1 Voter Strips to Bra, Another Walks in Texas T-Shirt Disputes
At least two women voters in the Texas area found out only after they got to their polling places about the sweeping scope of a state law banning election paraphernalia, at least as those applying the law are interpreting it.
One woman stripped to her bra during early voting, after being told that her Barack Obama T-shirt was in clear violation of the election code ban on campaign buttons and the like, reports the Houston Chronicle in an article today. However, another woman, who happens to be a Sarah Palin fan, was incredulous and outraged to learn that her “Seward, Alaska” T-shirt was deemed to be in violation, too. It also featured a moose head and fishing poles.
After she refused offers either to change in a women’s restroom and turn the T-shirt inside out or cover the offending Alaska reference with duct tape, Ginger Hurley, 40, was initially denied an opportunity to vote Oct. 26. But an election judge she encountered in the parking lot was more sympathetic, and let her cast her ballot in the T-shirt, the newspaper writes. Friends of Hurley who voted at the same site in the second week of early voting saw a handwritten sign indicating that T-shirts that named Arizona, Delaware and Illinois—the home states of both major-party presidential candidates, as well as their running mates—were prohibited.
“It sounds like this went beyond the letter of the law, but it probably was in the spirit of the law,” Hector de Leon, a spokesman for the Harris County clerk’s office, says of the Alaska T-shirt ban. “In this election, there’s a high level of awareness of who the candidates are and where they’re from.”
