.Once a set of political maps are in place, the Tarrant County Elections Office will need more than a month to update county maps and databases, Raborn said. State law forbids voters in two political districts from being in a single voting precinct. Whenever the new boundaries of a district split a precinct, election workers have to identify each voter in that precinct and move some into another one."We've got to go in and adjust the voting precincts, and that will take about a week," Raborn said. "Then we've got to move all the voters into their new precincts in the voter registration database, and that will take about a month."This will be the third time in the last year that Tarrant County will have to pay a consultant to update its precinct lines in light of changes to the statewide maps. Like officials statewide, local officials at first assumed that the Legislature's maps would be used for this year's elections. Then a federal court drew temporary maps which, again, many guessed would be the ones used for 2012. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the court-drawn maps from being implemented."Every time we did it, we thought, 'This is it,'" Raborn said.County commissioners initially allocated up to $75,000 to a law firm that specializes in redistricting to update precinct lines. That money's been spent, so commissioners have committed $50,000 more to do it again.While the elections office is revising its databases, candidates will file for spots on the Democratic and Republican primary ballots. Once the ballots are finalized, election workers will have to hustle to comply with a federal law that requires sending military and overseas ballots 45 days before the election -- mid-April if the May 29 election date holds.Voter ID lawA separate legal dispute is adding even more election uncertainty.Gov. Rick Perry signed a bill last year requiring Texas voters to show photo identification at the polls. The law is still waiting on federal approval.Whether the law will be in effect for May elections impacts the language on several signs and forms Raborn needs to order.The big one, he says, is a special envelope used with provisional ballots that voters can cast if there's a question about their eligibility.If the lack of a photo ID is why a voter might need to cast such a ballot, the new law requires that the ballot envelope reflect that.Aman Batheja, 817-390-7695Twitter: @amanbathejaHave more to add? News tip? Tell us
