WDNY Radio

(AUSTIN, Texas) — As the first in-person voters of the 2022 election cycle head to the polls on Monday, not only is this year’s early voting period expected to set the political tone for candidates ahead of the March 1 primary election, it will also put a renewed spotlight on Senate Bill 1, the state’s recently revised election law.

The law officially went into effect in December following nearly a year of debates in the Texas legislature over its possible impact on voting rights. Some of the most contentious floor debates were rooted in state Democrats’ claims that the law would limit voters’ ballot access through complicated voter identification requirements. Democratic lawmakers and voting rights advocates also took aim at the expanded access poll watchers would have within polling places under the new law.

New regulations surrounding voter identification appeared to create immediate ripple effects in election administration as early as January. In some of the state’s biggest counties, like Harris and Tarrant counties, hundreds of Texans eligible to vote by mail initially saw their mail ballot applications rejected due to the heightened proof of identity requirements.

Some counties had trouble matching original voter registration records to the information provided by voters on their mail ballot applications and, in some cases, voters appeared to have their applications rejected because they failed to include all of the newly required information.

In the middle of January, Harris County — which includes Houston — reported up to 30% of its mail-in ballots being rejected or flagged for rejection. The county is obligated to tell voters if their ballot was rejected, giving them a chance to fix it, which is bringing the numbers down. Now, Harris County is reporting to ABC News it is seeing a 13.45% rejection rate due to the new law.

Other counties are also reporting rejected ballots. Travis County — which includes Austin — told ABC News it is seeing a 7% rejection rate. Tarrant County — which includes Fort Worth — is reporting to ABC News an 8% rejection rate of its mail-in ballots.

“Every time there’s changes in the law, whether it’s ID requirements, new requirements for mail-in ballots, it takes some time for voters to get used to,” Texas’ Assistant Secretary of State for Communications Sam Taylor told ABC News in January.

Critics of the new law are also bracing for another potential change with the start of early, in-person voting — the possible effects poll watchers could have on voters, especially voters of color.

According to the Texas Poll Watcher’s Guide, which is issued by the secretary of state’s office, a poll watcher is a person appointed to observe the conduct of an election on behalf of a candidate, a political party, or the proponents or opponents of a measure. Poll watchers must first successfully complete a training course administered by the state and are limited in where they can serve. Although there are some limitations to who can serve as a poll watcher, partisans associated with campaigns or political parties are not exempt.

Under SB 1, poll watchers are given broad access to observe activities within polling places, as well as any instances of curbside voting, and situations in which a voter could be getting help with casting their ballot. According to the Texas election code, watchers are also “entitled to sit or stand near enough to a member of a counting team who is announcing the votes to verify that the ballots are read correctly.”

SB 1 stipulates that watchers are supposed to observe the happenings inside a polling place “without obstructing the conduct of an election,” and an election administrator can call for a law enforcement official to remove a poll watcher if that watcher “commits a breach of the peace or a violation of law.”

But the presence of people within polling places whose roles do not involve assisting voters could cause confusion, or even dissuade first-time voters from casting their ballots, according to Cesar Espinoza, executive director of the immigrant-led civil rights organization Fiel Houston.

“One thing is what you say on paper, but the other thing is what your actions portray or what your demeanor is — who really is going to be out there monitoring these people?” he said.

“Even if everything is done, right…we feel this is a waste of resources. This is a waste of people power. We should be all working to make more people want to go vote instead of trying to police those people who are already showing up to vote,” Espinoza added.

Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said empowering poll watchers through the new law could lead to a heightened partisan environment, putting voters of color on alert about interactions with poll watchers when voting in person.

“The push on empowering poll watchers, while increasing regulations around voting, have raised questions about voter intimidation, particularly from people of color, and in Texas – [voters] historically have an experience of voter intimidation during the period of Jim Crow – and… beyond that, during the period in which voting rights were not uniformly extended, particularly to African Americans, to Black voters and to Mexican American voters,” Henson said.

Although election administrators like Travis County Administrator Rebecca Guerreo tell ABC News they welcome trained poll watchers to be a part of the election process, despite concerns that some individuals “may be overzealous and overstep their authority,” voters could feel differently.

“Historical context is pretty clear, and I think historically, context is pretty hard to ignore for a lot of voters, and again, particularly voters that are people of color,” Henson said.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The very career experience that makes Supreme Court candidate Judge J. Michelle Childs attractive to both Democrats and Republicans may now be complicating her potential nomination, as some labor and progressive groups warn the White House that her appointment would break President Joe Biden’s promise to be “the most pro-union president” in history.

