During the 2010 election, a Tea Party group called the King Street Patriots sent "poll watchers" to Houston voting locations to intimidate low-income and minority voters.
Yesterday, the King Street Patriots held a fundraiser with Matthew Vadum, an ultra right-wing author who expressly opposes voting by the poor. In an article published in September entitled "Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American," Vadum made his crazy case:
[T]he poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery. Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country...
The King Street Patriots aim to reduce low-income and minority voting as much as possible to push forward their awful right-wing agenda. After the group's proud association with Vadum, there can be no doubt about this.
The King Street Patriots is now pushing to recruit one million "poll watchers" in a project called "True the Vote" that should be named "Kill the Vote."
They must be stopped. The Texas Democratic Party is engaged in a major legal battle against their efforts, which you can donate to here.
We all know that the real intent of the Republicans' voter suppression legislation, strict requirements for a photo ID in order to vote, are intended to disenfranchise groups that tend to vote Democratic, especially Hispanics, African-Americans, young voters, students. After all, if the demographics suggest the state will turn blue within the decade, why not just throw up massive procedural hurdles to likely-Democratic voter participation?
One of the worst offenders on this issue is Aaron Pena, R-Himself, who switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party before this past Legislative session. Pena voted for the strict Photo ID requirements to vote, thus disenfranchising a sizable percentage of his own constituents.
According to the Secretary of State, more than 600,000 registered voters in Texas don't have a Texas driver's license or state-issued photo ID. In Hidalgo County, 22,769 - or 7.98% of total voters - lack this identification. Of these, 17,984 are Hispanic.
"Aaron Pena and his Republican colleagues are using every trick in the book to try and pre-determine the outcome of elections," said Boyd Richie, Chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. "Pena voted for legislation that could disenfranchise more than 22,000 Hidalgo County voters. He knows he has a better chance at winning if less people vote."
In 2009 when Aaron Pena sat on the Elections Committee as a Democrat, he voted against the Republican voter suppression legislation. It was only after joining the Republican Party that he embraced proposals to disenfranchise voters.
"As Chairman of the Hispanic Republican Conference, Aaron Pena has taken the lead in disenfranchising Latinos," said Rebecca Acuña, spokeswoman for the Texas Democratic Party. "After a session of voting against the interests of Hispanics and his constituents, we understand why he's scared."
House District 40, which Aaron currently represents, has 204,340 Hispanics. The new House District 41, which Pena gerrymandered for himself, has 127,801 Hispanics, meaning that Aaron purged 76,539 Hispanics from his district.
The Department of Justice pointed to Pena's blatantly gerrymandered district when they objected to the Texas House Map as a Violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Aaron Pena literally voted for a law that will keep his constituents from voting him out of office. I guess that's the Republican way to do incumbent protection. I hope he totally bites the electoral dust, either in the Republican primary OR the general election.
A voting problem left more than 1,500 local ballots off the Nov. 2 election canvass, a problem the Tom Green County Elections Office said would not have changed the outcomes but which it has reported to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office and local political leaders.
The problem resulted partly from a mobile ballot box getting left behind at one of the precincts during early voting, said Vona McKerley, the elections administrator.
“Once we realized it was something to do with early voting, we realized one of the mobile ballot boxes was missing,” McKerley said. “We found a shelf that had our training equipment, and somehow that piece of equipment had gotten set on those shelves.”
[...]
“I take full responsibility that this has happened,” McKerley said. “We were under no obligation to let anybody know, but because our office aims for integrity, we let people know that this happened and that we will try to find ways that this never happens again.”
Personally -- I don't really care. Mistakes happen. No election outcomes were changed by the discovery of the missing ballots, and this woman appears to have done everything she can to take full responsibility and announce a problem she probably could have just tried to cover up. I applaud her honor and integrity on the matter.
But in the upcoming legislative session, Republicans are going to push -- and most likely pass -- voter ID legislation. They will dehumanize Democrats and Hispanics for cheating the system. For Republicans, a granddaughter helping her grandmother vote can constitute voter fraud in the right circumstances. They will choose cases involving a single misplaced ballot and pontificate for hours about how that single ballot could have led to the end of democracy as we know it. So when they do, kindly remind Republicans that a Republican elections administrator lost over 1,500 ballots for an entire month, and nobody is persecuting her or claiming she was trying to steal an election or demanding drastic new laws to increase government control in order to over-correct a simple human error.
Reason and sensibility is one of our only advantages we'll have in the next seven months. Keep this story in your back pocket, Democrats.
From a press release from Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee:
I was very concerned when I was informed of multiple incidents in which voters in predominately minority neighborhoods of my congressional district were intimidated and harassed. These incidents were documented by both the electronic and print media.
