Austin American-Statesman: Fight goes on over election confusion; 3,000 complaints, most on ‘mundane’ matters

Some of the complaints were alarming.

A person in Galveston, dressed in military garb, being a noisy nuisance outside a voting center. A person in Dallas wrongly telling voters they must temporarily hand over their cellphones and smartwatches to enter a polling place.

But the bulk of the nearly 3,000 complaints that voters filed this election season with Common Cause Texas, a nonpartisan voter advocacy group, reflected procedural problems. People having difficulty figuring out where to vote, or whether they were eligible, or how they could correct a problem with their mail-in ballot. People not being told what to do with the printed ballot containing their selections. Or people, particularly in Harris County, arriving at a precinct that had run out of the paper used to print ballots.

Any problem that interferes with a voter casting a ballot is an important one, of course. But it wasn’t lost on Common Cause Texas Executive Director Anthony Gutierrez that most of the problems that voters faced had nothing to do with wild conspiracy theories.

Procedural problems “may seem mundane,” Gutierrez told me, “but we get a lot more of these calls than other states, which speaks to the fact that Texas doesn’t do nearly enough public engagement around voting and how to make your voice heard and be civically engaged.”

Count me among those who breathed a sigh of relief when Election Day passed without any major outbursts at the polls. It was the first big test of our elections since Donald Trump riled up his base with unfounded claims of a stolen 2020 election and pointed his mob toward the U.S. Capitol.

Gutierrez agreed this Election Day went better than many had feared, but he cautioned that our state isn’t in the clear. …

The Carter Center folks say they plan to expand this democracy-building effort, although it’s too soon to say which states would be involved.

I mentioned the idea to Gutierrez, with Common Cause Texas, and he was intrigued. Better explaining the mechanics of our elections not only helps voters participate in the process, but it helps debunk the falsehoods that could lead to violence.

Still, he wondered about the ability to find GOP figures in Texas who would sign on.

“We are short on Republicans who will speak out against the election deniers,” Gutierrez said.

Still, he wondered about the ability to find GOP figures in Texas who would sign on.

Indeed, two-thirds of Texas Republicans still do not believe President Joe Biden was legitimately elected. Election deniers made strong runs for office around the country, and the massive layoffs at Twitter and at Facebook’s parent company could allow even more disinformation to pour across social media platforms, potentially triggering political violence.

Jesse Littlewood, vice president for campaigns at Common Cause, said many of us are like the proverbial frog in the pot of water, growing acclimated to rising heat instead of sensing the danger.

“We are now in a pot of boiling water,” he said, “and we haven’t realized it.”