What Christi Craddick Just Said to the Citizens of Denton
The Texas Railroad Commission continues its tradition of insulting the citizens of Denton. First, outgoing Chair Barry Smitherman accused us of working with the Russians and now incoming Chair Christi Craddick, in her column in today’s Denton Record-Chronicle, condescendingly calls us misinformed.
Here’s my summary of what Chairwomen Craddick really just said to the citizens of Denton:
“Hi, Denton. So fun to see your little attempt at democracy. Had you been smarter and not so susceptible to misinformation you would have chosen differently. Plus, I don’t have a damn clue about the regulatory situation that brought you to this point, so let’s talk a bit about Midland and 500 foot setbacks and old, disproven economic arguments. Let’s work together, as I continue to issue permits for fracking in your city, OK?”
The Final Word on Demographics of Frack Ban Vote
Last week we anticipated the industry political consultants would look for ways to justify how they spent $1 million to lose the frack ban election. Sure enough, they made a bunch of stuff up about supposed college “bloc voting,” threw around non-existent data about “permanent” and “transient” residents of Denton, and all the while insinuated that young and non-home owning voters were less important in the future of a city. Using early election data available from the county election office, we demonstrated their narrative to be categorically false.
We now have complete voter data from the November 4 election to supplement our earlier analysis.
Out of 26,266 total Denton city voters:
- The average age of voters in this election was 52. That’s only down 1 year from the last midterm/gubernatorial election in November 2010.
- Only 1920 college-aged voters voted in this election. That’s only 7.3% of the total voting population.
- The frack ban won by 4386 votes – even if all of these young voters voted for the ban, that’s not even enough to split the spread in half.
- 4509 people registered to vote since May 1, 2014 in preparation for the Nov 4 election. Only 2084 of them showed up to vote in this election.
City Council Preview – November 11, 2014
Happy Veterans Day! Today’s City Council meeting starts at 3pm and is a combination of work session and executive session items – no official actions items are on today’s agenda. Go here to see the full agenda. Here’s what we will be discussing:
UPDATE ON DME’s CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS
The city owns its own electric utility. That means that we have oversight over its direction and future in a way that we wouldn’t if our city was at the whim of a large corporate provider. It’s the reason we can boast 40% wind energy and the reason why we have significant say in large-scale electric-related infrastructure projects in our city, such as where we put our substations and transmission lines. DME has embarked on an ambitious and large-scale update to our transmission and distribution system that was first approved in Fall of 2013. Today we’ll hear an update to that and see what lies ahead.
COMMUNITY MARKET LOCATION
The wildly popular Denton Community Market is exploring additional options of where to set up for its next season. We have asked the city staff to explore options on city-owned property. We will hear a presentation of the pros and cons of setting up the market in three different locations: Quakertown Park, the Civic Center, and the parcel of land by the old county tax office between E. Oak and McKinney Street. This will be a great discussion as we seek to find a way to further encourage this one-of-a-kind community amenity.
On this note, here’s a book recommendation: The Good City and the Good Life by Daniel Kemmis, former Mayor of Missoula, Montana. He starts off the book discussing the central role Missoula’s Farmers Market plays in the democratic life of his city. This is worth pondering.
CHANGES TO CITY COUNCIL RULES OF PROCEDURE
We will be discussing possible changes to the “rules of procedure” of city council meetings, specifically whether or not to extend the 3 minute public hearing comment length to 4 minutes. During this discussion, there are some other rule changes that I’d like to consider:
- Allow the public to speak to Consent Agenda Items at the beginning of the Regular Session. Currently, the time to do that is at the beginning of our afternoon Work Session. This might be difficult for some given that flexible start time and the fact that it takes place in the middle of the day.
- Discuss the necessity of pre-sign-ups for Citizen Reports – currently a citizen must pre-register by Wednesday prior to the following Council Meeting in order to get on the agenda.
- Consider moving all Citizen Reports to the front of the council agenda. Currently, when there are more than 3 citizen reports, the others are moved to the back of the council agenda. It seems we can put them all up front.
- How can we make the beginning of the meeting more celebratory? Currently the mechanism for highlighting something is by using an official proclamation. I’ve seen other cities use this time as a way to highlight great citizen initiatives and other worthy projects in the city. In some cases, all the council members are invited to submit an item or person to honor during this portion of the agenda.
- Denton ought to choose a few meetings a year to begin the council meetings with live music and a reception in the lobby of City Hall. It’s how Denton does Government.
LEGAL DISCUSSION ON GAS WELL ORDINANCE AND CURRENT LITIGATION
No doubt, after last week’s historic vote banning the use of hydraulic fracturing in the city of Denton and the subsequent litigation that came the next day, there is much to discuss with our legal team.
Did a “College Town” Ban Fracking?
If Tuesday’s fracking ban really was the result of a good number of the city’s 50,000 college students exercising their predictably left-of-center viewpoints at the ballot box, perhaps the results of this election would be easy to dismiss. Already you are seeing many among the industry and state entities writing Denton’s historic vote off as the work of an activist student population. And most national news stories on the topic refer to Denton as “a small college town.”
