By A. Govea
Voter turnout actually went down after Countywide voting was enacted,” French said in a Sept. 9 X post. “So, when you see all the lying democrats on here whining about voter suppression, just know they only care about making it easier to cheat.”
That was a posting that was published locally and attributed to Republican County Chair Bo French. If it was meant to be devised, mission accomplished. Pero, he (Bo) did not attend it to be a call to action, which it turned out to be. It’s never a good idea to poke the bear or, in this case, the donkey. The issue on the table here today was whether to decrease early voting sites. Especially the ones at UTA and other local college campuses.
Again, Bo and company would have not predicted the pushback and honestly neither did I. Now I know that just like the Cesar Chavez holiday controversy that came up a couple of weeks ago. There was a fair amount of people show up. However, the number of folks there on Thursday far exceeded that turnout.
I got there at about 10.10 am with a 10.00 am start time and was expecting not to have a lot of seating options. However, I was taken back to realize that I was not able to get into the court chambers. It was full, so I was directed to an overflow room. And this room was close to capacity as well.
In this room, you could watch the proceedings on a big screen, and that is about it. However, it did not stop the muffled jeers and boos directed at County Judge Tim O’Hare. Especially when he said that the folks in Keller and his home in Southlake only had one early voting spot. Had we been in the actual hall, Tim would have directed these folks to shut up or be removed. He made this clear when local community advocate Alex Montalvo was removed for mentioning Cesar Chavez at Thursday’s meeting.
I was there for two reasons: one for this article and to share my concerns about removing established voting sites. So, to that end, I signed up online to speak with full knowledge, and I would not be alone. Pero, when they got to the part for public comments, they announced that there were over 160 people signed up. I was like, woo, and then they took a vote to cut time from the normal 3 minutes to 1 and lost. I quickly did the math in my head and said to myself, “Chala (Nope) and headed for the door. And it turned out it took over 4 hours to finally get to the vote?
I applaud all the folks that hung in there and had four hours to give up on a Thursday morning that turned into a Thursday afternoon. God Bless them, we need more people like them if we want to preserve our Democracy. Especially all the young people who were there, who flew in the face of people who said, “Young people don’t care.”
By now, you know how it turned out. With a 4 to 1 vote, the fifty-one sites were kept. And you can guess who the lone vote against (Tim O’Hare) was. This was a big relief to most, especially since commissioners Simmions and Brooks were out of town at an elected official’s event. However, they both were able to Zoom in to cast their vote.
I, along with most of the folks who attended, were happy that common sense and Democracy won. However, this was just one battle (They), and we had more to come, and we had to be ready. In fact, Bo French described the citizens who showed up as a mob in a published report if you would like to help our efforts to preserve the cornerstone of our Democracy, the right to vote. Please contact me @ albertogovea@amigosnbusiness.com to be invited to our next meeting.