Texas News

Vol. 1, No. 4--Post-Election, 2004

The Progressive Populist Caucus/Texas is holding a post election "WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE" feedback session in San Antonio on Saturday,November 20 at 11:30 am, at Picante Grill at 3810 Broadway. The objective is for the PPC to dialogue with progressive and populist activists from around the State on strategies to enlarge our already significant foothold in the Texas Democratic Party. Representatives from such common-ground groups as DEMOCRACY FOR TEXAS, Tejano Democrats, Young Democrats, African American Caucus, Asian American Democrats, Stonewall Democrats have signed on to participate and about 100 are expected. This is a first step in galvanizing the entire progressive movement within the Democratic Party in Texas to continue transforming the Party.

A sixth regional group of the PPC in Texas has been formed in Corpus Christi Texas to encompass the entire South Texas region and will be installed with a seat on the PPC Statewide Steering Committee at the upcoming November 20 meeting.

The Houston regional PPC, at the invitation of the Harris County Democratic Party Chair, weeks prior to election day November 2, formed a Committee for Election Security to address signficant security issues with the new Hart Intercivic DRE's used at over 800 polling places across the County, home to 2 million registered voters. The PPC members teams also with Dr. Dan Wallach of Rice U., a nationally recognized leader in electronic voting machine security (or, insecurity !) as well as a representative of People For The American Way's Election Protection team, in a meeting with the Republican County Clerk whose elected office oversees the county's elections. Our demands were the creation of a bi-partisan board to oversee a pre-election test of the voting systems, an idea promulgated by the Brennan Law Center of NYU. We were summarily rejected by the County Clerk but for the first time she was put on notice by an impressive delegation of activists, lawyers and technical experts, that the people are engaged and watching. The Houston area PPC also were invited by the Democratic Chair to recruit members of the Early Voting Ballot Board to play a key role in process and approving mail in, military and provisional ballots. Our work on that Board brought us up close and personal to the ballot processing and counting associated with the election of the first Vietnamese American and Democrat to displace a Republican with important committee assignments from the Houston area. He beat the Republican by 31 votes!

Stan Merriman, Chair
Progressive Populist Caucus of the
Texas Democratic Party

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