Election Debacle Report

I haven’t had a chance to debrief, following the November 8^th Midterm Election. Maybe it’s better to have waited a couple of weeks, so I can look at data and facts, and not be overcome by emotion.

In Texas at large, Republicans won big. We won some House districts that I’m quite happy about—special congratulations to Terri Leo Wilson and Mark Dorazio, both of whom I consider my friends. And, again, we won all the statewide offices.

But in Harris County, where I live, it was one disappointment after another. And there were widespread problems with the election. Were our losses a failure to GOTV? Or were they insurmountable election system issues? Or some combination?

Let me look first at the voter apathy issue. I can look at my precinct, and my polling place. They may or may not be typical, but at least it’s data I have. This relates to the energy of the electorate, which is at odds with the final results. But if you’re not interested in this very local detail, you can scroll down to the broader county report.

 

My Precinct and Polling Location

When we opened our polling place at 7:00 AM (workers arrive at 5:30 AM to make opening on time a reliable reality), we had 70 people already in line, waiting to vote. We never caught up throughout the day. This is even though we are very efficient in getting people to fill every available voting machine. We marked the end of the line at 7:00 PM, and it took us until 8:00 PM to clear all the voters in line.

The school where we have our polling location. We use a band room,
with its own entrance, off to the left.
image from Google Maps

We had a record number of voters for this polling place—around 900.

Our polling place is not limited to our precinct, since there is countywide voting now on election day. When we had polling places assigned to precincts, prior to 2019, there was another polling place in the elementary school next door to the middle school where we’re located. The problem with countywide voting was that, if polling places are too close together, a person could vote at one location and then vote again at a second location that was within 20-30 minutes away, before the electronic pollbook was updated to show that voter had voted. The one within 5 minutes of our location, then, was eliminated. So heavier voter traffic than historically is hard to measure back further than a couple of years.

In March, during the Primary Election, we ended up running both the Republican and Democrat polling, because the Democrats didn’t hire any workers for our location and asked us last minute to step up and help without any additional pay. We did it. We had about 100 more Republican voters than Democrat voters that day at our polling location. Our area is close to even between the parties but leans Republican.

In my precinct (which includes early voting and voters who go elsewhere on Election Day) I had 437 Republican Primary voters. I got 639 known Republican votes in the November election. That looks to me like a pretty excited Republican electorate.

I have data to drill down a little deeper for this election, but I don’t still have access to data to make apples-to-apples comparisons to previous elections.

I had 2231 voters from my precinct in the November 8 election, of 5002 registered voters, for a turnout of 44.6%. Of known Republican voters, I got 639 out of 806 for a turnout of 79.3%. Democrats got 488 out of 656 for a turnout of 74.4%. Swing voters are the largest cohort; we got 1104 out of 3540 for a turnout of 39.8%. I don’t have That’s not an unexpected increase. Only committed party voters show up in a primary election. Those, plus Democrats or other parties who cross over, plus the “swing voters, which includes not just people who swing from one party to another, but those who are not committed to a party, the independents. You get even more in a presidential election year, such as 2020, because a lot of voters only tune in enough to vote when they’re bombarded with presidential election ads and news for a full year.

Those who are saying our turnout was down are comparing it to the 2020 election. I had 3465 votes cast from my precinct in the 2020 election; that’s out of 4792 registered voters, 72.31%. 1709 were for Trump; 1673 were for Biden. That’s a difference of just 36 votes.

If you look at differences in this election, my precinct was significantly more Republican. I put it in a table.  Here is a key: CD 38 is my US Congressional race; it’s a new district. “Comptr” is Comptroller, the state controller of funds. “GLO” is General Land Office. “Ag Comm” is Agriculture Commissioner. “RR” is Railroad Commissioner, which handles Oil & Gas mainly—long story regarding the name. “SBOE” is State Board of Education. “HD” is state House District. “DJ” is District Judge; I chose a particular race as a representative race, rather than the many dozen district judge races. “HC Judge” is the Harris County Judge, the administrator of the county. Then we have District Clerk, Harris County Clerk, Harris County Treasurer. And “CC Pct 4” is the County Commissioner for county precinct 4. The County Commissioners Court consists of four County Commissioners and the County Judge.

Note that this table shows only my precinct data, not necessarily the winners of those races.

My precinct data for several races, November 8, 2022 Midterm Election.
I gathered the canvass report data from the Harris County elections report site.

This lets me do at least a bit of comparison. For example, in 2018, the last Midterm Election, I remembered my Texas House Representative won by just a tiny margin, and a lot of it was the difference in my precinct. This time that race was a 7-point spread in my precinct, which was by no means the highest spread. Here’s the 2018 table for comparison. There was no SBOE race in my area that year; the other races are the same as the 2022 table. However, not all races have the same candidates.

My precinct data for the same races, from the November 2018 Midterm Election.
I gathered the canvass report data from the Harris County Elections Archives.