Accordingly, I shared my concerns with the Department of Justice and the Harris County Attorney’s office, who are investigating these incidents. I even visited with some of these voters who experienced intimidation and went to polling locations to view firsthand the way voters were being treated. The right to vote is a fundamental right enshrined by our Constitution, and my interest is to ensure that every person’s right to vote is protected.
You can read the Congresswoman's letter here (PDF). It is similar to a letter Rep. Sylvester Turner had sent previously.
The voter intimidation scheme has been featured prominently -- almost daily -- in the Houston TV market. Here's one story:
The best sources for this are the American Independent, Off the Kuff, and Talking Points Memo. A round-up of their stories are linked below, for further reading:
The funny part of the whole ordeal is that I feel like I wasnt actually a target, just an innocent bystander that the Republicans didnt quite think about. Granted, Im a progressive and a minority, but I make good money and am usually kept out of the firing lines of the Repubs, but this time I dont think they thought all the way through this tactic (sure, they dont think through most of their tactics, but this could bite them in the ass).
You see, I am part of the new younger generation that grew up with computers and I rarely ever check my regular snail mail. The only reason I checked it today was to get my allergy medication. Awaiting me with my medicine was a nice letter from Nelda Wells Spears that stated that I have been put in Suspended status because "2 consecutive mailings have neen returned to our office..". The best part was this line: "The registration deadline date for the November 2, 2010 election is Monday, October 4th", today is Oct 9. Wonderful, now I cant vote. I dont know how many of you have lived in an apt, but if you have ever received any registered mail to it you know that the Post Office wont deliver it to your door and they wont leave it at the Apartment Office, so you are forced to drive down to the Post Office to pick it up. If you are like me and work constantly, you usually dont have time to do this. This leads me to the backfiring part of the tactic. I happen to be a progressive, but my apt is in Mccaul's district and I am quite sure I am not the only out here trying to be fully paperless, so what I am wondering is, how many Republicans just got their records purged also?
Most of my friends rarely check their mail because they are also trying to be paperless and since most new housing developments have community mailboxes, it's even more difficult to check the mail on a regular basis and missing some of this voter reg paperwork is quite easy.
Glenn Smith has written an excellent piece at Huffington Post I wanted to point everyone's attention to, titled, "The Struggle for Voting Rights in 2010." It leads off:
It seems extraordinary that Americans must still struggle for their right to vote. A new group in Texas - the Diversity League of Houston - is leading the struggle there. More about this group in a moment. But it's staggering that after all these years there are still reactionary forces working to suppress the voting rights of those they suspect of opposing their radical, right-wing policies.
African-Americans were given the right to vote with 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870. After a century, many blacks were still barred from voting by lynch mobs, bigoted literacy tests, poll taxes and such. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, adding further guarantees. Women in America were finally granted the franchise in 1920. And yet the struggle continues election after election as right-wing thugs take to the streets (and to the offices of their co-conspirators among voter registration officials) to deny the franchise to qualified American citizens.
Last month I posted a piece at HuffPost detailing the lies of a group in Houston, Texas - the King Street Patriots -- who have raised a substantial anti-voting rights war chest. Conspiring with the Harris County voter registrar, Leo Vasquez, the group doctored photos and made up stories about people registered to a vacant lot. It is all part of a plan to deny the right to vote to American citizens.
The group unveiled its plan just prior to a suspicious fire that destroyed all of Harris County's voting machines. There's still no word on whether the fire was intentionally set.
The group, the Diversity League of Houston, has put up an excellent video everyone should watch:
Moderate Republican Todd Smith is now in the crosshairs of the local Northeast Tarrant County Tea Party because of his refusal to support Republican challengers to Democratic legislative incumbents.
Smith, the House member representing Hurst, Euless, and Bedford, fended off an attempt by Tea Party organizers to unseat him in the Republican primary after former Bedford City Council Member, Jeff Cason, received an influx of money in the waning days of the primary season from special interest organizations not happy with Smith's moderate record.
When confronted by Tea Party organizers about whether Republican Smith would support Republican challenger Bill Zedler, the subject of a controversial doctor-donor scandal this past week, against incumbent Chris Turner in House District 96, Smith responded:
"I strongly and only endorse Republican candidates," Smith said in an e-mail. "I do not get involved in races against sitting legislative colleagues -- period. This policy has served me well in advancing on the House floor the legislative interests of the people of Hurst-Euless-Bedford."
Talking heads and pundits wish for the electorate to believe that the Tea Party is an energizing force within the Republican Party, but time and again the extreme and bizarre elements of the Tea Party continue to demonstrate that they are anything but a motivating force for Republicans this election cycle. The Tea Party continues to expose the disunity and unorganized elements of the GOP. The infighting continues to pour out into the public domain. Clearly the leadership of not only the Texas Republican Party, but the national Republican Party, are unable to rein in the radical elements of a third party insurgency within their own ranks. Moderates in the Republican Party are no longer welcome as extreme has become the mainstream of the modern Grand Old Anglo Party.
