Paper trail voting technology brought to you by Travis County Republicans

As a major victory for advocates of ballot integrity, the Travis County Commissioners Court this week approved a new paper ballot backup hybrid voting system that combines electronic tabulations with a voter verified paper ballot.

According to the Austin American Statesman, the county's elections chief gave credit to the voters in general for paving the way for this innovation in voting technology.

“Our voters have been asking for it for a long time, and it was not available on the marketplace,” [Travis County Clerk Dana] DeBeauvoir, the county’s chief election official, said in an interview. “I tried to build it myself. We got a long way down the line, and ... we caused, we influenced the marketplace to come back and do this.”

For background read the Statesman article here: https://www.statesman.com/news/local/travis-county-purchase-million-paper-trail-voting-system

Who might "the voters" DeBeauvoir referred to be, exactly?

Austin audit headed to ballot; fight to remove tricky language just beginning

Misleading language may potentially doom a now-approved petition to place an audit of the City of Austin on the November ballot.

The coalition supporting the audit ballot item, Citizens for an Accountable Austin, is taking emergency legal action to clarify the language (see legal petition via the Texas Monitor at https://texasmonitor.org/attorney-citys-ballot-language-on-independent-austin-audit-political-prejudiced).

According to Matt Mackowiak, county Republican chairman who stayed up to the wee hours to testify, the victory was nothing short of heroic, but the battle continues in making certain that voters are aware of what, exactly, they will be voting on.

Cedar Park Council: intent of new rule isn't to prohibit speech, but ...

Interesting, if not troublesome, tid-bit in the editorial page of Thursday's Hill Country News:

With no fanfare and limited discussion, the council passed a set of rules to govern itself. Among those is a paragraph that states: 

“Members of the City Council shall confine their discussions concerning a motion or a question to the merits of a motion made and seconded or to a question already presented to them. Councilmembers shall show respect and courtesy to, and refrain from making disparaging comments about, fellow Councilmembers, the public, and City staff in the conduct of a City Council meeting, outside of Council meetings, in social settings, and on social media.” 

Council Member Heather Jefts told us [the editorial board] that the verbiage had been discussed for some time and the intent wasn’t to prohibit speech, but to ensure the council members conduct themselves “in a manner befitting the gravity of (their) positions.”

Read more: http://hillcountrynews.com/stories/dissent-is-essential-to-our-democracy,77815

Jefts happens to be one of the liberal candidates on the Cedar Park City Council, having taken out conservative John Lux in May 2017.

Several dictionaries we consulted seem to agree that "disparaging" means "expressing the opinion that something is of little worth; derogatory." We'll see what comes of this.