Support for the Governor went down—mainly due to pandemic orders that went against freedom, plus the ongoing border crisis. Just about every other race, the Republican vote in my precinct was a much higher spread.

HD 138 went from 0.8% to 7.0%, with an increase of 135 Republican votes. The DJ 248 race went from 2.6% to 12.6%, with an increase of 206 Republican votes. The County Judge went from a very respectable 7.5% to 12.4%, with an increase of 84 Republican votes. My precinct still just leans Republican, but it’s a much stronger lean than in 2018.

I believe we had both better turnout and more Republican voters. While some precinct chairs could claim credit—because of their blockwalking and get-out-the-vote efforts, I’m not one of those. I mainly contact active Republican voters and get them the information they need to be informed voters. The overall excitement was not coming from me. That’s why I believe we had that excitement over all or most of the county.

And that’s why I’m so shocked at our complete sweep of losses across all county races.

So that brings us to what else was going on in this election.

 

The Mess That Was the Harris County Election

We had ballot security expert Alan Vera come and speak at our Tea Party again on Saturday, to give us a report. It wasn’t pretty. He starts off this way:

Earlier this year, during the heat of the fight over the primary election, some guy named Alan Vera looked at the TV cameras from every major Houston TV station and said, "Incompetence is the perfect camouflage for malfeasance." I refuse to use the word incompetence anymore in discussing elections in Harris County. We’re long past that phase. The accurate words to use are malfeasance and collusion.

Ballot security expert Alan Vera, at Cypress Texas Tea Party, November 19, 2022.
screenshot from here

It’s hard to know how much our local news makes its way to other places. But, as Vera says later,

General and Special Election in Harris County, Texas, and Maricopa County, Arizona, have replaced Broward County, Florida, as the election laughingstock of the country. Think about—those of you who are old enough to remember—who won the presidential election in 2000. Remember that that year, and for years afterward, Broward County, Florida, was the cesspool of elections in the US. If something was going to go wrong, it was Broward County that was going to screw it up. Today you're living in one of two main cesspools of election integrity in the US. I’m not sure there’s a bottle of Rid-X [septic treatment] big enough to clean out the mess we have in Harris County.

So, what were the problems this time? Let’s just say, if there were issues in the past elections—and they were so bad the County Judge actually required the resignation of her specially chosen crony that she’d appointed as the Election Administrator (we covered details here)—those were still present. But today we’ll deal mainly with the new ones. Here’s the list, and then we’ll go into a bit more detail.

·        Preventing Republican Election Workers.

·        Misallocating polling places and equipment.

·        Failing to provide ballot paper.

·        Spoiled ballot problems.

·        More ballots than voters.

First, trying to prevent Republican election workers. The law required that any judges and workers be provided by the parties by the deadline of the end of June; any such listed persons had to be appointed. Done—we thought. Harris County Republican Party provided more than ever before. But then the County, after the deadline, instead of confirming these workers, sent out an invitation at large for workers. If the workers who had already signed up saw those emails and didn’t respond—because they had already applied and been selected by the party weeks or months earlier—the Harris County EA’s office kicked them out of the system and replaced them with workers of their own choosing. Just a minor miscommunication? On top of all their other shenanigans, I don’t think so.

Second, misallocating polling places and equipment. Some background here. Up through 2018, when Stan Stanart, as County Clerk, ran the elections, the County was facing an ADA lawsuit (that’s the Americans with Disabilities Act). The lawsuit claimed that there were hazards preventing people with disabilities from voting. There were no such actual claimants, only an organization that wanted to impose its will. Before Democrat rule, Stan Stanart and Harris County fought the lawsuit and refused to submit. But the moment the Democrats took the wheel, they took on the fines and the burden of dealing with ADA requirements. The ADA training, added to our poll worker training, the first time or two added an extra hour that could have been handled with a 5-minute explanation saying essentially, “If you need to make adjustments to your polling place, you’ll get equipment and instructions when you pick up your voting equipment.” I’m not against that accommodation when needed. But there’s more to it. And they have since much condensed the ADA part of election worker training.

One of the ADA requirements is that a polling place must be within one block of public transportation. If you’re from some eastern city, you might think that makes sense. But we—out here beyond the Houston city limits, and many places within those limits—have no public transportation. At all. You drive, or you hire an uber. But this rule gave the Democrats the idea that they could disqualify all those suburban schools and other polling places—in mainly Republican strongholds. They couldn’t fully get away with that, but they did make polling places more scarce for Republicans, and it doesn’t look random.

There were entire school districts—I believe Spring Branch ISD was one—in which the Elections Administrator’s office said, “They refused to allow us to use their schools this year,” which I believe the schools can’t even do. But HCRP made calls to Spring Branch ISD and learned they had received zero requests for the use of their schools, but they were willing to host polling locations, as they always had. Hmm.

We got our regular polling location this time (we’d been placed elsewhere in 2019). It took some insistence, and repetition, and reminding them that we had a relationship with the school, which would make things go more smoothly. And, as you might have noted from above, we’re only just barely Republican leaning, so there are a lot of Democrat voters they’d be disenfranchising here.

