Vote Counts, Part II

We’re talking about counting votes, and how votes are counted. In Part I we talked about why the Electoral College is still a good idea and why the National Popular Vote (NPV) compact is a bad idea.

Just one of the significant reasons this is a bad idea is that we can’t get an accurate vote total. It’s just not possible in our current reality. Today, in Part II, we'll cover some of the details of why accurately counting all votes is an unattainable wish.

Harris County, Texas, where Houston is located (and where I live), has been an epicenter working toward voter integrity for a long time[i]. Alan Vera has been working for ballot security as his main battle for the past decade—and has trained people around the country on these issues. (He trained me as a poll watcher.) He spoke at our local Tea Party meeting a couple of weeks ago, reporting on the legislative session, and generally about ballot security issues.

Hart e-Slate machine
image from here

We have, in this county, what Vera believes is the gold standard for electronic voting machines, the Hart e-Slate. It has passed every test for every election, without fail. But, as of the last election, all countywide offices were won by Democrats, and the new County Clerk isn’t about voter integrity; she’s about getting particular results.

One of her “innovations” is countywide voting. This has been allowed in certain counties of Texas—mainly small, rural counties, where it makes some sense, where poll workers are likely to recognize their neighbors who come to vote. But she initiated it here without state approval for our May special election (a day for school boards, city councils, and other smaller things that don’t happen at the usual November election time—an issue for another day).

During early voting—the two weeks prior to voting day—we have citywide voting. You can vote at any designated voting location in the county. A computer system is set up to get the voter data and update it online supposedly immediately. People like the flexibility. But there’s a limited number of polling places, about three dozen. They’re spread out across the county, an area roughly the size of the state of New Jersey, so it takes a good twenty minutes to drive from one to another. It would be hard for a nefarious voter to vote at one place and get to another one before the system updated to prevent him from voting at another location.

But on election day we typically have as many as 800 polling places in the county. When they’re set up by precinct, you can more or less guarantee that you won’t overcrowd a place too badly. But when people choose their own voting location based on convenience to their work or whatever, you don’t know what kind of bottlenecks you’re going to cause. That’s just one problem.

But, back to the updates. My polling place is located in a middle school. The elementary school next door is a voting place for the adjacent precinct. It’s a two-minute walk.

Alan Vera
image from here

How long does it take for the “immediate” updates? Alan Vera and team did experiments to find out.

What needs to happen is that electronic poll books (a handy little tablet we now use, that works pretty well, I think) needs to register that a voter was given a code, and then relay that information to all the other voting locations to indicate that particular voter has voted and cannot vote again. During early voting, locations are set up to have good internet and quick updates. Training tells polling judges that they are instantaneous, so they shouldn’t worry. But in the many locations on a regular election day, they could be in schools, where internet access may be blocked, or there may be interference. It took as short as around 20 minutes for a machine to update to as long as 17 hours. The team even found that it took a half hour for the e-pollbook to update to the adjacent machine at the very same voting location, which should be instantaneous. Vera has the data now to prove that the county cannot qualify for countywide voting.

There’s also a push toward throwing out the secure and accurate e-Slate machine and spending billions of dollars on a combination of electronic and paper system. You print out your vote, and then the machine has no other record. What could go wrong?

There’s a requirement to use electronic systems that meet a minimum standard, enacted eventually following the 2000 debacle in Florida. Paper ballots have always been subject to fraud.

Back in 2004, in the Washington State governor’s race, Christine Gregoire won against Dino Rossi, on a third recount, after Rossi had won by 261 votes, when all of a sudden, well after the close of the election, someone says, “Oh, my, I almost forgot. I have these boxes of ballots sitting out back in my shed. We have to count those.” And, lo and behold, they counted and counted until the total changed the outcome.

Look now at California. The governor has declared that they will give driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, and a driver’s license is the only requirement to vote. In other words, they are declaring that the vote total in California will include as many illegals as they can get to vote.

That means that, if the NPV compact were to be in effect, the vote outcome in any state in the compact would depend on the votes of illegal voters in California. And the outcome of the entire US presidential vote would depend on votes that should not count.

