Well, straight Democratic ticket for starters, ok? You can always go through and click back off any specific pol who you find particularly offensive and vote for someone else or nobody in that race, but that will still mean you'll be voting all the way to the bottom of that long looong ballot - and there's a lot of judges downballot who need your vote.
No, really, the issues I'm talking about here are before you come face-to-face with a ballot.
So, our Lege - gerrymandered all to hell and gone - back in 2011 passed a voter ID law which a federal district court judge has recently found to be intentionally discriminatory against blacks and Hispanics and effectively imposed a poll tax. That judge had ordered the voter ID law to be tossed, but the Fifth Circus stayed the effect of the trial court's order, and the Supreme Court chose not to do anything further at the moment - not unreasonably: we were days away from starting early voting then. We're three days into it, now, and voting is proceeding smoothly. Check back in a day or so for further analysis - the numbers are coming in interestingly. Battleground Texas has had an effect. Now, as to the mechanics of it ...
The easiest way is to vote by mail. None of this nonsense about a photo ID issued by God or Her favorite bureaucrats only - and if you want to vote by mail you have to mail (or fax) in your application so it's received by October 24 so DO IT NOW if you're going to. Restrictions are: you have to be 65 or older as of Election Day, or ill or disabled, or going to be out of town for all of early voting and election day, or in jail but still qualified to vote. Spot the joker? Just how ill? Don't know. Here's the application for a vote-by-mail ballot for Harris County. It's seventy cents postage - the County Clerk got it wrong - or, remember, you can fax it in.
Next easiest is to vote early. Yeah, you have to show ID, but you don't have to figure out which is your precinct and where you have to go to vote - you can vote at any of the early voting locations - and if you've been out at all, you've probably seen one or two - they're the places with big parking lots absolutely FESTOONED around the edges with all those election signs in red, white, and blue. If you're in Harris County - pick one. They'll be open 8am - 4:30 pm this week, 7 am -7 pm on Saturday, 1- 6 pm on Sunday, and 7 am - 7 pm next Monday through Friday the 31st.
That ID: a driver's license is the easiest, current or expired by not more than sixty days. Passport ditto, current or minus 60 days. Concealed carry license ditto. A bunch of different kinds of military IDs. Do we sense a theme here? Yes we do. And also a few other IDs - there's an ID you might get in place of a driver's license if you don't drive but want an ID, and now there's a special Texas Election Identification Certificate, and finally - a certificate of naturalization.
And now, a topic which deserves a diary all to itself - similar names !!!! Which has had people prophesying apocalypse, and which is not, after all, much of a nuisance at all except to conscientious election clerks on The Day.
We are all - election clerks and election judges - required to swear or affirm not only that we will uphold the purity of the election but that we have watched the videos on the County Clerk's website regarding "similar names" et cetera. Which, by now, we've all seen at least three times, because the law has been in effect for 15 months and there was the mayoral election last November, the primaries in March and then runoffs, and now again. If you want to see it, it's here. It's a download, click where it shows you to get similar name training.
But - what it says, is: election clerks should look at the photo and ALL the info on the ID and compare it to the poll book. Start with a curve ball: the beloved Lady Bird Johnson was in the poll book as Claudia Bird Taylor - but her date of birth was the same in the poll book and on her driver's license, the address was the same, the photo was obviously her. Name hits one field out of three - still, because of "the totality of the circumstances", according to our training, SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO VOTE NORMALLY. Enrique B. Gonzales or Henry Gonzales, no problem. Sandra Day or Sandra Day O'Connor, Beyoncé Knowles or Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, no problem. William or Bill or Billy, John or Jose or Jean or Johann, the election clerk is allowed to assume they are the same person. Hilary Diane Rodham or Hilary Rodham Clinton, fine. Carole Keeton Rylander or Carole Keeton Strayhorn, you don't have to show any other papers, the clerk is expected to know that people divorce and remarry - if there are other data that match - DOB and/or address. Everybody I've mentioned so far would x-mark and initial the affidavit box next to their name to swear that this name in the poll book described the same person as on the other ID that they presented and that was them standing there (if you can follow the subject through the thicket of pronouns), then sign the poll book, and then vote normally. And x and initial the box next to that and you can have your name in the next pollbook updated to match your Texas Driver's License name - which is also printed in the pollbook, right below the main entry.
Now here are a couple of tricky ones: Buddy Holly for Charles Hardin Holley - if the DOB and address and photo match, no problem. Ike Eisenhower for Dwight David Eisenhower - DOB and address match, fine. BUT. If the DOB and address of the photo ID that they presented didn't match what was in the poll book - now that might be a problem. The election judge would sigh and pull out a provisional ballot, which takes a lot of time to fill out and the election judge MUST do it himself - so the tendency is strong to decide that this person has a "similar name" considering "the totality of the circumstances". But if the election judge just can't persuade himself that this person is of a certainty the one described by the entry in the poll book, then the voter and the judge go through the paperwork nuisance of a provisional ballot, and the voter must bring a proper photo ID to the Main Office of Voter Registration within six days of the election for their provisional ballot to be counted.
On election day, you just don't ever turn a person away, just flat don't let them vote, unless you figure out that they're in the wrong precinct - you call Election Central and find out and tell them where their proper place to vote is - go there, hurry! or, work it out that they're in the wrong county (you just moved here from Dallas?) or they prove to you that they're not qualified to vote for whatever reason, like, "here's my voter's registration, can I vote now?" "Sorry, this state doesn't do same-day registration". If there is any shadow of a possibility (you did mail in your registration, a month and a half ago, you're sure?), you vote them provisionally, nuisance though it is.
The enforcement of the "similar name" rule has been extremely variable in the past - and oddly enough, it's been the more-Republican precincts that have lower rates of affidavit execution. We'll see how it goes this year.
Early voting runs until October 31. Go vote, okay? And then on November 4 you can call voters, or stand outside the polls and smile and hand out mail pieces, or call local Dem HQ and volunteer to drive voters to the polls ...