01 Mar Election Information and Useful Links

This Tuesday is Election Day and if you are choosing to vote in the Democratic or Republican primaries (and you haven’t voted early) tomorrow between 7am and 7pm is your opportunity.

Polling locations, sample ballots and more details for Austin area counties are here:

• Travis County: http://www.co.travis.tx.us/county_clerk/election/20100302/polls.asp.
• Hays County: http://www.elections.co.hays.tx.us/March22010brElectionInformation/tabid/110/Default.aspx 
• Williamson County: http://www.wilco.org/CountyDepartments/Elections/tabid/450/Default.aspx

Quick reference to candidate info and endorsements:

• League of Women Voters’ valuable voter guide can be downloaded here: http://www.lwvaustin.org/
• Austin Chronicle endorsements http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:960985
• Austin Sierra Club made only one endorsement for Raul Alvarez for County Commissioner Pct 4

Little known aspect of democracy
On the evening of the primaries in each precinct there is a precinct meeting for each party at the site of your voting location, which starts promptly at 7:30pm. The precinct convention handles the election of Permanant Officers, it elects Delegates and Alternate Delegates to the County Convention, and put forth resolutions which can be forwarded to county and state conventions. See this blog  for a resolution being forwarded by the SEED Coalition – Sustainable Energy and Economic Development. Bring it to your precinct meeting and introduce it!

Alternatives

There are reasons you may not want to vote in the primaries, particularly if you are planning to support a different party. If you vote in the primaries you cannot cast a vote at any of the other party conventions.

Green Party
Green Party of Texas precinct conventions will kick off election events at 7 PM on March 9, 2010, across the state. In order to obtain a ballot line in the November election, the number of participants at precinct conventions can be supplemented by petition signers requesting Green Party ballot status. Petitions will be circulated for a 75 day period starting on March 10, the day after the precinct conventions. The number signing or attending precinct conventions must total at least one percent of the total number of votes received by all candidates for governor in the most recent  gubernatorial general election, around 44,000 voters. More info at  http://txgreens.org/drupal/

Libertarian Party
Libs have a state convention too. More details at: http://lptexas.org/

Independent Voting
You can read more about the breakdown of the two-party system and how to approach elections as an independent at http://www.independentvoting.org/. The Texas version is called Independent Texans http://indytexans.org

By all means get involved in some way. IF you don’t like the choices available then run yourself or back someone you believe in. Democracy works only when we do!