By Claire Osborn
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, October 23, 2008
A widely circulated Internet message telling people to vote straight party and to vote again for their choice for president needs to be ignored, Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said. Their vote for president won't count if they do that in Travis County, she said Wednesday.
"We've been hearing about the rumor for the last three weeks, and it's all over the nation," DeBeauvoir said.
The message tells people that if they vote a straight-party ticket for the Democrats, they then also must mark the box for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, she said. In the county's electronic voting machines, that move would deselect the voter's presidential choice, she said.
On Monday, a man was telling voters at a Randalls grocery store at 2025 W. Ben White Blvd. to do the double voting, DeBeauvoir said. After an election official confronted the man, he fled in a Chevrolet Impala covered with stickers for GOP candidate Sen. John McCain and the Republican Party, she said.
DeBeauvoir said that was the only incident of a "polecat" she has heard about in Travis.
If Travis County voters mistakenly vote that way, a message will appear on the screen saying that they have changed their choice, she said. The electronic ballot allows voters to reselect that candidate, which means that their selection will be counted, she said.
The process is still confusing, said Buck Wood, an attorney representing the Texas Democratic Party. A lawsuit that the party filed last year against the Texas secretary of state alleges that the electronic voting machines used in Travis and 101 other Texas counties disenfranchise voters who make the same mistake that DeBeauvoir discussed. The lawsuit is on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Some people don't trust the straight-ticket vote, and it's really prevalent in rural areas," he said. "About 50,000 people in the state may lose some of their vote. They don't understand the instructions."
In Bastrop County, where paper ballots are used, people can vote straight party and also for individual candidates in the same party, said Melissa Kincaid, an administrative aide in the county's election office.
