El Paso City Council Bans Mobile Voting Sites In Churches, Businesses

El Paso City Council has decided to move all mobile voting sites to public property.

Traditionally, the city would install mobile voting sites at churches and some businesses for a day or two during early voting. Some city leaders were concerned that taking a ballot box to a business or church with prevailing beliefs means giving that specific group a louder voice than other voters.

City Rep. Beto O’Rourke wanted to completely get rid of mobile voting sites. He said that with regular polling places already prevalent throughout the city, mobile voting sites are not necessary.

Each mobile site costs 3-thousand dollars per day, per site. There are 20 sites, and the city spends $60,000 on them.

“If it costs 3,000 dollars a day to provide that ballot box at Helen of Troy, at the City, at the Catholic church, at Sierra Medical Center, who’s interest are we really serving here”, asked O’Rourke.

But other city representatives, such as Emma Acosta, Susie Byrd, and Eddie Holguin argued the extra sites are imperative in a community with historically low voter turnout. “The elderly, the ones that can’t get out to the polling places on election day. They’re there at church, during early voting, that’s when they use that”, said Acosta.

The sites include financial institutions and businesses like Govt. Employees Credit Union and Helen of Troy; private hospitals such as Providence Memorial, Del Sol Medical Center, and others; plus several churches, including St. Pius X and St. Thomas Aquinas.

“You’re in a service with 200 other congregants and the preacher is not telling you who to vote for but he says homosexuality is a sin, and the Lord cannot abide it, and it’s outlawed by the bible, and oh, by the way, there’s a charter amendment on the ballot that’s right here on the grounds of the church for you to vote on this issue today, tell me that’s not going to persuade anybody or have an outsized influence on the outcome of that election? You’d be lying to me if you denied that”, O’Rourke told Carl Robinson, who is opposed to changing or removing the sites.

City residents will vote for four city representatives and potentially a charter amendment that would repeal a voter-approved citizens referendum meant to strip away the health insurance of gay and unwed partners of city employees.

“Are we saying that the people who go out and vote, don’t cast a vote on their own, they’re not intelligent enough to vote their conscious”, asked Robinson.

O’Rourke also takes issue with public mobile voting sites, such as city hall and El Paso Police Headquarters. He said that with one of the most powerful associations in the city representing them, it’s not a stretch to believe that officers will vote based on association beliefs and culture. “I’m not against them, I’m not for them, I’m saying to literally deliver the ballot box to their doorstep, to their membership and then allow them to file past it and vote the way you would think their leadership would want them to vote, just is not the way our country is supposed to work”, he said.

He didn’t mince words about voting on private property either. “Helen of Troy has a certain number of employees who are literally going to have the ballot box delivered to them and that’s great if every organization in town had that same convenience”, O’Rourke added.

Though O’Rourke wanted to get rid of the mobile sites, he did agree to a compromise, by allowing them only at public places. The lone vote against the move was City Representative Carl Robinson, who said he believes there’s no such thing as a neutral polling place.

“We’re not giving the voting public much credit, as far as who they vote for”, Robinson said.

Steve Ortega, the representative to suggest the compromise of only holding the sites on public property, said the move is fair. “To have voting at private businesses seems to give access in a manner that’s unequal or points of view in a manner that’s unequal”, he said.