This week, I spoke to the Denton City Council to ask that they join the effort to get the County Commission to allow countywide voting on Election Day (voting centers).
My name is Jane Scholz, I live at Robson Ranch and I'm here to ask you -- individually and as a council -- to help raise voter awareness about the need for countywide voting on Election Day in Denton County -- just like we do during Early Voting. This is also called voting centers.
And to do what you can to help make this happen.
I serve as a voter registrar and election worker. I've been impressed with how secure our elections system is in Denton County, so secure in fact, that there's no reason not to allow countywide voting on Election Day, just like we have during Early Voting.
I've been talking to voters about this issue since March --civic and political clubs, church groups, neighborhood associations, people at local fairs.
Today I'm going to share what I've learned in that time. You can also find this on the website votingcentersnow.org.
First, I've found out this restriction on voting affects A LOT of people.
I started this effort after working as a clerk at a Democratic polling place during the March 5 primary where we turned away -- the official term is redirected -- more voters than actually cast ballots that day.
... and of the 400-500 voters we redirected for being in the wrong location, the vast majority were Republicans.
I start my talks to voters by asking for a show of hands of those who've been turned away from a polling place on Election Day. Quite a few hands go up.
Then I ask for hands of those whose spouse, good friend, relative experienced this. Many more hands go up.
Second, I've learned that voters don't know much about this issue. Even those who've been directly affected don't know why it happened to them.
Third, when I tell them a) that in 96 other Texas counties -- including our four closest neighbors -- this doesn't happen, and b) how easy it would be for our County Commission to fix this, they are not happy. Some are downright angry.
Many have contacted commissioners to ask that action be taken.
After the May 28 runoff, I learned something even more interesting. In Democratic polling locations, the equivalent of 7% of all voters who cast ballots that day were turned away from the first polling location they visited...most of those voters were, you guessed it, Republicans.
If we had numbers for Republican polling locations as well, we might find that as many as 14% of Election Day voters couldn't vote at their first stop...or maybe didn't vote at all.
Come November 5, we could be talking about several thousand frustrated voters trying to figure out where to vote.
I plan to keep talking about this, so our County Commissioners will continue to hear from voters on the issue.
I ask you to add your voices to mine and theirs in our call for action.
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