An electronic publication of the Texas Association of Election Administrators

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Charlotte Wilcox
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1 Volume 16, No. 1 Page 1 August 2015 In This Issue Executive Committee President s Dispatch Vice-President s Day Dreams Treasurer s Tall Tale Secretary s Scribbling s Continuing Education Legislative Liaison Chance Outlooks Subscription Information President s Dispatch John Oldham john.oldham@co.fort-bend.tx.us August has been a month of changes. Our TAEA Secretary, Dawn Goldthorn, resigned her position as Elections Administrator of Wood County. We wish her the best, but will miss her and her contributions to our association. This also means that we will have two offices, Secretary and Treasurer, to fill at our annual meeting on September 1. We have also posted a new survey on our website. Please help our organization by providing information about the Annual Banquet at Buca de Beppo on Tuesday, September 1. This dinner is free to all TAEA members, but if we have an accurate head count, we will not have to pay for members who are not planning on attending. You find the survey under Upcoming Events on the right hand side of our home page: Guests are welcome as well. A guest ticket form is attached. Another change that may be coming our way deals with the Texas Photo ID Law. It would appear to me that the Federal Courts found that the law has a discriminatory effect but remanded the case back to the court of original jurisdiction to tweak the law rather than toss it. Of course that s only the way I read it. As Election Officials we will need to wait upon more learned interpretation from the SOS and/or the Attorney General. A good change for Fort Bend County is that we were approved to participate in the Countywide Polling Place program for the November 2015 election. We have been looking forward to this for a long time. Remember, the registration materials for our TAEA Midwinter conference are posted on our website. Hopefully, we will get a preliminary agenda posted in September. Also, we hope to soon be able to post registration for the final four REO classes.

2 Page 2 Vice-President s DayDreams Oscar Villarreal ovillarreal@webbcountytx.gov Greetings from Webb County... Boy it's HOT!!! How hot is it? It's so hot that even The Donald who is RED HOT (in the polls) could only take about 3 hours of the SIZZLING LAREDO HEAT when he visited last week!!! But seriously folks, we had been doing ok all the way through the month of June but starting on July 8 th until today...man, the days have been really SCORCHERS with temperatures exceeding the 100-degree mark all this time and unfortunately, there seems to be no end in sight. See what I m talking about by clicking here: July: August: You know, the worst part about this is that my office is usually very cold so I keep getting this uneasy feeling that one of these days as I walk out of the building towards my truck, which by the way is parked about 15 away, that I m literally just going to MELT. Really!!! I hope the weather is not as hot for you as it is down here in Webb County. Hopefully, by this time, all of you have made plans and reservations to attend the Secretary of State s 33 rd Annual Election Law Seminar for County Officials as well as the TAEA summer meeting and dinner in Austin in about a couple of weeks. There will be a lot of information on changes in election and voter registration procedures due to the 84 th legislative session and also possibly to the way voters are processed/qualified at the polls due to the recent U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that SB 14 (Photo ID law) had a discriminatory effect on minorities and violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This seminar will be very interesting for sure. By now, I m pretty sure most of you have heard that Dawn Goldthorn resigned her position as Wood County Elections Administrator and since her last day will be August 28 th, she will not be attending the SOS seminar nor the TAEA Summer meeting. Dawn was the first E.A. in Wood County and will retire after serving the Wood County voters for 10 years. In June 2013, she found great joy and excitement serving as an International Election Observer in Albania (Europe) during that country s Parliamentary Elections. Dawn was devoted to her job but more devoted to her family as family always came before anything else in her life. Obviously, this is one lady that definitely has her priorities in order!! She is a member of TAEA, presently serving as Secretary and would have moved up to Treasurer this coming year. Her smile and positive