The reality is that we do not count all votes. We count enough to determine the outcome. All votes available and certified on election day get counted. Provisional votes take more time and depend on case-by-case circumstances. Mail-in votes—a larger portion and a growing fraud problem—get counted if received on time, but there may be leeway based on postmark date (different rules in different jurisdictions). Military votes that arrive this way tend to be left out of the count, unless there’s a recount that requires a more accurate count of all votes. If they’re deemed mathematically unlikely to change the outcome, they get left uncounted.

Then there are the disputed votes. Overvotes, for example, where more than one candidate is marked on a ballot (not possible on a certified e-Slate machine, but common on any kind of paper ballot and some other systems). This is the kind of detail that makes recounts slow and tedious and makes the outcome uncertain for long periods of time.

And there are issues of fraud that come up. If, for example, a particular voting place was found to contain an extra several hundred votes that all have the same signature—that means a poll worker, probably in cahoots with the presiding judge, found names from the precinct that hadn’t voted and they input votes for those names, signing each person’s name without even trying to disguise the signature. Yes, that has been done, in Harris County. And that was when each precinct was separate. With countywide voting, there could be such fraudulent voters who put in every name in the entire county at every voting place and truly mess up the accuracy of the count.

With NPV, there would be incentive for such fraud to take place—at any and every voting location that wasn’t run by honest Americans and watched over by other honest Americans from the opposing party.

Imagine how much discord there would be if states used this combination of fraud and NPV to prevent a win to a Republican president. Constitution-loving Americans would not stand for being subjugated under a corrupt, illegitimate ruler. It would end the centuries-long peaceful turnover of power that our founders designed.

The national vote total is not how we elect a president. It isn’t even possible for us to count an accurate national vote. The Electoral College isn’t antiquated and outdated; it is more necessary than ever.

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[i] I’ve written about election integrity here, here, here, and here. 

Electronic Ballot Security

There’s good news and bad news concerning ballot security—which can, unfortunately, affect the outcome of our elections.

But in Harris County, here in Houston, we can feel pretty good about certain aspects of election integrity. 

This past Saturday, at our local Tea Party meeting, we heard from Ed Johnson of the County Clerk’s Office concerning ballot security here. Specifically, he was talking about the eSlate machine used here, and how they protect its integrity.

Ed Johnson, Harris County Clerk's Office
photo: Cypress Texas Tea Party

Can it be hacked? If everyone involved colluded, then possibly. But with the bipartisan safeguards in place, no.

How did he convince us? He began with a story.

Back in 1996 Duane Bohac, his friend from their college fraternity days, told him he was going to run for state representative. He was running against a 20-year incumbent. The incumbent had 15 voters registered at his home (people who didn’t live there), plus six more in his garage. This voter fraud was reportable, and those illegal voters were removed from the rolls, which is good. But it shows the propensity of that Democrat to engage in illegal voting tactics.

Early vote tallies showed Bohac up by about 1000 votes. But there were four precincts that reported very late—not until around 1:00 in the morning. After they reported, Bohac lost by 75 votes. They found hundred of over votes in those precincts—votes that have more than one candidate marked on the paper ballot, so they are not counted.

In 1998 Bohac ran again. This time he got alternate judges (Republicans, when the presiding poll judge is a Democrat) and poll watchers to watch what happened. The poll watchers followed the judges as they drove the ballot boxes to the central location for counting. As in the previous election, all but four precincts reported in a timely manner. The poll watchers followed these four as they drove around the 610 Loop (the innermost freeway circling Houston) until 1:00 AM. They watched them shaking the ballot box. Early counts showed Bohac leading. But these four precincts showed 400 overvotes, and Bohac got zero votes from these precincts. (Bohac eventually tried again and won; he is my state representative.)

Paper ballots are easy to manipulate. Remember the 2000 election with its hanging chads? Suppose someone with a moment alone takes a long sharp device—like an unbent paper clip—and pokes it through a whole stack of punchcards through the punch hole of the candidate they favor? Any ballot already voting for that candidate is left unchanged, but any ballot for another candidate is now an overvote—or possibly a confusing one with a hanging chad, which pretty much never happens when punching only one card at a time. In that election there were also entire precincts with zero counted votes for Bush, which is statistically highly unlikely, especially when you consider these "safe" areas were the ones where Gore asked for the recount. [Johnson only mentioned the hanging chads. The rest of this paragraph is from what I remember of that history.]