We don’t yet have specific demographic information for election day voters, but given that an early voting location was on the campus of UNT and we faced all-day heavy rain showers on election day, it is safe to say the college students of Denton were more likely to early vote.
Of the roughly 15,000 early voters in the city of Denton, the average age of all voters was 51. That’s only down slightly from the 2010 midterm elections where the average age was 53. What’s more, only 1030 of them were between the ages of 18 and 22 (the average age of college students). That’s only about 7% of all the voters (and likely to go down in percentage once the election dat voters are factored in).
That is up from 2010 when only 3.3% of the total voters were of college age.
But, and this is the most important stat, the 7% figure is still below the percentage of college age registered voters in the city of Denton – 12% of registered voters in our city are between the ages of 18-22. College students didn’t even vote in proportion to their numbers in the general registered voter population.
Here’s an additional breakdown from Devin Taylor:
The only group that showed up LESS than the 18-22′s was the 23-30′s. Over half of 70+ year olds early voted, 1 in 8 college age voters and less than 1 in 10 23-30 year olds bothered to show up.
Average Early Voter turnout 24.27%
Born after 1991 12.37%
1984-1991 9.61%
1975-1984 15.47%
1965-1974 19.26%
1955-1964 28.16%
1945-1954 44.28%
pre-1945 52.12%
AN UPDATE (11/8): After this post was written, the Denton Taxpayers for a Strong Economy put out a press release arguing that the Fracking Ban “would have failed if not for massive bloc voting by University of North Texas and Texas Woman’s University college students.” Their data is wildly inaccurate, claiming to cite voting data that doesn’t even exist such as supposed distinctions between “permanent residents” and non-permanent residents.
Fortunately, some journalists are beginning to call foul and question their analysis. Here’s a story that aired on WFAA on Friday night.
Early Voting Analysis
There’s so much to be interested in when the polls close on Tuesday, especially if you live in Denton. With 2 citizen-initiated ballot initiatives (one on fracking and one on alcohol) and a series of city bond initiatives, there’s a lot to pay attention to for what is typically a run-of-the-mill midterm election in Texas.
There’s a bunch of talk about historic voter turnout in this election and already people are pointing to local issues, particularly the initiative to ban fracking, as a reason for this. It is too early to tell the ultimate turnout and clearly too early and simple to point to a particular issue on the ballot. Keep in mind, there is also a Governor’s race at the top of the ticket and this is the first open-seat Governor’s race in Texas since Ann Richards battled Clayton Williams for the open seat in 1990. Bush v Richards in 1994 was arguably another energizing race (even though an incumbent was on the ticket). All this to say, judging turnout of this election vis-a-vis previous Governor’s races/midterm elections is not precisely the right way to analyze this. We know that Battleground Texas has been working the state for a significant amount of time to register voters and drive turnout. That, in turn, has resulted in an equally competitive ground game on the part of the Republicans. We may very well see an historic turnout, but it is likely to be the result of efforts at the top of the ticket, not necessarily city-specific issues.
There are a couple of things to look at after the results come in on election night that can shed light on this one way or another:
- Look for how the voter turnout % in Denton tracks with the turnout in Denton County and in the state as a whole. We can only safely say city-specific issues drove turnout in the event that the Denton voter turnout busts the curve statewide.
- Pay attention to the number of total voters in the city and compare that with the number of people who vote on the city-specific items. In such elections, there is predictable shrinkage from the top to the bottom of the ballot.
EARLY VOTING STATS
According to county records, 14,465 Denton city voters turned out to vote during the Early Voting period ending on October 31 (when I crunched that with the latest City of Denton voter database, the number shrunk to 14,117 and I haven’t spent the time to figure out the discrepancy). Compare that with 20,028 total voters (early and regular) from 2010 (the last Governor’s race – again, consider the above qualifications).
The average age of these voters is 51 – this more or less tracks with the 2010 demographics where the average age was 53.
There’s been much talk of the number of newly registered voters heading into this election. For my purposes, voters who have registered since May 1, 2014 (roughly 6 months prior to the registration deadline for this election) are counted as a newly registered voter. There have been 4509 of those new voters registering during that time. As of right now, only 919 of them have voted – that’s only 20% of them. The average age of all the newly registered voters is 29, but the average age of those who have showed up to vote so far is 32.
UNT was home to an early voting polling site. 1460 of the city of Denton early voters voted at UNT – that accounts for 10% of all the early voters in the city of Denton. The average age of those voting at UNT is 29. Over half of the 919 newly registered voters who early voted did so at this UNT site – 469 of them.
We won’t know until Tuesday night what percentage of total voters voted early, but the trend has been increasing in recent years. 64% of all 2012 voters from the city of Denton voted early in that election. If early voters account for 64% of this election’s total vote, we can expect to see 22,601 total voters after the polls close on Tuesday. That would only be slightly up from the 2010 total of 20,028 voters – not the historic voter turnout some are already claiming.
We will soon find out. Go vote if you aren’t counted as part of 14,465 of your fellow citizens who already have!