But they cut the number of machines and workers from our Primary Election allotment, even though the November General Election typically has a much higher turnout than a Primary Election. We had 21 working machines in March (because we ran the Democrats’ Primary for them, we only opened one controller line for them, which is all we could staff, but I think there were more machines). They cut our staff to PJ, AJ, plus four clerks. We needed six clerks to fill their requirements. As a result, I was planning to just volunteer (work without pay), and the AJ’s husband ended up going to a different polling location to work. A few days before the election, they let us have our full six.

We asked why we had been given these smaller allotments and couldn’t get an answer.

Third, failing to provide ballot paper. This isn’t the first time for this one, exactly. In the Primary, they figured out, during the weekend of handing out equipment, that someone had estimated ballot paper as one page per voter when we have a long ballot that requires two legal-size pages. In that election, some Presiding Judges got the wrong size paper—letter-size rather than legal-size, all of which was unusable. Others just got half of what they needed, so they had to go back for a second time to the pickup location to get more. That was our experience.

So you’d think they would figure this out. But somehow they managed to underestimate how much paper would be needed—at these various locations similar to ours where they thought we’d get way fewer voters than in the Primary, instead of more. (Remember, a general election is both parties plus independents, so it’s almost guaranteed to be more voters than in the Primary.) In our polling location, we had a clerk start making phonecalls for more paper by around 10:30 in the morning, based on the kind of traffic we were getting. We got lucky. The roving technician assigned to us, who stops by every two hours, had two extra boxes of paper in his vehicle, and he gave us one. Giving these technicians all the extra paper their route might need would have solved the problem entirely.

By the time the County got around to delivering the requested paper, around 6:00 PM, we were two reams into the new box. (The delivery guy left the extra box anyway, showing that a paper shortage was never the issue.) We would have been one of those shut-down polling places, if we hadn’t been both proactive and lucky.

Other polling locations were not so lucky. Stories abound. Many were on hold or were ignored entirely by the County’s call line. One story I heard was a polling place that did that long wait on hold, and then the County told them, “You’re wrong; you have enough paper,” refusing to believe them or send over the needed paper.

They did finally send out additional paper—a pallet load full. They put that in motion at 5:00 PM, during Houston’s going-home traffic hour, ensuring they couldn’t get across the county in less than an hour. By the way, there were places that had run out of paper as early as 2:00 PM. Everyone arriving between 2:00 PM and 7:00 PM got turned away.

There were, I think at latest count, 23 polling locations that ran out of paper—and had to send voters away. Maybe the voters had time to go to some other polling place and wait in lines made longer there by the closing of these polling places; or maybe they didn’t have that kind of transportation or time. Voters were absolutely, definitely disenfranchised by this action of the Election Administrator’s office, which is indeed a criminal offense, since it’s the thing the Democrats are always accusing Republicans of attempting.

But, by the way, all 23 of these paper-deficit polling locations just happened to be in strong Republican areas. What a coincidence.

Fourth, you may recall that we had paper jamming problems in each election since we started using these machines in November 2021. Smaller elections, with one letter-size page, were not as bad as the Primary and General, where we have 99 lines on the ballot. This time they added a paper feeding device to the machine and promised us in training that you couldn’t even force them to jam now. Except, in my training, the first try jammed. And then the demonstration of the duo-go (for handicapped curbside voting) also jammed.

Showing the new paper path guide, intended to prevent jams,
from page 153 of the Harris County Elections Manual 2022-2023

We had paper jams, as if the paper feeding devices did no good at all. We had to have one person working each line, to help voters with paper feeding problems, at all times. That ended up being my assignment for the whole day. I got very good at it. I could hear the little hum that meant the person is ready for printing, and I’d get close to see if they needed help. Sometimes the paper just needed a little much nudge, to catch, than you’d think it would need. Even with my help, we still had some jams. Most of the time we could easily deal with reprinting a page and spoiling the crumpled page.

At our polling place, because of our special care, we had almost no problems at the scanner. That wasn’t true for other places, where scanners couldn’t read smeared or crumpled ballot pages. And this is where the real problems show up.

By the way, I’ll mention here something new Alan Vera told us. Tarrant County, where Ft. Worth is, uses the same machines we do. Also, they are a large county with a long ballot that requires two ballot pages. And yet they have zero paper jams. What’s the difference? They maintain and calibrate their machines. A FOIA request in Harris County reveals that there has been no maintenance schedule for our voting machines. Is this incompetence, or are the people running our elections planning to use the mis-scanned ballots to cheat?

If a scanner takes one of the two pages but not the other, the solution is to put the second page of that ballot in an emergency chute. It is then read by hand at Central Count. But that’s not what people were doing—and this problem arose during Early Voting. Poll workers instead gave the person a new voter code and had them redo their ballot, print it, and place BOTH of the new pages into the scanner. That means that voter got, at minimum, 1 ½ votes.