In 2000 County Clerk Beverly Kaufman was faced with a problem. Harris County has the longest ballot in the country (some say LA has a longer one, but Johnson says he still feels confident in making the claim). Much of this is because we vote for judges, and it’s a very large county with a lot of district courts. Anyway, Kaufman couldn’t find a ballot long enough to handle all of the races. Within two years she found the Hart System, which makes the eSlate machine we still use here.

The Hart eSlate Machine
used in Harris County

Since the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002, electronic voting has been required across the country. A federal commission must certify the equipment. The Election Assistance Commission was functioning well until Obama; he has refused to appoint anyone to the post, and it has gone defunct, so there have been no updates available, so it is still a slow and burdensome process.

Nevertheless, County Clerk Stan Stanart got our eSlate system to pass the federal regulations. The EAC test takes a year to complete, and costs the company $2 million. Then the system is submitted to states, which take another year for testing. Ours has passed both. HAVA gives money to the states to buy equipment that meets standards.

Johnson spent a fair amount of time going through the type of testing done. He used a number of detailed slides, so this report will only skim the surface, from my notes.

There is HASH testing, or code testing. They check to make sure no coding has been changed.

There is BOSS testing—Ballot Originator Software System. There is no connection to the internet, at any point. Ever.

There are two encryption keys between segments of the system. One is internal. One is external—on a thumb drive. The official (County Clerk) has to take it and plug it in. This is kept in a vault.

There is the Mobile Ballot Box (MBB), the memory card upon which the ballot is backed up. Votes are also kept in three places in the system; cheating would require changing all three locations somehow, without leaving a trace. The memory card is loaded into the JBC (judge's booth controller) machine. A security code identifies the card for each machine. This is tracked throughout the process.

There is security of the election equipment. When you press “cast ballot” on the eSlate machine, your vote is saved in three locations—with the timing of that vote and other identifiers. It is virtually impossible to change votes on a memory card and the other two locations.

There is Login and Accuracy Testing required by law, that takes a week. It uses people of both parties. They create a spreadsheet that includes every possible combination of votes on the ballot. The testers input, physically, each of these voting combinations. The outcome must meet the spreadsheet. This shows there is no tabulating error. Harris County has always passed this test.

For early voting, supervisors set up the polls, with the machines showing zero votes on the screen. They print this zero report to start, and at the end of the day they do another report. Equipment is locked, resealed—all seals are labeled with codes, which must match, to show that there was no tampering overnight. At the end of early voting, the machine is sealed, again with a coded seal. A constable delivers the machine to the downtown office. Seals are validated, and the machines are locked in a vault with the memory card still inside it.

There’s a second Login and Accuracy Test done by members of each party. This takes three hours on election night, with a high amount of security. It is completed just prior to the polls closing. Early voting tallying begins, but no results are available—to anyone, including those involved in the counting—until after the polls have closed, so that early voting outcomes have no influence on voters who haven’t yet voted.

At the polling place, machines arrive sealed, with codes on the seals, which are recorded. The zero tape is printed, to show that there were no votes on the machine prior to the start of voting. Each voter must show eligibility (ID), sign into the polling book—plus their name is written by the clerk on a voter list. The voter is sent to the JBC machine to get a code. They take their code to the voting booth and enter their code on the eSlate machine. The machines have a dial, which prevents errors that can happen on touch screens. No helper (language assistant, for example) can touch the machine—only the voter. The voter presses “cast ballot,” and a flag on the screen indicates that the voter was successful in casting the ballot, and the voter can leave the booth.

There are some similar machines that can print cast ballots. This removes the safety of a secret ballot, and these machines have a lower accuracy rate. So Harris County does not use them.

