Category: Uncategorized

Selected as Lead Story for Harvey Kronberg’s Quorum Report, Feb. 1, 2005

So Many Eyes of Texas Watching, So Little Seen

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch / GlobalResistanceNetwork / ILCAonline

In live internet broadcasts last week, a Master of Discovery appointed by the Texas Legislature to investigate allegations of a stolen election in West Houston indeed found some ‘fact patterns’ that looked scandalous, but you can’t tell it by reading any press reports. The hearing was supposed to look for evidence of voter fraud committed by Democratic voters. Instead, every time one of these curious patterns emerged, it was a hint of possible fraud not by Democratic voters, but against them.

On Thursday for example, Master of Discovery Will Harnett (R-Dallas), a cum laude graduate from Harvard, noticed that several voter registrations in the West Houston area looked strangely alike. They were all dated late 2003, presented accurate mailing addresses, yet re-registered voters to addresses where they did not live. In effect, the series of fraudulent registrations ‘deported’ African American voters out of Texas House District 149 and therefore made the voters appear illegal when they attempted to vote in their usual precincts.

So when the defeated Republican incumbent in the District 149 race went looking for evidence of ‘massive voter fraud’ that would explain his embarrassing loss to a Vietnamese immigrant, he snared the names of these ‘illegal’ voters and brought them to the state capitol accusing them on live broadcast of voting where they did not live. Instead of proving these voters had cast illegal ballots, however, the Republican team of lawyers actually produced evidence of another kind.

Thanks to the careful eye that Hartnett cast upon the evidence, it appeared that someone was moving voters without their knowledge. Hartnett suggested the cards might be forwarded to the Harris County District Attorney. In press reports Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I have not been able to locate a sentence, much less a headline about Hartnett’s discovery of this criminal pattern.

On Friday Hartnett noticed another curious thing. As he examined original questionnaires that were supposed to be filled out by alleged illegal voters and notarized as depositions, he found two kinds of ink used to fill out the answers and two kinds of handwriting. Larry Veselka, the Yale-educated lawyer who represents the elected Democrat in the race, Hubert Vo, then noticed that handwritten ‘no’ and ‘NA’ answers on at least two questionnaires looked to be written in the same hand.

Again, nobody reported this alleged ‘tampering with evidence,’ especially not the state capitol press corps, who let this open-air revelation pass without even quoting the words that were mentioned in the broadcast. However, since the proceeding took place under the jurisdiction of Austin prosecutor Ronnie Earle, maybe reporters are simply waiting to quote him on the matter of ‘assisted depositions.’ Or maybe I’m trying too hard to find a sensible motivation for media behaviors.

Finally, Hartnett was caught grinning at the flexibility he found at the official website of the Harris County voter registrar, which changed its listing of more than one voter from legal to illegal sometime during early January, following consultations with Republican lawyers. Hartnett seemed perversely amused when lawyers for the defense showed him a web page confirming a voter registration, dated early January, as Republican lawyers submitted more recent web pages showing the voter was not registered. Sometimes this duel of conflicting web pages seemed enough for Hartnett to say that he just couldn’t be sure if the voter was illegal or not.

At one point Republican lawyer Andy Taylor openly admitted that when he was not satisfied with a listing he found at the web site, he contacted the registrar’s office, presented his own findings, and got voters kicked off the rolls so that he could submit revised web pages as evidence. That wasn’t mentioned in the press, either.

In the end, it appears that the Republican challenge not only failed to prove ‘widespread fraud’ among Democrat voters of West Houston, but actually served up a fine public record of practices by Republicans and unknown others that would suppress their rights.

But you had to be watching the hearings in their 19-hour entirety to know any of the above, because according to inscrutable laws of Texas journalistic selection, nothing of this sort has yet been counted as news. How could so many eyes of Texas be upon the hearing, and yet so little be seen? If this is the kind of reporting we get about publicly broadcast events, what kind of independent reporting can we expect during this legislative season session about anything happening off camera?

The Electionline Briefing of Dec. 2004 strikes a tone favorable to statewide registration as it reports that, “Statewide registration databases were used in 16 states
and the District of Columbia, making for a smoother election process by reducing the number of double registrants and better tracking voter movement between jurisdictions.” As we will see below, however, in Georgia “better tracking” may be the best explanation for why the state tossed out 70 percent of provisional ballots cast.

According to the electionline database the 16 states with statewide registration are: Alaska (1985); Arizona (2004); Connecticut (2005); Delaware (1990); Georgia; Hawaii; Kentucky (1973); Louisiana (1987); Massachusetts (1993); Michigan (1998); Minnesota; New Mexico; Oklahoma; South Carolina (35 years); South Dakota; and West Virginia.

Pennsylvania reports that 56 of 67 counties are covered so far.

Georgia offers an interesting example how the use of a statewide database may make it more difficult to get your vote counted. In Georgia, 70 percent of the state’s nearly 13,000 provisional ballots were tossed out. And electionline speculated that one reason for the high rate of rejection might be the use of a statewide database to more easily identify out-of-place voters (p. 5). The possibility that Georgia’s database resulted in more effective post-election “discipline” is just the kind of thing that worries us.

We would rather see a statewide database used to explain higher rates of participation and success in having votes counted. It is what we call the frontend-backend test of registration technology. Did the statewide database enable voters to more easily vote or did it enable state officials to more easily discount votes after they were cast?

Labor Needs a Radical

Vision

A new direction on civil rights requires linking immigrant
rights to a real

jobs program and full employment economy.
It demands affirmative action that can come to grips with

the
devastation in communities of color, especially African
American communities. Some unions,

particularly HERE, have
moved from rhetoric to actual contract proposals linking
immigrant rights

and jobs for underrepresented communities.
But this is just a step towards unity, and it is

already
endangered by proposals for new guest worker programs that
will pit immigrants against

the unemployed. As employer
lobbyists continually point out, jobs and immigration are
tied

together. Corporations will either pit people against
each other at the bottom of the workforce, or

labor will
unite them in a struggle for their mutual

interest.

Archive Report–Day One
By Greg Moses

Thanks to an open records request and some very professional help from state staffers, I am now reviewing the original documents from the Heflin v. Vo election contest.

From the Monday afternoon review, I have confirmed the observations of Master of Inquiry Will Hartnett (R-Dallas) that at least one deposition was submitted with two different colors of ink. However, at this point I’m not sure about the further claim that two kinds of handwriting are evident.

Also, the so-called mystery of the “deported” Nigerian-American voters was not a mystery to anyone with access to the original evidence. This includes the Republican team of lawyers who gathered the evidence in the first place. Written very plainly on the envelope of one of the provisional ballots cast by one of the voters was the explanation that the changed voter registration was probably due to the work of another candidate in another district. This plain indication of the probable cause of error did not deter Republican attorneys from attempting to suppress the ballot anyway.

So far, evidence for bad faith is not in the style of handwriting on depositions, but in the explanations for discrepancies in voter registrations that were plainly written and plainly ignored by the Republican effort to criminalize Democrat voters.

I’ll spend most of the day Tuesday going through more files. Please stay tuned.

Of course, we are delighted that Vo was finally ruled the winner, but there are voters rights issues worth pursuing, so we’re not ready to celebrate unconditionally. Please see stories below.

Thanks to Charles Kuffner at OffTheKuff.Com and the other Greg at GregsOpinion.Com for blogging the post-hearing work of the Texas Civil Rights Review. And to the Houston Chronicle, hang in there, the voters of Houston need you.

Note: Originally posted as top message 8:30 am 2/15/05