And there’s more. Some voting locations—innocently or not—very wrongly placed spoiled ballots in the emergency chute on the scanner, instead of in the carefully segregated spoiled ballots envelope, to which we attach the voter’s name and time of voting, to make sure we do not accidentally allow that spoiled ballot to be counted while they get a reprinted ballot page that is counted.

Fifth, that’s one way you get more ballots than voters. But Harris County’s Elections Administrator’s office found another one. Because there were some voting locations that did not open on time (equipment failures, or possibly just not skilled enough workers), they went to a judge—without even notifying the Republicans—and requested an extra hour of voting, which the judge granted, illegally. But we were instructed to take voters who arrived between 7:00 and 8:00 PM and have them vote provisionally. We handled about 10 of these. That means their ballots would be segregated and not counted, until they could be proven to be legal, acceptable ballots, which is called “curing.” That’s what we do if someone needs to provide proof of something—such as, if they were given a mail-in ballot and claim they didn’t use it, they can vote provisionally, and then later turn in their unused mail-in ballot to “cure” their provisional ballot.

In this weird case, these post-7:00 PM provisional ballots were supposed to be segregated from any other provisional ballots. We can’t be sure that happened around the County. Then we got a message, at 8:20 PM, after we’d processed all voters, including those provisionals, that we should not allow after-7:00 PM provisional ballots, because another judge had stayed the first judge’s ruling, so they couldn’t even vote provisionally after 7:00 PM.

I haven’t mentioned yet a new problem we noticed at our polling location this time. There were a large number of voters whose ID did not scan or did not show up in the system. An advanced search by name turned them up. One of our clerks handled 15 of these—at the same apartment address. We don’t have power at our polling location to deny a voter whose name shows up as a registered voter. But 15 from one apartment—young people, lots of tattoos and piercings, all showing up late in the day, and their IDs don’t scan. And that’s just in the line that noticed; we don’t know if there were more from that apartment who ended up in the other line.

Voter roll problems continue, so I didn't list that. But Alan Vera tells us there are 200,000 known names on Harris County voter rolls that do not live here and are not legal voters. We made a big effort this summer to try to identify a number of troubled places, to verify that voters did not live there, particularly in places listing many voters in one location. We sent in affidavits to legally challenge those names. They are nevertheless still on the rolls. 

What I think this shows is fake driver licenses. We had that issue come up last election a couple of times, but it was for addresses that didn’t even exist in the county. When we couldn’t let this one guy vote, he just picked up his ID card and mumbled something about having to talk with his friends. Later I learned that there was indeed an entity manufacturing fake driver licenses for the purpose of voting. Now, apparently, they’ve learned to at least identify an actual location within the county. They just haven’t learned not to have them all assigned to the same apartment—at least not then have them all show up at the same polling location.

Yes, there is a place to report such voting irregularities. In Harris County it is DefendMyBallot.org/.   Elsewhere in Texas, you can make similar reports at Texas.ProtecttheVote.com. This is for any PJ, AJ, clerk, poll watcher, or voter who observed an election irregularity. Getting it in writing by eyewitnesses is the way to build a case.

This is, as Alan Vera put it, “alarming and infuriating.” He also gave us the only real solution: “Plan A for election integrity in Texas is that 99% of all adult Texans live their lives according to traditional Judeo-Christian principles.” But the reality is, “Thousands of people across the state have consented to being human agents of powers and principalities of darkness, and are working to undermine the state and this country, which God himself founded.” So his Plan B continues to be: Deterrence, Prevention, and Real-time Intervention.

Alan Vera (left), HCRP attorney Andy Taylor, HCRP Chair Cindy Siegel,
Senator Paul Bettencourt, former District Clerk and candidate Chris Daniels,
at press conference November 10, 2022
screenshot from here

 

This is what happens when I don’t write often enough; I write one blog post that is long enough to be three or four. If you’ve read this far, congratulations. You might also want to check out these videos and other sources related to the Harris County election debacle:

·        Alan Vera at our Cypress Texas Tea Party meeting November 19, 2022. 

·        Cindy Siegel and HCRP press conference November10, 2022 

·        Cindy Siegel and HCRP press conference November14, 2022 

·        Post by Sen. Paul Bettencourt, with links to several Houston Chronicle stories. 

We Are at War

War comes in various shapes and sizes, and temperatures. Some are comparatively small, others big. Some are cold, others kinetic. Some are wars of ideas. Maybe all are wars of ideas. Ideas like, what is good and what is evil—and which are we choosing? We’re in one of those right now.

Back in the 60s there was a saying, “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” It never made sense, because if nobody is warring, there is no war. But if one side is warring and the other side isn’t defending itself, you just have a takeover by the warring party. So, if someone is warring against you, you either succumb or fight back.

We’re being warred against. Many of us are fighting back—in non-kinetic, non-violent ways. We spread the message. We campaign. We vote. We work the polls. Some of us fight in the courts. Some of us fight in the legislature—if we’re not in the legislature, we testify and do citizen lobbying. We speak up. We make our voices heard. And meanwhile we live peaceful, productive lives in our communities.

