Texans flock to polls in pandemic
In hard-struck area, voters overcome fears to cast ballots
Fifty-year-old Sharon Cummings has asthma and recently had surgery. Usually, she tries to stay home in southwest Houston — not wanting to risk getting infected with the novel coronavirus.
But on Tuesday, Cummings pulled a blue Dallas Cowboys mask across her face, tugged a glove over her hand and cast her ballot in the primary runoff election.
Like Cummings, tens of thousands of voters across the region Tuesday had to weigh civic duty against health concerns — and they decided that voting in person was worth it even as COVID-19 cases had increased sharply.
Court decisions blocked efforts to make mail-in ballots available to all Texans. And the runoff itself was delayed while a new Harris County clerk drew up safety plans after the former clerk resigned with health concerns.
Cummings voted in the 77045 ZIP code, which has one of the county’s highest per capita rates of COVID-19. But for her, she said it was
important that her two boys know “they have to fight for their rights.”
The Hiram Clarke Multi-Service Center polling site that Cummings chose anchors neighborhoods where Black residents moved in the 1970s, seeking upwardly mobile lives.
Residents there typically voted in high numbers, said 53-year-old Keith Taylor, who steers the Hiram Clarke Civic Club. Taylor was taught growing up there that voting was an important way to strengthen the community, he said.
“That continues to this day,” he added.
Taylor and his wife live down the street from his mother, Margie V. Taylor, 86. The pandemic had kept her from going to water aerobics and Bible study, but she was among the more than 2,300 voters who cast early ballots at the multi-service center as the pandemic raged.
“I always vote,” she said. “That’s the only way change is made.”
Among City Councilwoman Martha Castex-Tatum’s constituents in the area are her 10th-grade science teacher, her eighth-grade basketball coach and her parents, who have spent time sitting in the backyard and celebrated her dad’s birthday in the driveway.
Castex-Tatum called to tell them voting early at the multi-service center felt safe. The vice mayor pro tem felt confident others in the neighborhood would be voting, too.
“Voting is important to people,” she said. “They will show up, take the precautions, go home, make sure they wash their hands and get it done.”
Indeed, on Tuesday, voters arrived as the multi-service center doors opened to voters at 7 a.m. Red, white and blue signs pointed the way. American and Texas flags waved in front of the building.
Poll clerks — who were required to wear masks — received training over Zoom to offer voters masks, finger covers and a wipe to clean their IDs after scanning them on the machines.
After every person voted, clerks also planned to sanitize the machines, which were placed at least 6 feet apart.
“We have set in place every necessary action to make sure that everyone is protected,” said Devoun Rushing, elections director for the Harris County Democratic Party. “There will be social distancing. There will be masks. There will be gloves available.”
Applications to vote by mail had increased significantly, said Chris Hollins, the interim county clerk. His office had also encouraged voters to go during early voting, when lines would likely be shorter — and more than 153,000 people did.
“We put a number of measures in place to keep people safe at the polls,” Hollins said. “So seeing those numbers, seeing that turnout leads us to believe that people are hearing that message and that they do feel safe.”
The Hiram Clarke area today is predominantly Black and Hispanic. Many work in the service industry, Castex-Tatum said, and can’t work from home — perhaps one explanation for the high amount of COVID-19 in the ZIP code.
It’s also a short drive from Butler Stadium, which has served for months as a COVID-19 test site, where the capacity of 650 samples is routinely collected by early afternoon each day. Harris County added 1,658 new cases Tuesday, a 3.5 percent increase, and is now at 49,027 cases total.
At the multi-service center, the usual community meetings and senior gatherings had been canceled, but Ed Kelly, a legislative aide for Democratic state Rep. Alma Allen, said he still comes to the center to organize food deliveries to seniors.
“You worry about it all the time,” Kelly, 64, said of possibly contracting COVID-19. “But you do what you need to do. You wear your mask” — his slipped under his nose as he spoke — “and hope for the best.”
On Tuesday, voters wore all kinds of masks. Mike Graves, from the Fresno area, wore a bulky one with round, pink filters on either side that made his voice sound distant, as if he were underwater.
Graves, 32, said he has a weakened immune system. His hours working at a brewery had been cut back. He felt it ridiculous that it wasn’t easier to get a mail-in ballot so he could vote — a right he fought for in the Air Force.
“For me, I’m out here just taking all the precautions that I can because voting is a right,” Graves said. “At the end of the day, if this is what I’m stuck with, and this is what I have to do to express my right to vote, I really don’t have much of a choice.”
Zina Garrison, a Houston native and former professional tennis player who now runs a tennis academy, drove her sister and brother-in-law, both in their 70s, to vote at the Hiram Clarke MultiService Center, too. They have two children at home, one with brain cancer and another who receives dialysis.
On the way over, Garrison’s sister told her how important it is to vote. She felt energized by what Garrison, 56, referred to as the younger generation’s recent social justice movement.
Garrison, too, felt it was important to participate and to not be afraid. And she knew the scope of the virus; she had worked for a time as a COVID-19 contact tracer before the work became too overwhelming.
“We talk about … having a voice,” she said, “and this is one way to have a voice. And it’s time that we get involved and stop complaining and actually do something about it.”