The individual votes cast can be printed—and are printed, by a hard-to-read dot-matrix printer. Stan Stanart still uses this, although the state has recently allowed an alternative laser printer version. But, once an election process is underway, Stanart doesn’t make changes, so this election will still use the dot-matrix printer.

Every recount done in the county has come out the same as the original count; the electronic voting system has a zero% error rate.

There are seven vendors selling electronic voting equipment nationally. It is our County Clerk’s opinion—and Harris County has been ground zero in preventing election fraud—that the HART system is the best.

I have no personal expertise to know whether this is true, but I have been a poll watcher and poll worker here a number of times. And I am persuaded that electronic voting prevents fraud, and I’ve seen the security procedures followed carefully at the polling places.

Ed Johnson told us (though it wasn’t news to us) that Democrats hate electronic voting. In the national effort to “turn Harris County blue,” they have two goals: do away with photo ID, and get rid of electronic voting.

Unfortunately, electronic voting can prevent counting errors, but it can’t prevent all other versions of election fraud.

Picture a voting place with no alternate judge or poll watcher. There may be people on the rolls that haven’t voted yet. The judge can put the voter’s name on the list, print out a code, and hand it to a friend to cast a ballot. If the person comes in and signs the book later, they still get to vote, and, unless there is a recount, no one will notice that person’s name twice on the voter list.

Or the judge might print out the code and cast the extra vote without even bothering to put a name on the voter list. At the place I worked as a poll watcher in 2012, there were 20 additional votes at the end of the day that were not recorded on the voter list. The presiding judge made no attempt to reconcile the error; she just shrugged her shoulders and assumed the clerks had failed to write the names that many times. That’s possible, but I hadn’t witnessed any failures. The difference in the election nationwide was about 10 votes per precinct. 

I did file the discrepancy in my report, but voter fraud is notoriously hard to prove. In some of the most egregious cases, the only outcome is to prevent that judge from being hired again.

The best prevention is to have an alternate judge and poll watcher in every polling place. Harris County has a pretty good program to train and recruit towards this end, but it’s still a challenge. And it’s not being done in many voting places around the country.

The good news, then, is that people in favor of free and fair elections are getting better technology to accomplish that. But the bad news is that people against free and fair elections will continue to find ways to disenfranchise the voters who disagree with them.

Texas Legislature Roundup



Texas State Capitol in Austin

The 84th Texas Legislature adjourned the end of May. So it’s time to look at what happened, and what didn’t happen.

In our local Tea Party, I have the assignment of making a list of bills for us to follow. We take our list to all of the legislators who represent people in our group, which is about two visits a month for four months. We visit their local offices while they’re in Austin, although we did get a couple of visits with the legislators themselves, and some also visited us at our Tea Party meetings.

The Texas Legislature meets every other year, from mid-January to the end of May. So a lot of business gets compressed into these few months.

Our list was longer this year than in the past, with more people contributing bills they were interested in. So, while it was a bit more work to keep track, the interest is good. It means we’re awake, and we’re hopeful that our speaking up will have an effect.

Texas is a very “red” state, with GOP majorities in the House and the Senate. So you’d think it would be a breeze to get the right kind of legislation through. But that’s not totally true. There are thousands of bills filed during the session, sometimes several on the same issue, so finding the bill that will catch attention and move is a challenge. Also, the Democrat minority is still active in committees, and they have some influence over the House Speaker, who influences what moves.

This report today isn’t what the news thinks is most important. It’s my personal list plus the list of interests of other locals who spoke up. But I think it might be interesting to see what caught the attention of our little corner of conservatism.

First, here’s the list of principles our Tea Party has adopted, which we shared with our legislators:

Principles of Cypress Texas Tea Party 

·         We support the US Constitution and conservative principles in the Texas Constitution.

·         We support low taxes and limited government spending and oppose ever having a state income tax.

·         We support handling each issue at the most local authority possible—with individual and family decisions as the default authority.

·         We support asserting 10^th Amendment states’ rights against usurpation by federal government.

o   We particularly oppose allowing national health care to be imposed on the people of Texas.

·         We support parental rights in the education and upbringing of their children, including local control over spending and curriculum in public schools.