The other side is using less lawful tactics. They censor. They propagandize like crazy. That is, they lie. They falsely accuse—in fact, if they’re accusing us (their opponents), you can assume they’re doing what they’re accusing us of. They harness business, media, unions, schools, NGOs, agencies, and anything else they can finagle to do their bidding.

They thwart free and fair elections. We have an election underway, with early voting running through tomorrow, and election day coming next Tuesday. And all of the thwarting is evident. However, in our war against evil, we have upped our game—more training, more poll watching, more calling them out. And yet, here’s an example of what this war looks like.

Gregg Phillips and Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote
were arrested for not revealing a source
image from True the Vote found here

Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote (which started here in Houston and trained me in poll watching over a decade ago), and Gregg Phillips, a fellow researcher, turned over information to law enforcement identifying the company Konnech as having stored personal data of millions of US election workers on a server in China. CEO Eugene Yu has been arrested on criminal charges in the case; he is a naturalized US citizen, if I understand correctly, but is nevertheless a spy for the CCP.

The fact that charges were made means that verifiable information was provided and corroborated. But Konnech filed a defamation suit against True the Vote and all involved. The thing is, it’s not defamation if the claims are true, and the fact that charges have been filed make it very likely that what was said about them was true. In other words, Engelbrecht and Phillips did not make false claims, so a defamation lawsuit ought to be dismissed. Instead, the judge in the case is insisting that they provide the names of their sources.

And Monday Engelbrecht and Phillips were jailed for contempt of court. Here’s a good metaphor:

“Let’s imagine that a drug dealer facing criminal charges filed a lawsuit in civil court to make the cops provide the name of a source inside his organization. Would anyone think for a moment that would be a reasonable request? Would anyone have any doubt as to the fate of the informant if he was identified?

That’s how ludicrous this is and how obscene.”

                              —Sam Faddis, former CIA operations officer, writing in AND Magazine

Let’s look a little closer at the timeline. I’m getting most of this from a True the Vote email newsletter, as well as some recent news stories.

January 2021     True the Vote learned of the illegal breach of personal information to the CCP by Konnech. Recognizing the seriousness of the breach, they immediately turned over their information to the FBI. It turned out Konnech was already on their radar. They continued to cooperate with the FBI for 15 months.

April 2022           Catherine was told by a Texas-based FBI agent that the Washington, DC, office was now involved in the case. The FBI agent told her it was possible the FBI would now be targeting them, and their best way forward was to go public with their information.

August 2022       Engelbrecht and Phillips held a meeting in Arizona, called “The Pit,” an audience including citizen researchers, journalists, and law enforcement personnel, to whom they divulged their story publicly for the first time.

September 2022              Michigan-based company, Konnech, filed suit against True the Vote for defamation, racism, and xenophobia, based on their making their findings public. The court issued a temporary restraining order (TRO), which required providing the names of all individuals who were involved in the discovery of poll worker data in China.

October 4, 2022               Following a grand jury convened in Los Angeles, Konnech CEO, Eugene Yu, was indicted in California on charges that included fraud, embezzlement, and a data breach that resulted in the theft of the personal information of election workers in LA County. The arrest was announced by LA District Attorney, George Gascon.

October 7, 2022               Attorneys for Engelbrecht and Phillips made an initial appearance in federal court in Houston to answer the civil lawsuit filed by Konnech. It was at this hearing that the judge issued a highly unusual order requiring Engelbrecht and Phillips, through their attorneys, to reveal the name of the individual who originally presented them with the poll worker data on the server in China. Their attorney reluctantly complied and revealed the name of that one individual.

October 27, 2022             Engelbrecht and Phillips appeared in federal court in Houston, at which point they intended to demonstrate that there was a criminal matter in LA County regarding Eugene Yu and Konnech—which would mean the defamation case could be dismissed. The judge refused to consider this essential fact and further directed Engelbrecht and Phillips to reveal publicly the name of yet another individual who had been in the hotel room where Phillips had viewed the poll worker data in January 2021. Engelbrecht and Phillips offered to cooperate with the court and Konnech’s lawyers by providing the name of this individual under seal. The judge refused this offer. At the end of a long day of testimony, the judge found Engelbrecht and Phillips in contempt of court. They were provided an opportunity to “cure” the contempt on Monday, October 31, at 9:00 AM by announcing the name of this individual in open court. If they did not “cure” it, they would be immediately remanded into custody by the US Marshals.

October 31, 2022             Engelbrecht and Phillips refused to name the individual who was in the hotel room in January 2021, because this person was not involved in the sourcing of the poll worker data, and they strongly believe that this individual’s life would be in danger if his name were to be revealed publicly. They were immediately remanded to the custody of the US Marshal’s Service and remain in federal prison.

In any normal case, the defamation suit would have been dismissed. In parallel cases where journalists or researchers have been jailed for not revealing a source, it was at least on the pretext that it was preventing law enforcement from verifying the evidence they needed to proceed with their investigation. That is clearly not true here.

