The Evening Brief: Oct. 29, 2012

Culled:

•   Texas officials: Motor voters should check status (The Associated Press): "State officials are advising Texas voters to make sure they'll be good to go at the polls if they used the increasingly popular method of registering while getting a driver's license. The warning comes as election administrators acknowledge there have been interruptions to the Texas secretary of state's system of electronically transferring registrations received each day from the Department of Public Safety."

•   El Paso lawyers' withdrawal in recall try raises ire (El Paso Times): "Local attorneys Theresa Caballero and Stuart Leeds have withdrawn from a lawsuit involving the attempted recall of Mayor John Cook and two city representatives, but they did so in a manner that has the mayor and his lawyer calling for further disciplinary action against them."

New in The Texas Tribune:

•   Texas A&M System Launches EmpowerU Website: "On Monday morning, Texas A&M University System officials unveiled EmpowerU, their new accountability website designed to gather comprehensive data on all system institutions and package it in a user-friendly manner online."

•   Interactive: 2012 Early Voting Totals in 15 Counties: "Using data collected by the Texas secretary of state's office, which provides early voting totals for the 15 counties with the most registered voters, we have built an interactive way to explore these numbers."

•   In College Entry Rule, Reality Can Trump Logic: "The top 10 percent rule at Texas colleges wasn't all about higher education — it was about the inequities in public schools that are still being litigated today."

•   In Taking On Distracted Driving, Texas Cities Go in Different Directions: "More cities in Texas are passing texting-and-driving bans, but some say such laws are ineffective and infringe on personal freedom."

•   New Parole Rules Sought in Cases That Involved Injury to a Child: "Advocates in Houston are hoping to make parole more difficult for anyone convicted of injuring a child. They plan to pursue legislation to allow the Board of Pardons and Paroles to deny reviews of parole eligibility for up to five years in these cases."