·         We do not as a group endorse candidates, but we provide a platform for sharing information so our members can make informed decisions; individual members may endorse, work for, or become candidates. 

Now, instead of repeating the whole bill list here, I’ll mainly identify categories and issues. 

Immigration Law and Homeland Security

We were in favor of e-verify, a method for employers to verify eligibility of employees. If you’re going to hold employers accountable for hiring illegals, you have to give them a way to meet the law. Several bills were put forward. SB 374 passed.

We were against sanctuary cities; the bill we followed, SB 185, disallowed cities from proclaiming they would refuse to obey the law. The bill was approved in committee but died in Intent Calendar.

There are several calendars, and I’m not sure we ever fully understood them all. There’s Intent Calendar, Calendars (not specified), General State Calendar, and Constitutional Amendment Calendar. That last one was for joint resolutions that would be sent to the Secretary of State to be put on the November ballot, to be voted on in a general election. The others were about scheduling votes for passage of bills in the House and Senate at different stages. Calendars, generally, is where bills go to die. If they don’t get a scheduled vote, that’s the end. We probably need to pay more attention to who is on the various Calendars committees, and pressure them with phonecalls and emails. There’s always more to do.

In the last couple of months we became aware of some bills related to infrastructure safety—particularly the electronic grid—both from terrorism and natural disaster causes of an EMP. (I wrote about this here.) Protection would be relatively inexpensive and extremely valuable insurance. We appreciate that loca State Senator Lois Kolkhorst was a co-author, but the bill didn’t progress this session. You might be interested in the testimony by Frank Gaffney, for future reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmgoSHCh77U&sns=em  

State and Citizen Rights Preservation

We followed several bills that were intended to assert our Tenth Amendment state’s rights. A couple of them simply asserted the Tenth Amendment. One was specific to declare through state constitutional amendment that Texans would not be subject to a federal requirement to purchase Obamacare. None of these bills progressed. That in no way means Texas won’t assert its Tenth Amendment rights. There are lawsuits underway, and there are other various approaches.

We became aware, about halfway through the session, of several attempts to impose “climate change” rules on Texas. We were against the junk science approach to limiting Texas’s economy. Fortunately, none of these bills progressed.

We followed some tax lowering bills, aimed at the homestead exemption and taxes on inventory located in the state prior to shipping. But they didn’t progress. We also followed some bills that could have raised taxes, including increasing gasoline tax while that industry is depressed, which we were against. Fortunately those failed. 

Article V Convention

The Article V Convention comes under states’ rights, but probably deserves its own subheading. I was not an expert on this issue, but we had a member among our legislator visitors who was, and he was quite persuasive. I still need to read Mark Levin’s book The Liberty Amendments to bring myself up to speed; I can’t yet explain the issue adequately. But the general idea is for enough of the states to propose a US constitutional amendment change, and then the US Congress would have to take up that issue. If the amendment passed, then it would be sent on to the states for ratification—a long and challenging process. Article V refers to that portion of the US Constitution that describes this possible remedy.

Two of the bills, HJR (House Joint Resolution) 77 and HJR 79 both were approved in the House and then died in the State Affairs Committee of the Senate. HJR 77, which was authored by a couple of our local representatives, Fletcher and Bohac, looked like it had possibilities, with a public hearing May 25, but it was left pending in committee, and then time ran out. 

Second Amendment

There were two issues we favored related to carrying firearms. One was open carry—which means that a person who is at least 21 and has a concealed carry permit is allowed to carry openly (not hidden). This puts us in the company of the majority of the states, and takes us out of the company of a half dozen anti-gun states the likes of California and New York. The bill passed.

Friends from out of state told me the news had characterized the debate as trying to make Texas allow open carry for anyone, regardless of mental state or criminality, like the Wild West—which people kind of think Texas is anyway. But, seriously, we’re not crazy. We’re just in favor of allowing the good guys to defend ourselves.