Glenn has also written an excellent front-page story at Huffington Post -- which has attracted nearly 900 comments so far-- and which I've placed in full below. It is absolutely worth the read:
A right-wing group in Houston engaged in a systematic voter suppression and intimidation effort used a doctored photo in its showcase video. Tellingly, a hand-lettered sign carried by an African-American woman at a 2000 Florida, Gore-Lieberman recount rally was changed from, "Don't Mess With Our Vote," to read, "I Only Got to Vote Once."
In addition, a Gore/Lieberman sign was altered to read, "I'm With Stupid." Here is the doctored video as presented in King Street Patriots' video, followed by the original photographs.
The King Street Patriots video has disappeared from their website (soon after the deception was revealed), but it remains on YouTube. UPDATE: Video still at King Street Patriots site affiliate, TrueTheVote.org. Here it is:
In the video, King Street leader Catherine Engelbrecht says their effort is all about the truth, that they just want true, fair, honest elections. But if they are so committed to the truth, why did they use doctored photos? Why did they lie?
Because their real intent -- as it has been for similar voter suppression efforts for decades -- is to create barriers between the ballot box and the voters. They want to suppress the vote of people they suspect of opposing their agenda. In this case, as in most, that means assaulting the voting rights of the poor and minorities.
Their pious and sanctimonious rhetoric works -- most of the time. Political journalists seldom get beyond the "he said/she said" accusations and counter-accusations in voting controversies. This deception, in a showcase video, puts the lie to King Street Patriots claims to the truth and destroys whatever credibility they might have had.
Republican Speaker Joe Strauss continues to show that he picked the right puppet to spearhead the Texas GOP's efforts to disenfranchise elderly, veteran, minority, and low-income Texans from voting. Todd Smith, the flip-flopping legislator who Chairs the Elections Committee, is set to push his Party's highly partisan voter suppression legislation in 2011 should Republicans control the House in 2011.
"It may not receive attention in the press because of competition from other issues, but in terms of the extent of the contention on the issue itself among the parties or the members, I don't see it as being dramatically different," Smith said.
Oh Smith, things are drastically different this cycle. The fact that Texas is in an $18 billion dollar budget hole, with no Federal stimulus dollars set to bail you out this time, you and Rick Perry have a lot more pressing issues and policies to address than highly partisan legislation meant to address phantom issues fabricated to increase and prolong the GOP majority in Texas.
I could see a number of things the legislature could address that is far more important than political power grabs.
Let's start with the budget, shall we? How do you plan to address the CONSERVATIVE estimates of an $18 billion dollar shortfall in our fiscal state budget?
Novel idea for you and Joe Strauss. How about convincing Rick Perry to dump $9,999 in taxpayer funded rent for his mansion, his personal chef's (yes plural), and wine magazines for a quaint $1 a month home? That's just for starters.
How about addressing the fact that Texans pay some of the highest utility costs in the nation?
How about addressing the fact that Texans pay some of the highest insurances rates in the nation?
Texas Republicans continue and demonstrate that their legislative priorities are nowhere near the priorities of mainstream Texans.
Back in 2005, Attorney General Greg Abbott announced with a flourish a rash of arrests in South Texas on various counts of voter fraud. These arrests, some of which were announced while the Lege was debating a voter ID bill, were cited as evidence by Abbott of an “epidemic”, for which voter ID was naturally the solution. Many of these cases ultimately wound up being dismissed, with the last batch in Hidalgo County getting dropped last week.
Despite the fanfare, nearly all the charges have been dismissed five years later.
What was once trumpeted across the state as one of the premier examples of the “epidemic of voter fraud” plaguing Texas polls evaporated even as debate over the divisive reform measures it helped spawn continues.
See here, here, and here for some background. One thing that’s been true in all of the cases Abbott has pushed is that they involved mail in ballots, which as I’ve observed would be unaffected by any legislation that required photo ID to vote in person. Abbott and his allies, of course, never drew that distinction, since the purpose of the voter ID legislation that keeps getting pushed in the Lege isn’t about stopping the kind of voter fraud that actually happens, it’s about making it harder for certain people to vote. In the end, even the fraud cases that Abbott claimed to have found turned out to be a whole lot of nothing. It’s no surprise to me.
Thankfully, Texans have a much better choice than Abbot on the ballot. Barbara Ann Radnofsky is challenging Abbott for the AG spot this November. Last week was her turn in the Texas Democratic Party's "Meet the Statewides" campaign -- a great series that highlights every statewide candidate with a video, op-ed, issue piece, biography and more. Here's the latest from Radnofsky and the TDP:
