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Brazos County election officials on Tuesday had to bring additional voting machines and employees to help with an unexpected high turnout in College Station.
College Station residents are voting on whether to approve Proposition 1, which would remove the city’s nine red light cameras. Meanwhile, voters across the state are deciding on 11 proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution.
College Station resident Hunter Goodwin, president of Oldham Goodwin Group, said he went to vote around 8:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Bryan-College Station Convention & Visitors Bureau with his two children when he witnessed a dispute broke out.
He said when he arrived at the location there was a man standing outside the building chanting and holding a sign asking for people to vote against the ordinance for red light cameras. Goodwin said he ignored the man and went inside the building to vote in favor of getting rid of the city’s red light cameras.
After he finished, Goodwin said he saw the same man in a heated discussion with a woman who was inside her car. He said he buckled his kids up in the car and confronted the man to ask what he was doing. Goodwin said the individual told him he was from Houston and was paid by the Keep College Station Safe political action committee to be there.
“I could tell he was getting really emotional,” Goodwin said, describing how the man kept telling him to back off and quit asking questions.
So Goodwin said he complied and then called the police.
“I think it’s completely distasteful. I think it makes you question the partnership. Is this really a company our city should be in partnership with if there going to go that far. I’m still sitting here bewildered that our city is in partnership with a company that would go that low,” he said.
College Station Police Department Lt. Rodney Sigler said an officer did respond to the location after the call, but no action was taken, Sigler said, adding that the officer talked to the man about rules regarding campaigning at polling sites.
College Station resident Emily Reiter, a spokesperson for the political action committee Keep College Station Safe, said they had “a lot” of people working the various polling locations to ask voters to cast ballots against removing the cameras.
“We’re glad to have their support,” she said.
She said she wasn’t sure if any were from Houston, which is what some residents said, but she did know that several students and local residents were volunteering, while others were being paid.
The red light issue is what brought voters to the polls in droves, a sight made clear when checking in a Bryan site where the lines were almost nonexistent and then a College Station location where sometimes there was a wait.
Brazos County Clerk Karen McQueen said they brought in four more machines because of the long lines at Christ United Methodist Church off Texas 6. She said that increased the total of machines to 13 at that site. She said Tuesday afternoon that they were in the process of calling more people to help process voters there.
“We planned for an amendment election. We didn’t plan for a proposition,” she said.
McQueen said she thinks the increase is because they had to move nearby Precinct 80 to the church.
Workers at the other polling locations have seen a steady flow of voters, but have not been overworked, she said.
McQueen said there was a rumor a fight broke out at the College Station Conference Center, at 1300 George Bush Drive, which is Precinct 9. However, nothing had been confirmed early Tuesday afternoon.
Polls close at 7 p.m.
Check back to The Eagle’s Web site Tuesday evening for updates on the election.