The judge doesn’t even seem concerned with how political it looks to do this false imprisonment a week before the important Midterm Election, for which True the Vote is a clearinghouse of training for poll workers, poll watchers, and any other election observers who see election laws being broken. They couldn’t wait two weeks to avoid the appearance of political shenanigans?

post on Catherine Engelbrecht's Locals.com account November 2, 2022
linking to the updates of election violation reports, of which the leading
problem is ballot drop boxes

The logical conclusion is that this judge, along with Yu and other players, is fighting on the side against truth and freedom.

Engelbrecht’s friend Dinesh D’Souza, who directed the movie 2000 Mules, based on their research, suggested in his Tuesday night podcast, we pray for them of course, but not to worry about them. They will be fine. Some years ago he underwent political persecution that ended up in his spending time in prison for a violation that should have been limited to a fine, if anything. He said he learned a lot, and it actually raised his profile so that he could share his ideas with more people than before. He hopes that will be the case for Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips.

We can’t not fight in the courts, because to not fight is to succumb. But it is definitely not a fair fight. So getting the word out, spreading the message that compares freedom to tyranny, is essential.

In that fight we are shut down at every turn by those warring against us. But truth rises. Truth wins.

Meanwhile there are battle to be fought all around, and not all will be won, as we would hope.

Another such casualty in the fight for truth this week was Dr. Peter McCullough. Not dead. Just another attempt to silence him. He has been one of the most published and outspoken doctors (also here and here) in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, who developed an effective protocol early on, shared by millions and found to be effective. He’s a cardiology specialist and was among the first to connect the rise in myocarditis in young people to the so-called vaccine.

Dr. Peter McCullough testifies to the Texas Senate HHS Committee March 11, 2021
screenshot from here

After decades of stellar work and spotless record, all of his credentials have been stripped from him. He was not given due process. He was not given a chance to defend himself, or even to learn the reasons; he was coldly informed in an email. In a message about it, Dr. McCullough said,

I was terminated as the Editor-In-Chief of Cardiorenal Medicine and Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine after years of service and rising impact factors.  There was no phone call, no board meeting, no due process.  Just e-mails or certified letters.  Powerful dark forces are working in academic medicine to expunge any resistance to the vax.

Yesterday I was stripped of my board certifications in Internal Medicine and Cardiology after decades of perfect clinical performance, board scores, and hundreds of peer reviewed publications.  

None of this will stop until there is a “needle in every arm.”

I don’t know what this means for him going forward. He is of an age that retirement is an option—but that would be a tremendous loss for the public. While he might be prevented from seeing patients (it would be hard to get insurance without credentials), he might still be able to do research and publish findings. And he could still continue his online work and speeches and interviews. So we shall see. But I’m sure it’s intended to be a warning signal to any other medical professional who dares to go against the powers of those warring against truth and freedom.

We will win some battles in this war. Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter may be a good thing for freedom of speech, although not quite fully realized in time for the Midterm Election.

And speaking of the Midterms, we may have a rare number of victories next Tuesday. Biden’s ominous and odd speech the other night seemed to portend a repeat of the worst—don’t expect the count to be complete for several days (so that they can dump in enough unreal main-in ballots to change outcomes they don’t like); and beware of violence breaking out (is that a threat against us disguised in an accusation toward us, disguised as a call for peace?) Weird.

I don’t know what it means. But I do know in this war between freedom and tyranny, the tyrants will not give up easily. And they have already proven, many times over, that abiding by the law is a limit on us, not them.

In the final end, we win the war. We’d better keep that in mind as they continue their attacks in this war many only recently realized we had to fight.

The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime

We tend to say every election is the most important of our lifetime. And truthfully it has probably felt that way every time. This time it is more true than ever—because our country is now a post-constitutional republic, and this may be our only opportunity to turn around on the path back toward our Constitution.

Decisions are state and local, since it’s not a presidential election year. And yet they may add up to a greater impact than anything we’ve seen before. That is, if—we vote for that return toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

image found here

I’ll be looking at Texas and local races today. Principles will apply elsewhere, but you’ll have to do your own research.

The short and simple answer this election is to vote Republican. And vote Republican all the way down the ballot. In Harris County, that’s a long ballot—possibly the longest in the nation. We vote on our judges, and it’s around a hundred races total. I’ll highlight just a few. There is no straight-ticket voting anymore, so it requires tedious individual voting. Note that the Republican candidate is listed first in every race.

 

Governor

The choices are Greg Abbott, our current governor, and Robert (Beto) O’Rourke. Beto had no redeeming qualities when he ran against Ted Cruz for Senate in 2018, but he pulled in a great deal of out-of-state anti-Cruz money, and was a media darling. He failed. He attempted a run for president, without the anti-Cruz enthusiasm and money, and showed himself to be at the bottom of the Democrat heap, only slightly above Kamala Harris. So again he failed. He’s attempting to pretend the multiple failures are a reason to vote for him. He changed from his previous, “Hell, yes, we’re going to take Americans’ guns” (an actual quote) to something more nuanced that he thinks might play better in Texas. He’s pro-abortion without restriction and thinks that’s a winning issue. It isn’t.

