Stephen Young

How dallascountyvotes.org looked on election day.

They had one job. Last Tuesday, the one day this year most people will even think to look at the Dallas County elections website, it went down. For seven hours. Any person needing to know her polling place had to seek out other methods. The situation was laughable, but it also couldn't have helped turnout.

See also: Dallas County's Voting Website Is Down

"I've got some real concerns," county commissioner John Wiley Price said at this Tuesday's Commissioner's Court meeting. "This is the second time that the website has gone down."

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Dwight Burdette

No we didn't.

Preliminary numbers are out for Texas' midterm election voter turnout from the Election Project, and they are abysmal. Just 28.5 percent of Texans eligible to vote did so, either in early voting or on Tuesday, the lowest percentage in the country. The last time Texas voted for its governor in 2010, 32.1 percent of eligible Texans voted.

Dallas County weather, and the dearth of competitive races, likely bears most of the blame. In 2010, Dallasites voted at a 37 percent clip, casting 424,511 votes for the top line race -- Rick Perry and Bill White's gubernatorial election. This year, despite the number of registered voters in the county growing by about 100,000, only 406,594 ballots were submitted in Greg Abbott's landslide coronation. That's 32 percent turnout. Prior to the election Dallas County Elections Administrator Toni Pippins-Poole told The Dallas Morning News she thought turnout would be between 35 and 37 percent.

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Would be king no more.

As in any good tragedy, Craig Watkins' tumble from his perch as Dallas County district attorney was preceded by hubris and stupidity. After badly underperforming compared with the rest of his party in his 2010 re-election win against Republican Danny Clancy, Watkins did everything possible to ensure another close race in 2014. He got one, and now, come January he'll be out of a job.

Whether it was the car wreck that Watkins secretly settled using forfeiture funds, the contempt charge saga, a bizarre debate performance or an ill-advised attempt to become the de facto boss of the Dallas County Democratic Party, Watkins consistently found new ways to shoot himself in the foot, and never raised enough money to spend his way out of it.

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Rob Boudon

Texas' voter ID is back, at least for this election.

In one West Dallas neighborhood, roughly 25 to 30 percent of eligible voters do not have a valid photo identification for voting. This area, along with sections near Fair Park, have the highest rates in the city. Yet speaking to voters outside C.F. Carr Elementary School, one of the central voting locations in the neighborhood, voters were, for the most part, well-prepared. And more important, many were more adamant about voting this year because of the voter ID law.

See also: Dallasites without Voter IDs Are Generally Poor, Non-White and -- Surprise! -- Democrats

Kameha Brown voted early last week, but says she has had a few friends who were discouraged from voting because they did not have a proper ID.

"I had a friend who came in with the voter registration card, and they said with the new ID law, we cannot let you vote unless you have the ID," Brown says. "It's causing a lot of confusion, and people are getting upset."

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Stephen Young

This ain't it.

If you aren't sure of where you're supposed to vote this morning, you're now battling more than just the rain. As of 10:00 a.m., dallascountyvotes.org, the county's guide to all things voting, isn't working.

We called the county to see what was going on. A worker told us the site was working, but when she closed her tab and tried to log back on, she got the same message we did. Elections experts predict that shutting down our computers, counting slowly to 10 and restarting them should fix the problem.

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seaotter22

How much does your vote really mean?

For all you Dallasites who skip the midterm elections in favor of the presidential races, you might reconsider that strategy: For Texans, your vote in national and even state races is all but symbolic.It's local issues where your ballot will really count.

According to financial analysts at WalletHub, Texas is ranked near the bottom on a list of most empowered voters in each state. A local elections such as the Denton city ordinance to ban fracking is an issue in which Denton voters are given a substantial amount of power to determine what happens in their city.

Casting your vote for senators, presidents, and governors in Texas is much more symbolic than numerically meaningful. Yet every Denton ballot cast for or against a fracking ban will have significant repercussions throughout the city.

Dr. Tom Hayes, a political science professor at the University of Connecticut who contributed to WalletHub's report, says that for an issue like Denton's, local voters could have ripple-effect power. Their vote could, in turn, influence later votes on similar issues.