The other issue was campus carry—allowing concealed carry licensees to carry concealed weapons on college campuses. This passed, but with amendments. I think it was watered down so that each campus school board gets to decide. It sounds like a decent compromise, but it actually nearly nullifies the law. I can understand the argument against arming live-on-campus freshmen who drink too much or get depressed their first time away from home. But you have to be 21 to get a concealed carry license. On campuses like our local Lone Star Community College system, average age is 24+, and no one lives on campus. Nevertheless, only one or two board members are willing to allow these adults, coming from their jobs to classes on campus, to defend themselves and others—even though we have had incidents in which attackers had to be taken out by brave fellow students, because it took too long for security to arrive. So, this was a win that’s not quite a win. 

Marriage and Religion Protection

These issues are combined now, because everywhere marriage isn’t protected, religious freedom is lost. One bill would refuse to allow local judges to grant same-sex marriage licenses (or any license not allowed in the Texas Constitutional definition of marriage). Other states are trying this as well. It’s an assertion of the Tenth Amendment, which can be done regardless of this bill. But it was a declaration of Texas’s intent prior to a decision by the Supreme Court that could try to usurp Texas’s sovereignty. The bill didn’t move. Another reiterated that Texas would retain its state constitutional definition of marriage; this one got a public hearing and was approved in committee, but died in Calendars.

Another bill declared that Texas could only apply Texas law, and no foreign law. This was in reference to attempts to apply sharia law, particularly in reference to family/divorce law. This should be a given without the bill, but it has been an issue, even in Texas. What we really need is judges who apply the actual law. Again, the bill got a public hearing, was approved in committee, and died in Calendars. 

Hunting, Fishing, and Wildlife

I’m no expert in this, but we had a member who brought these to our attention. One bill, SJR 22, to protect the right to hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife, was approved and will appear on the November ballot. Another bill, HB 158, meant to use taxes imposed on the sale, storage, or use of sporting goods for parks and wildlife, passed as well. So that was good. 

Education/Parental Rights

We had a little success in parental rights. There was an HHS bill, meant to clean up and make more efficient in necessary ways, that had a provision that would allow state agencies to remove a child from home without imminent danger. We were against that. Fortunately, when that provision was brought to the attention of the committee, a substitute bill without that wording was put forward, and that passed. Other bills attempted to give the state agencies that power, but fortunately they didn’t progress.

Yet again there was an attempt to restore parental rights. The situation is that grandparents can sue for rights, and sometimes judges grant them access or custody, taking children from fit parents. The issues that bring on these suits are often related to the religion or education choices of the parents. These cases are always overturned at the Texas Supreme Court level, but getting there can cost millions, and some families lose control of their children when they are impoverished by the repeated lawsuits. This should be corrected and prevented in the law; fit parents should have the right to decide on the care and upbringing of their children.

Currently homeschool and private school students (with a single exception) are prevented from participating in UIL competitions—even though UIL was created at a time when nearly all students in the state were homeschooled or privately schooled. This needs to be corrected. The last two sessions this was referred to as the Tim Tebow Bill, because the professional football player had been homeschooled. Again this session the bill progressed. SB 2046 passed the Senate, but languished in the Public Education Committee in the House.

There was a success with SB 1543, which higher education discrimination against homeschoolers and non-traditional students. The bill passed.  

Voter Integrity

We watched a number of bills that could have allowed for greater voter fraud, including online registration, same-day registration, getting felons to vote, trying to dilute Voter ID, and trying to remove judges from party voting (so even less would be known about judge candidates). All failed to move.

There were others we were happy to see pass. HB 621 allowed for dismissal of a volunteer voter registrar that failed to follow the law. This is to prevent the Turn Texas Blue arm of ACORN from doing their fraud here. SB 795 creates a mechanism for interstate voter registration crosschecking, which is a common sense approach to preventing voting in multiple places.

Voter Integrity Vigilance

You’d think everyone would be for free and fair elections. But there’s actually a lot of opposition, with the thinly veiled purpose of making voter fraud easier to do and harder to prosecute.

The Texas Legislature is in session, and, as they say, when the legislature is in session, we’re most in danger of losing our freedoms. So I was very interested in the Ballot Security Committee’s report last Saturday the quarterly meeting for precinct chairs and other officials of the county GOP. This committee is intended to help us move toward free and fair elections.

