Republican Dwayne Bohac's Election Corruption With Ed Johnson

Fox guarding the hen house (0.00 / 0)

It is obviously a blatant conflict of interest, for Johnson to be both an elections official and a political consultant for the Republicans. Let's flood the TX SOS Elections department with a ton of emails showing our outrage. I have already suggested that in my County.
This is just another example of the Republican shenanigans that are going on all around the state,. They'll do anything to keep their tenous hold on power in Austin. The more we complain and take action on tactics like this the more likely the general public is to pay attention and hopefully come next election vote the .......s out!

JCourage

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by: JCourage @ Tue Jun 09, 2009 at 18:31:23 PM UTC

This is probably endemic (0.00 / 0)

A large-scale effort at invigilation -- Canadian for poll-watchng -- by the Harris County Democratic Party drilled down into and discovered this mess ... and more, yet to come ... later.

The Lone Star Project, of course, can take credit for now producing some fabulous oppo research. Chad Dunn o/b/h Boyd Richie, Gerald Birnberg (HCDP Chair), Goodwille Pierre (Democratic candidate), et alia, deserves plaudits for getting the basic facts right:

Behind a pompous curtain of "proprietary", "ministerial", and "homeland security" secrecy, the GOP in Texas and Harris County are running ..., well, we do not yet know for sure, yet. Likely, this is the proverbial "tip of the iceberg". It is either a dinky racket or ... part of the Total Information Awareness program, not authorized by the Congress but funded out of various other budgets anyway.

Yes, Ed Johnson and Dwane Bohac, have a "data-mining" business on the side. The business itself may not even be illegal. Failing to disclose it in legislative proceedings may be "unethical", for whatever that is worth in Austin. But, using the sort of database access not available to political parties for legitimate purposes to conduct a commercial enterprise, ... well, that might be illegal -- a seldom enforced state law suggests it is.

But, such data-mining is probably widespread and winked at by the Secretary of State and both party establishments in Texas. This private exploitation of public data is now inevitable, given that there are no controls or audits, just ... secrecy, not security.

Voter registration data is very valuable for a whole range of political or, for that matter, commercial purposes: The collection of public and private debt, for instance, is probably being the most lucrative and the most politically wired-in commercial activity based on partisan access to the Tax Office or the Secreatary of State, more even than Ed Johnson's relatively two-bit operation.

Also, while the "voter roll" is the first or second-oldest public record in Texas, federal, state, and local voter registration databases now are shrouded in secrecy, also, gross incompetence, maybe, criminality, and like certainly fraud.

That is common when one has secrecy, where security should be.

The secrecy is justified, it is said, because the database has "PPI", federally protected personal information in it today. Truly! When only white men could vote in Texas, the voter roll was nothing more than a signature and a name for each voter.

But, ever since less wealthy and non-white people have begun to vote, "qualification" -- not eligibility -- requirements have become fantastically complex and, surprise, discriminatory. The GOP "Voter ID" bill is only the last, small increment in, for instance, the photo ID requirements already imposed by Democrats.

Now, a Texas voter registration application includes the same key fields used to run a credit check on a mortgage or, duh, insurance application. That is how far we have come: From a "property-qualified" franchise (1874) to a "credit-scored" franchise (2001), from overt racial to effective economic, age, and, as always, educational discrimination. That is not a GOP plot: That is what bi-partisan office-squatters from both parties support.

So, what's next? There is already a recent vote-tampering conviction in the Harris County Clerk's Office and, now, maybe, there will be some sort of criminal, civil, or administrative action against a figure in the Harris County Tax Office.  

the real question is which, if any, political party really supports universal suffrage?

That is not clear. Perpetual incumbents from both parties prefer low political participation rates, and mercenary pimp-consultants prefer a very few contested races with very high $/vote ratios. Lobbies love weak parties that compete for their money, not really for votes.

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by: JRBehrman @ Wed Jun 10, 2009 at 22:03:53 PM UTC

This relationship has been going on for a while now........... (0.00 / 0)

Ed Johnson's conflict of interest as an employee of the Tax Assessor-Collector's office while moonlighting with Dwayne with this consulting business has been going on for some time now.  It was first brought to our attention in 2006 by Sherwyn Roden, a consultant who passed away last year.

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by: ginntonic @ Fri Jun 12, 2009 at 04:06:10 AM UTC