State Legislature Special Election Megathread v2

[jimrtex]

In other news it appears the Spanish translation for the ballots in TX Senate District 19  (a very hispanic district) were translated with Google Translate, giving the wrong translation for the word "run-off" as "drainage". So for many Spanish speakers the ballots informed them that there was an election drainage.

Here is a story about the mixup.

ACLU says Bexar County inaccurately translated ‘election runoff’ as ‘election drainage’

Here is the Bexar County elections website.

Bexar County Elections

Down at the lower right, there is an item to select a language. Select 'Spanish' or any other language and see what happens. It appears that Bexar  County learned from the special runoff and included the Spanish version of the election description. But if you translate to Spanish and then to English you will see that the election is

"November 6, 2018 - GENERAL, SPECIAL ELECTION, AND BONDS SET LETTER"

There is no evidence that any actual election materials such as ballots were mistranslated. These are usually translated by the SOS office, because there is a concern that an election, particularly referendums, could be overturned if different counties used different translations.

Harris County is required to provide Vietnamese translations, and there was concern that Fort Bend might have to also do so. There was a proposal to have the SOS provide standardized translations. The county election people one time asked the USDOJ what they did with the translations (submitted with a VRA Sectiom 5 preclearance). The USDOJ guy replied that they put them in a filing cabinet - "we don't have anyone who can read Vietnamese").

For example here is the election notice from Val Verde County.

Notice of special election (runoff)

"eleccion especial decisiva" translates to "decisive special election".

Atascosa County uses Microsoft translator, and translated

"Texas Senate District 19 Unexpired Term Special Election Run Off - September 18th" to

Senado de Texas distrito 19 expirado elección especial escurr - 18 de septiembre"

If Runoff had been used, it would have been translated as "la segunda vuelta" (second bike race around Spain).

A problem with the Atascosa website is I couldn't find a way to turn off the translation.

There is an underlying assumption that persons who are Hispanic (1) speak Spanish; and (2) are literate in Spanish. Someone with a minimal education in Spanish might be able to read Spanish because spellings are more regular, but might be limited if they only had a spoken vocabulary. Someone who was raised in the US and was educated in the US are likely to be able to read English better than they read Spanish. Naturalization requires some proficiency in English (there is an exception for the elderly).

There may be some US citizens who don't read English or Spanish. This might be true of migrant workers, whose education if any was hit and miss. But how many of these voters are going to log on to the Internet and navigate to a county election web site, and then figure out how to turn translation on.  They are either going to have their grandson figure out where the polling place is. Perhaps they would try to use the automatic translation. The number of persons perusing an election website to determine if their happened to be a special election is approximately zero. Someone who knew there was a special election is unlikely to have been confused by the translation. They just wanted to know when the election would be held and where early voting would occur (for a special election in a district, typically only the early voting elections in or near to the district are used).

If you are told that you have to provide all information in Spanish, it would seem like a pragmatic decision to use a tool that provides translation into Hindi and Russian etc.

It is hard to maintain a website. If you look at smaller county websites if they exist at all, this is quite obvious. Perhaps they had a high school student put some content up, but he didn't understand how to make the site maintainable. If someone else added some content later, they probably didn't understand the original scheme, so just edited the page source enough to make it work.

Some smaller counties.

Brewster County

Election web page is links to official documents all which include translated (and appear to use wording provided by SOS). Brewster County hired a new elections commissioner in 2017. Bilingual was not a requirement, but a plus.

Crockett County

No county web site. I did find links to county offices on the Ozona COC web site. County does appear to have email. 87% of the population lives in Ozona, so probably everyone knows the county cleark personally.

Dimmitt County

Very basic web site. Coverage of general election is sparse.

Edwards County

[jimrtex]

The Special State Legislative Elections across the country weren't even remotely on the networks radars for understandable reasons, but let's run down what happened, state by state.
Texas: Coming into the election, the GOP controlled the seats up for special election by a margin of 2-0. They maintained one by default as no Dem filed, but the Dems picked up the other seat by a margin of 51%-49%!

The special elections were for the remaining two months of the regular terms. In both cases, the candidate had announced they were not running for re-election, and then resigned. Under Texas law, special elections are held at the next uniform election date (there is one in April and the November election). There can be an earlier election, but typically this only happens when the legislature is in session. The Texas legislature only meets in regular session in odd years, so there is nothing for a legislator to do other than attend some interim committee hearings. The office can probably handle any constituency matters, and there aren't too many of those.

In HD-62 in North Texas the representative for the regular session was determined in the Republican primary and runoff last spring. There was a Democrat and Libertarian candidate for the regular election. The Democrat and Libertarian candidate probably decided to save the filing fees for the special election (the Libertarian did not pay a filing fee, since that is for the primary, and he wasn't nominated by primary. In the regular election for the full term it was R 76%, D 22%, and L 3%. It was somewhat unusual to have a Democrat running in the race. Perhaps someone ran because it was an open seat, or the Democrats appear to have been running more candidates. In an ordinary election, a candidate might have had to pay the filing fee out of their own pocket.

Special elections in Texas are open primaries (like Louisiana) but with partisan labels. There are no nominations, and party labels are self-ascribed, there are no qualified parties. If no candidate wins a majority a runoff is held. Since there are not party nominations, the straight ticket device does not apply.

In HD-52 the two nominees for the general election also filed for the special election. The regular election for the full term was the 18th race, but was at least on the first page. The special election was 31st, on the second page, just before the school board races. There was about a 10% rolloff for the special election.

There is a possibility of a special election for SD-6 late this year. Sylvia Garcia was elected to Congress and will be forced to resign by January 3 (unless she delays taking the Congressional oath). It is likely that the special election will happen in the new year.

[jimrtex]

A special election has been called for December 11, for Texas SD-6 after Sylvia Garcia resigned. Texas statute permits special elections to occur on an expedited fashion if a vacancy occurs during a legislative session or proximate to it. A majority is required for an election so a runoff is a possibility. It could also trigger a special election for a House district since two contenders are currently representatives.