Now that the Brownsville Independent School District election has come and gone and the three trustees have been sworn in, obvious problems in the balloting for the district have become all too apparent.
According to voting totals, Cesar Lopez, Carlos Elizondo and Joe Rodriguez all won their respective positions on the board.
But it is the totals for the undervote in all these races that have cast suspicions in the process.
The Cameron County Elections Department indicate that a total of 19,152 voters cast ballots in the election. The total vote for Position 1 was 14,142, 13,776 for Position 2, and 13,913 for Position 4.
Why the difference between the total votes for district races and the totals in the positions?
A staff person at Elections told us that some of the 47 precincts in the district's were half in and half out of the jurisdiction, resulting in some voter ballots being over votes. That could explain some of the difference.
But the number of undervotes was a little more difficult to explain. Undervotes indicate that some voters did not vote in some of the races. That's understandable. But the pattern in the number of undervotes in the three positions, 2,789 in Position 1, 3,169 in Position 2, and 3,026 in Position 4, are too consistent to be mere accidental non-votes.On average that's 2,994 (about 3,000) per race. If we write off the difference in the two races as overlapped precincts as the staffer explained, then we come to the conclusion that the undervotes were the result of placing the BISD board election on the back of the same ballot used for the partisan general election.
In other words, many of those people who voted straight ticket (palanca) didn't bother to turn over the sheet to see if there were non-partisan races or propositions.
This is a fatal fallacy in the design of the ballot and on its face, the BISD was shortchanged on the $95,000 it cost to print both the ballots and to pay the personnel to run the precincts.
For example, even though only 19,152 voters cast a ballot in the BISD races, the elections office printed (and the BISD paid for) 54,714 ballots. The county paid for only 46,239 ballots. In total, the county elections office reports that they printed a total of 95,000 ballots.
We all know that Elections Administrator Chris Davis has stated in the past that he would rather err on the side of accuracy and caution than to get a fast count or deprive anyone of voting. But given the numbers above, the undervotes seem to be a function of a badly designed and thought out ballot.
Except for the race involving his father-in-law Joe Rodriguez, the undervotes in the other two races could have decided the election the other way.
If Davis can't see that (or admit to the mistake), then we'll just have to continue having the BISD subsidize the county and getting a bad product for their taxpayers' money.
12 comments:
We have incompetent BISD trustee because they are elected by ignorant citizens. As a result, our kids get the raw end of a bad educational deal here in Brownsville. Want to know why so many of our kids need remedial courses at TSC....its because the BISD Trustees are serving themselves and not the students. If most of the trustees went back to college, they would need remediation in all life studies.
I believe Luci Longoria, Mary Rey and Robert Rodriguez won hands diwn, but the "election workers" made it the other way....
This shit would never end.
The county needs to pay back the money, and Mary, Luci, and Robert need to fight back.
Luci Longoria needs to stop sending too many friends request on Facebook and posting selfies like
if she were some teenager.Some of us don't know her or care to . She needs to get a life and a husband who pays attention to her.
Agree w/ Nov 15, 11:19 pm comment.
Lucy , Mary, and Robert need to have the Feds look into their races!!!
Every BISD election is a failure because stupid people run for office and stupid people vote. In all cases the result will be stupid. The losers...our students.
No, integrity counts. Therefore, the complaining candidates (luci/cata) are failures "by design." If folks want to vote for you, they will. And, sample ballots are always available. Stop making excuses for losing, Losing Candidates. You sound like a student who blames the teacher for getting that D-.
What a joke. There were that many under votes because that many voters did not care or were too dumb and lazy to read the ballot. Cameron county is 43% illiterate. It's a good thing those aren't the ones who determined the outcome.
Cesar Lopez won. That's it.
Longoria walked around like she deserved to win. Cesar worked it. Surprise lady you and your son are not that big of a deal. Wanna be Losers.
And you are a worthless pendejo, which is even worse. ..sad!!
She is only 67 years old!!
Chris Davis, Cam'n Cnty Electon Commissioner, should have done the right thing, admitted his conflict of interest because his father-in-law was on the ballotand stepped aside for just this one election. Gotta love having family as the election chief, huh, Joe Rodriguez?
Democracy needs stupid people for voter activity. Democracy works in mysterious ways. El filósofo de Güemes.
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