Alan Vera, doing poll watcher
training I attended in 2011

The committee chair is Alan Vera, who spent four years as True the Vote’s national director of curriculum and Training. True the Vote is the nationwide organization that trains poll workers and poll watchers, as well as examines voter rolls and pushes for prosecution of voter fraud. They started here in Houston. In fact, the building they used to use is where we met Saturday. (You might be familiar with them from news about the IRS attacks on founder Catherine Engelbrecht, who also founded King Street Patriots.)

Vera wrote the curriculum and led training for Texas, Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Arizona, and what he calls “hopeless California.” He was my trainer as a poll worker. Just about anywhere in the US, you can volunteer with True the Vote. If you’re at all concerned about the 2016 election being stolen, getting trained now and having a year or more of training is the best protection. Vera told us, “I’ve seen the worst in American elections. And I’ve seen the best when ordinary citizens rose up to take charge of the integrity of their own elections.”

Now, on the Ballot Security Committee, he’s keeping an eye on the Texas Legislature. The bill that really got my attention is a proposal to offer online voter registration. There’s a bill in the House (HB 312, plus similar bills: HB 76, HB 444, and HB 953) with a companion bill in the Senate (SB 385). Normally you’d think of this as Democrat mischief, but HB 312 is authored by a Republican, a local one we have to keep an eye on. But we’ve had productive visits with her staffer in past legislative sessions, and maybe a little citizen lobbying will persuade her to withdraw her bill—that would leave only four others on this issue to worry about, that we know of.

Vera made a good point about this “gateway to automated voter registration fraud”:

The sad truth is that online transactions are nowhere near being reliably secure yet. J.P. Morgan Chase and Blue Cross/Blue Shield have single year online security budgets many times larger than the COMBINED budgets of the Texas Secretary of State, and the voter registrar of every single county in Texas. But Chase and Blue Cross have their systems hacked every week.

I want to add some perspective to that. Back when the Sony hack was news a few months back, that supposedly came from North Korea, I wondered how that could be. They can’t even feed their people; how could they pull off hacking that technologically sophisticated? So I asked my son Economic Sphere, who has spent the last year paying attention to North Korea from close range. He said yes, they definitely have the skills to do that kind of hack. They spend their time hacking South Korean businesses constantly. Every typical company in South Korea has better online security than even the best corporate online security in America. So, yes, it could happen.

If they can do it, other hackers can do it. And that, I’m certain, is the plan. Sure, it would be convenient to handle yet another detail online. But registration is only a matter of filling out a card with your identifying information—and signing your name to swear that you have answered truthfully—followed by enough office time to allow “trust but verify.” It would be nice to get a driver’s license online and avoid the dreaded hours of waiting for bureaucracy to do its thing too. But, again, how do you verify ID? And what about losing that sensitive information to hacking?

As Vera put it,

I’ll start to consider that online data exchanges are foolproof when the SAT test allows people to take the test online with only a driver license number as proof of identity.

And all you smart lawyers in Austin, I’ll consider online voter registration when Texas allows you to take the bar exam online.

There are other attacks to voter integrity in the Texas legislature. There’s one to have same-day voter registration during early voting. There’s one that wants us to go to great lengths to get felons registered and voting. There’s one trying to add to the forms of ID acceptable when voting (an attempt to dilute last term’s Voter ID bill).

So, we need to be constantly vigilant. In Texas or any other state, you can sign up with True the Vote. Their free newsletters give frequent updates on bill movement in all the states.

The Ballot Security report also included some proactive legislation. They’re pushing for changes to tighten voter assistance, which should never include touching the machine or suggesting a party or candidate; to punish voter ambush by organized groups; to tighten residency requirements for voter registration; and to overhaul the process for collecting ballots from nursing homes and state homes. They’re also attempting to convert several violations into felonies.

As Joe Stalin said, and his followers as a directive, “It doesn’t matter who votes; it matters who counts the votes.” Socialists aren’t big on free and fair elections.

If you want your vote to be accurately counted, and not cancelled out by fraud, now is the time to raise your awareness, keep track of legislation, and volunteer to be a trained poll worker or poll watcher.