So he’s not much of a threat.

As for Governor Abbott, he disappointed many during the pandemic by allowing lockdowns. He lifted statewide mandates pretty quickly, but defending our freedoms against more local tyrants has been piecemeal. He just extended the declaration of emergency for the 31^st time (Houston Chronicle story here). Fact: the pandemic isn’t an emergency and hasn’t been for a very long time. Only 12 states still retain these emergency declarations. We’re hoping the legislature will address that this upcoming session; the people are calling for an automatic requirement for the Texas Legislature to approve emergency orders in order to extend them beyond 30 days.

That being said, he has been mostly conservative, and has been good at growing Texas and our economy here. While we would have preferred some DeSantis-style boldness, we’re better off than most. So, with less enthusiasm than before the pandemic, I am definitely voting for Governor Greg Abbott.

 

US Congress

I’ve been redistricted from CD 2, Dan Crenshaw’s district, to the new CD 38. Our candidate is Wesley Hunt. He’s ex-military and supported by Crenshaw. Those of you who followed this race in the primary know I did not support Hunt. I campaigned for a much better candidate. But Hunt got the big money and pulled off a win without a runoff—despite failing to show at every event I was made aware of. As a precinct chair I have since been invited to an event or two, but at times I was unable to attend. That means I still have not seen him in person since he began his campaign. That is completely opposite of how Dan Crenshaw ran.

Hunt says the right conservative things. My impression of him, in person, when he ran a previous campaign in 2018, was that he wasn’t as clear on the concepts, or as committed to conservative principles as his opponents. But he said the right things then too, and won the primary but not the general.

This time he’s in a district that is designed to trend Republican. As long as he doesn’t blow it, he’ll get elected. Unless I look up the name on the sample ballot, I can’t even remember his Democrat opponent’s name (it's Duncan F. Klussmann). I have seen no campaign signs for the opponent. There seems to be no enthusiasm for him. So Hunt is likely to sail through.

I’ll be voting for Hunt, in hopes that he will live true to the conservative things he says. He will be better to work with than someone who openly opposes conservatives.

 

Harris County Judge

This is possibly the most important race on the ballot for people in Harris County. Again, a brief explanation that HC Judge is an administrative position. It is, in fact, one of the largest administrative jurisdictions in the nation. I think Los Angeles and maybe one other are larger. In smaller, rural counties, some county judges still act as judges, but in the enormous Harris County, that has not been the case for many decades; just the name remains.

It’s a challenge to list the many reasons we need to get rid of our corrupt socialist incumbent. But here are a few:

·       Lina Hidalgo directed $11 million in COVID-19 relief money to a partisan crony. Three of her main staffers were indicted on fraud charges; charges against her may yet come, but not likely before the election.

o   Claims the funds have been returned are not accurate. Stories here and here.

·       Lina Hidalgo and cronies on Commissioners Court changed the structure for voting, after a corrupt Democrat County Clerk stepped down in May of 2020, and called for a new elections administrator to handle elections, rather than the County Clerk. She hired an incompetent crony as EA, who messed up the Primary so badly that even Hidalgo asked for her resignation—although they postponed her leaving until after the runoffs could be mishandled as well.

o   There are ongoing serious chain-of-custody issues related to elections. Story here. 

·       She decided the way to allocate Harvey relief and recovery funds was—not according to who suffered the most damaged, but which ethnicities she wanted to favor.

·       She pushes for higher taxes at every opportunity. The three countywide ballot propositions are an example: totaling $1.2 billion for projects that haven’t even been delineated yet. Just-in-case money, during a recession.

·       She has misallocated money intended for police on the street to social programs. The state has called her to get back in compliance with the law against defunding law enforcement.

·       Even the Democrat District Attorney is at odds with Hidalgo for failing to allow prosecution of violent felons; Hidalgo won’t fund additional prosecutors.

·       Hidalgo supports the practice of letting violent offenders out on personal recognizance bonds; i.e., no bail bonds. Since Hidalgo’s election in 2018, the increase of PR bonds to violent criminals rose from 12 to 1283, including 110 capital murder offenders. 181 have died at the hands of these criminals out on PR bonds. (I wrote about this here.) 

But what about all the things she’s done right? Hmm. I can’t seem to come up with anything to list.

Back in the Primary, the Republicans ran several capable people. But my choice then and now is Alexandra del Moral Mealer. She’s a serious woman. Unlike Hidalgo, who took on this job at age 2;7, as her first job out of graduate school, with no real world experience, Mealer has considerable leadership experience, both in the military (leading bomb squads), and in business. She’s smart, well prepared, and articulate. Doing political schmoozing isn’t really her thing; you can see it’s not natural for her. But she’s likable and real. A telling detail for me was last summer, on my way into the Republican Party of Texas convention, I ran into her in the crosswalk. She remembered my name, my association with the Cypress Texas Tea Party, where we had had her speak, and that I had supported her.

