GOP voters claim pressure by officials

Galveston County’s Republican Party chairman has lodged a formal complaint with the county clerk after a handful of GOP voters said election officials tried to discourage them from voting Republican.

Santa Fe resident Warren Smith said he went Monday to the West County building, 11730 state Highway 6, to vote in the Republican primary.

“Immediately, I’m telling you, their whole attitude changed when I told them I was a Republican,” Smith said.

Smith, a retired League City police officer, had moved to Santa Fe in September from Bay Colony. Election officials at the polling place told him he needed to vote in his former precinct in Bay Colony, Smith said, because voter rolls still showed him living there, even though he had updated his driver’s license in November.

State election law allows a person to vote in the precinct in which he or she resides, even if that person moved there after voting rolls were established with the old address, so long as the person signs an affidavit of residency. That person casts a provisional ballot.

“I told them about that, but they said there was nothing I could do, to vote in my own precinct,” Smith said. “They said I had to sign as if I still lived in Bay Colony.”

Douglas Godinich, who manages the county clerk’s neophyte elections office, said a call or visit to the county’s voter-registration office, a division of the county Tax Assessor-Collector’s Office at 722 Moody St., could have straightened out Smith’s problem.

“They can’t give you a provisional ballot if you’re registered to vote at another address within the county,” Godinich said.

Godinich said claims of Democratic bias by election officials at polling places were “outrageous” and “an insult” to volunteers at polling places.

“We don’t turn voters away at the polls,” he said.

Kerry Neves, a Dickinson city councilman and attorney, is chairman of the county’s Republican Party. Neves said he had received Smith’s complaint, as well as one from an elderly island man who said election officials at the county courthouse had repeatedly asked him, in a surprised tone, “You’re voting Republican?”

“I’m not happy,” Neves said. “These folks are supposed to be impartially running this. This is why we, as Republicans, have qualms about letting the clerk’s office further into this process because we have these kinds of problems.”

Godinich said each polling place had a 50-50 split of Democrats and Republicans working there.

“Ms. (County Clerk Mary Anne) Daigle has made a conscious effort to make sure both parties are represented at all polling places,” Godinich said.

Godinich said he found Republicans’ claims “suspect” because some complainants — including three African-American voters in Galveston — did not want to speak out publicly.

Neves said that, while he understood those voters’ desires to remain private, their anonymity made correcting problems more difficult.

“It is tough, because some folks just don’t want to come forward,” Neves said. “They’re leery because they already feel that they were focused on because they were black, but that makes it almost a Catch-22. If we can’t produce a voter with a complaint, it won’t let us call attention to these problems.”

Godinich invited Neves to station poll workers as observers at various polling places to ensure no political party received favorable treatment.

Neves said that could happen, even though early voting ends Friday.

“These officials should simply be checking in people to vote, not giving anyone a hard time, giving out erroneous information or even commenting on how they want to vote,” Neves said.