3 Page 3 attitude will truly be missed not only by members of TAEA but also, I m sure, by her county. We wish her all the BEST!!! We had TEAM WebEx training on Tuesday, August 11 th and by what my staff and I saw, the new TEAM system looks pretty good. Hopefully, this new revamped system will be put to good use with a minimum amount of effort and without any issues. Treasurer s Tall Tale Almina Cook mcook@huntcounty.net I hope everyone is enjoying the last few weeks of summer; I can already feel the buildup in my office of elections lurking near! There have even been a couple of phone calls inquiring about elections for next year already. Everyone please be on the lookout (probably next week) for us to request a headcount for both the TAEA lunch during the SOS conference, as well as the TAEA dinner at Buca di Beppo. I ve had a couple of phone calls about the SOS lunch & the TAEA dinner; so let me try to explain. (I know it s confusing). As John had mentioned in the July newsletter, if you are paid TAEA member for 2015, your Buca will be paid as part of your membership fee. As far as the TAEA lunch goes at the SOS conference, your registration fee to the SOS conference pays for that lunch, but as TAEA members we will split off at lunch to have our business meeting & elect a couple new board members. I am once again attaching the list of TAEA members; it is up to date as of today. If you are paid, your name will be highlighted in yellow. If you are not paid & you would like to be a TAEA member, I have also attached a membership form. Enjoy the rest of your summer & I hope to see all of you in a couple of weeks! Secretary s Scribbling s Position will become vacant effective August 28, Anyone who is interested should contact John or Oscar. Continuing Education Lannie Noble lannie.noble@dentoncounty.com Greetings! Hot enough for you? The opportunities for education are hot. There are many organizations that offer opportunities to learn things that could benefit us in our profession. The Election Center has their CERA program. TAEA works with them on our REO program. The next four courses will be offered at the 2016 Midwinter! The Texas Secretary of State offers seminars for Elections people in August, October (county chairs-primaries), and December (city, school, and special district) elections. The Texas

4 Page 4 Association of Counties is a resource for election information. Information and educational opportunities are available on The County and District Clerks' Association of Texas web page as well. Take advantage of the resources we have. It will help us be better public servants. Education is important for those of us that have been here for a few years as well as those that are joining our ranks to fill those positions that are being created by counties adding elections administrator positions. We also have some that are leaving our professions to pursue other things in life. To those I want to say thank you for your service and good luck in your next adventure! I want to personally thank Dawn for being there to help me when I was looking at electronic poll books a few years ago. She was very open and helpful in that process. Good luck! You will be missed. The garden is still hanging in there. Education comes into place in the garden as well. I am always looking at ways to improve that process. I am still getting tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, cantaloupes, and just pick the last peaches. It has been a good year. As I mentioned education has help. I made a few changes and it appears it may have helped. It also helped that we had record rainfall. lol The grandkids just got back from Colorado. I will be going to Lubbock at the end of the month for a birthday party and to play some baseball. It will be a nice break before the run to November and the very busy year we will all have next years. Take time to enjoy life. And as you are enjoying life, do not forget to get your reservations in for the upcoming seminars, REO classes, TAEA midwinter conference, or any other things you need to schedule. I hope to see at the Election Center and/or the SOS conference. Legislative Liaison Jacque Callanen jcallanen@bexar.org Too hot to think in San Antonio. Casual Thoughts George Matthews, Victoria County I sent out a request on Tuesday to the members of the executive committee and asked for monthly articles. Then I found out that John is on vacation this week. Now why would he pick a week when his article is due? I also asked to not write about the heat in Texas and Oscar promptly responds with the weather as part of his article. I guess I ll have to forgive him because Laredo is certainly a hot spot in temperature and in politics. The real question is how much hotter are the politics than the temperature? I think Dawn received my request and almost immediately, to keep from having to write an article for the newsletter, submitted her resignation. She really didn t have to resign. I would have forgiven her for missing one issue. Still it does go to show how far some will go to not put something down on paper (actually it is all digital so I guess it is put it down on silicon.)

5 Page 5 The association annual meeting is on Tuesday at the seminar noon luncheon. If you have a guest who is not already attending the seminar you ll need to purchase them a meal ticket from the SOS staff at the seminar. It would also be helpful to the hotel if we had a head count for the luncheon meeting. The dinner meeting is on Tuesday evening. All members of the association are welcome to attend. Those who are not members will need to purchase a membership or pay for the meal separately. Check again in John s story for the link to the survey. If you do hit reply you ll owe me a drink ticket and since we are taking the bus I will not have to worry about driving myself back to the hotel. I ll only have to worry about climbing up the bus steps (and back down without falling.) If you need additional meals (for people who are not members) the guest meal form is attached. For those of you who do not respond to our head count request, be aware there may be no food for you and there will certainly be no drinks either. I have been trying to read through the legislative changes and am once again confused by the final results. It cannot be easy to create this much confusion in the election code without real dedication. Too often we hear complaints about the lack of will and determination of elected officials. Even a cursory review of the changes enacted will astonish you. It takes true commitment to a purpose, unknown to me, for the election laws to be more obscure than they were before. But I have to hand it to the 84 th Legislature; they have reached a new pinnacle of excellence. * * * Subscription Information * * * Just a SPECIAL NOTICE for the recipients of the newsletter. The association newsletter is intended for members and associates of. Those individuals who are not members or associates of the association may be removed at any time. If you know of any member or associate who should receive this newsletter please let me know at gmatthews@vctx.org If you would like to be removed from the list, please me or call (361)

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