Childs, backed by influential South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn and the only candidate named by the White House as in the running to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, spent eight years practicing labor and employment law at a prestigious South Carolina firm, Nexsen Pruet. Some of her clients included employers accused of race and gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace.

“Her record shows that she wins for employers, and I think that’s problematic in this moment,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, billed as the nation’s largest grassroots-funded progressive group allied with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

“If we have any doubt about where [the nominee] stands on labor rights or the power of corporations verses labor in our economy right now, we should not put them forward and we would actively oppose them,” he said.

The firm’s website claims “one of the largest and most experienced” labor and employment law practices in the Carolinas, touting “litigation skills to aggressively pursue any matter through trial when it is in the best interests of the employers we represent.”

Earlier this month, a top lawyer for the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union with roughly 700,000 members, publicly called Child’s former employer an “anti-union law firm,” adding “that’s not what we need.”

While Childs did help defend corporate clients, she also represented employees in claims of mistreatment by their employers, her former Nexsen Pruet colleagues told ABC News. Several described her has a fair-minded and well-respected litigator. In 2000, she was named a partner at the firm — the first Black woman to become partner at a South Carolina law firm in a legal industry long dominated by white men.

“I would not characterize her work as anti-union or anti-employee,” said Nexsen Pruet managing partner Leighton Lord, who joined the firm a year after Childs and worked alongside her for many years.

“She worked on a dozen or so employee matters,” Lord said, referencing her work on behalf of employees suing their corporate employers. “Of the lawyers that came up in our firm, she’s probably one of the ones that worked more on the employee side than any of our other employment lawyers. So she’s very balanced in how she practiced in the private sector.”

Childs participated in 25 employment cases — in 23 of them defending an employer accused of alleged discrimination on the basis of race or sex, according to the American Prospect, a liberal publication which reviewed state court records during her tenure.

In one case, in the late 1990s, Childs represented a beachwear retailer sued by two former employees for alleged near-daily sexual assault at work. A federal jury sided with the plaintiffs, awarding compensatory and punitive damages, a decision upheld on appeal.

Her former colleagues say that court records do not reflect the many instances in which Childs achieved settlements for employees against their employers outside of court. Lord noted a 1999 case in which Childs represented a Mack Truck worker alleging wrongful termination, and she secured a “great” settlement without going to trial.

While some critics have accused Childs of working against unionization drives, Nexsen Pruet says it has never conducted any such campaigns and only has a single lawyer on staff specializing in union issues — one who joined four years after Childs left the firm.

“Diversity is more than just race and gender, it’s experience,” Lord said. “Her time at Nexsen Pruet gave her private practice experience representing employees, representing companies — it gave her a unique understanding of how the practice of law actually works.”

Childs has won the endorsement of some labor groups, including the South Carolina chapter of the AFL-CIO, whose president, Charles Brave, Jr., said in a letter to Biden earlier this month that Childs would “represent all of us well.”

After leaving Nexsen Pruet in 2000, Childs went on to oversee workplace safety regulations as an appointed deputy director at the state Department of Labor. From 2002 to 2006, she served as a workers’ comp judge on a state commission adjudicating benefits for injured or disabled employees.

“Everybody feels heard when they come into the doors of her courtroom,” said Meliah Bowers Jefferson, a former clerk for Childs on the federal bench.

Geevarhese said other candidates on Biden’s short list, including U.S. Appeals Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger, do not raise the same level of concern as Childs. He stopped short of endorsing a particular nominee.

“If Sen. Lindsey Graham [R-S.C.] is vouching for Michelle Childs, it should give Democrats pause,” he said.

Graham said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that he believes Childs would “get the most Republican votes” of any candidate on Biden’s short list. “She would be somebody, I think, that could bring the Senate together and probably get more than 60 votes,” he said.

The White House has not directly responded to the criticism of Childs but made clear she is still under consideration. The president “is actively seeking the recommendations of members of both parties as he prepares to make an historic choice and fulfill one of the most important duties of the presidency,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates.

Jefferson, who remains close with Childs, said the judge is likely unfazed by the controversy.

“While she may have been known at the beginning of her career as someone who had this expertise in employment law, certainly while she was on the state court bench the breadth of her experience expanded,” Jefferson said. “Her approach in every case, at least from my perspective, was that it is decided on its own merits.”

ABC News’ Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.