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Lone Star Project

A careful researcher might have included a few more ticks on that timeline, like the time Craig Watkins admitted his office made a mistake.

For three years, a confessed attempted murderer roamed the streets of Dallas, going on a crime spree that ended when he killed a man in July 2007. Michael Wyatt had pleaded guilty to the attempted murder in 2004, but the Dallas District Attorney's Office wanted him to testify against his co-defendant Aaron Vaughn, so Wyatt stayed out of prison on bond while Vaughn awaited trial.

Now Wyatt is back -- in a fashion -- in a political ad that targets Susan Hawk, the Republican running against District Attorney Craig Watkins. The ad suggests that Hawk, who at the time was a judge in Wyatt's case, was to blame to letting Wyatt remain free until the day he killed a man in an Oak Cliff drug house.

There's one problem with that theory, though. It contradicts Watkins' own words at the time of the killing.

See also: Witness for the Prosecution

The Lone Star Project, a Democratic political action committee, debuted a new ad last week that claims Hawk should have done more to keep Wyatt in prison. Even worse, the PAC charges, Hawk altered court records in 2012, removing Wyatt's references to a deadly weapon in his attempted murder plea and minimizing the charges against him.

Matt Angle, director of the Lone Star Project, says the case is a reflection of Hawk's political opportunism, just like her running as both a Republican and a Democrat in previous elections. As she geared up to take on Watkins, Angle says, Hawk sought to soften any potential blow Wyatt's case would strike against her campaign.

But the history of the case tells a different story. As reported in the Observer in 2007, Watkins and his office have already taken partial responsibility for Wyatt's crimes while out on bail.

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Tom Arthur

Dentonites are turning out more than ever for early voting, many in response to the proposition to ban fracking in the city.

As early voting wraps up this week, Denton County has seen a surge in voters, as well as campaign spending. Much of that has to do with the fracking debate, which has also incurred more spending than any other campaign in Denton's history.

See also: Frackers Have Launched an Aggressive Campaign to Kill Denton's Drilling Ban

"It's pretty fair to assume that given how much money is poured into this, that's why so many people are out," says Dr. Adam Briggle, a leader with Frack Free Denton and a bioethics professor at UNT. "Everything now is focused on communicating with voters, especially at the polls, and making sure that they're not confused when they're going in to vote. The language is definitely written by a lawyer. So we want to make sure that folks know that they're voting what they want to vote for."

As of Tuesday night, Denton County election officials report, there was a 16 percent increase in early voting from the 2010 election: 47,035 in-person votes were cast, up from 40,529 on the same early-voting day in 2010.

"I have noticed since I came here that there is great activity," says Lannie Noble, Denton County elections administrator. "We've had people at a lot of early-voting locations trying to get information out to the voters. Most especially here in Denton we've had the fracking parties, for and against, well-represented."

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Dwight Burdette

Around 490,000 eligible DFW voters won't get their stickers this November. Trust us -- you want the sticker.

For the last few days, you may have been busy warding off a flurry eager people with clipboards. This weekend marked Dallas County voter registration days, and volunteers from both sides of the aisle were hustling to try to get your vote in November. They had good reason to be eager: Recruiting those eligible but unregistered voters in DFW may be crucial to determining the next election.

DFW has the largest number of eligible unregistered voters in the state. Census and Texas secretary of state data show that around 490,000 eligible voters are not registered in North Texas, compared with 355,000 in Houston, 224,000 in San Antonio and just 73,500 in Austin.

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Dept. of Justice

Percentage of people without proper voter ID in Dallas.

You might have seen the above map making the rounds recently among those opposed to the controversial voter ID law, which first passed in 2011 and was upheld in 2013. It requires voters to present an up-to-date photo ID to election officials. The map, and maps below, were first put together by Dr. Gerald Webster, a geography professor who testified last year against the controversial law amid the flurry of legal challenges.

Despite continued courtroom challenges, it looks like the law will be here to stay at least through the November election. And an interesting pattern emerges when the Dallas map of those who currently lack a photo ID are compared to more general demographics. Check out the nearly identical maps below.

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