Me with Alexandra del Moral Mealer (right),
at Cypress Texas Tea Party in March 2022

She has garnered quite an army of willing block walkers. Her signs are everywhere around the county. I see almost none for Hidalgo.

Even the Houston Chronicle denied Hidalgo their endorsement and went with Mealer. The editorial board said, "Where it counts, particularly on the issue of crime, Mealer seems to be listening to many in our community who otherwise feel unheard: crime victims and their families." 

If you’re interested in seeing them side by side, there’s this video. 

 

County Commissioner

We’ve had just two of the five members of the Commissioners’ Court siding with the people, and against Hidalgo and those who control her agenda. Redistricting following the census has been used as an attempt to oust one or two of the remaining ones. My commissioner, “Cactus” Jack Cagle, is one of my favorite people in the political world. Cowboy, poet, philosopher—very fun to hear him speak on just about anything. I will definitely be voting for him. If you’re in Tom Ramsey’s district or one of the others, know that you’re doing the world a service by voting Republican in these races.

That's me with the tall guys, Cactus Jack Cagle and Mr. Spherical Model
at Cactus Jack's Campfire (picnic) in 2021

 

County Clerk

Stan Stanart was our County Clerk for eight years. Elections ran so much smoother then. All we had to worry about were the more traditional attempts at voter fraud—not systemic ones implemented by county officials. It would be such a pleasure to have him back. If we can get a Republican County Judge and keep our Republican County Commissioners, we could even do away with the failed attempt at using an Elections Administrator and return that duty to the County Clerk’s office.

We heard from Stan at last Saturday’s Tea Party meeting. Vide here.

 

County Treasurer

This race is even lower on the ballot than County Clerk. Kyle Scott would be such a joy in that position. He understands how the County Treasurer can keep spending under control—by not signing authorization to any spending outside the law. What a concept! He proved his contrarian abilities as a member of the Lone Star Community College board, some years ago (term-limited out). He cheers us up every time he speaks at our Tea Party. Here’s video of him from last Saturday as well.

 

Judges

As I mentioned, we have a l-l-o-o-n-n-g-g ballot, because of all the judges. This year, because of the ridiculous policy of letting violent felons out on personal recognizance bonds, it is especially important to safety in our community to oust those judges and put in judges who abide by the law. I signed on for nearly all of these judges; getting signatures saves them big bucks in filing fees. Many of them have served before but got ousted in the Beto wave or its 2020 echo. The Democrats are both inexperienced and ineffective. And in many cases they have proven dangerous to our communities. An excuse for the PR bonds is that it takes up to three years to bring a case to trial. Wouldn’t the better solution be to get through the docket faster? Managing caseload is something a good judge must do.

A favorite for me this year is Julian Ramirez, running for the 248^th Judicial District; it’s one of those criminal courts. Julian had been in the DA’s office for many years, but because of his support of the previous DA, he got ousted after Kim Ogg’s election. He has been my guy with inside info on judges for close to two decades. I believe I can trust him to do the job to make our streets safer.

 

Propositions

There are three bond propositions on the Harris County ballot. I’m voting against all three. It’s not noral to put forth bond proposals that are not even attached to planned projects, but that’s what our County Judge and her Commissioners Court are doing. During a recession. There’s no good reason.

If you’re in the City of Houston, there are another 7 or so bond proposals. I’d vote against those too. Taxing yourself at higher rates for no good reason just doesn’t make sense.

At the Harris County Republican Party Executive Committee (the precinct chairs) earlier this month, we vote to oppose all three Harris County propositions and all of the Houston propositions.

Vote All the Way Down the Ballot

Republicans tend to hesitate to vote down ballot where they don’t know all the candidates. This year especially, just trust that the Republican candidate will be better than the other guy. And vote every race all the way down the ballot. Plan on taking 20 minutes to vote—after you reach the machine. Good luck finding a place with a short line. The inexperienced Democrats running the election are particularly bad at allocating resources appropriately. In my polling location they have cut the number of machines in half from what we had in the Primary, and have cut our staff—as though we would have fewer voters in a general election than in a Primary. We’ll be adding to our staff with volunteers to make sure we can get the job done. But it appears from Early Voting, which started Monday, that we are having a high turnout. So plan your time accordingly. Paper jams took a lot of time in the Primary. The machines weren't expected to handle two-legal-size pager per voter. They now have installed a guide, which they said makes it almost impossible to jam. Nevertheless, in my training, we had a jam on our first try (not trying to jam, just trying to insert the paper). And then we had a second jam when they were demonstrating the curbside duo-go.

from page 153 of the official manual for this election

Voting in person on Election Day, preferably in your precinct polling location, is the gold standard. But if there’s any chance you can’t do it on Election Day, do Early Voting. (Locations for both here.) I didn't find a place to check for estimated wait times, but that would be handy info to have.

It took until just a couple of weeks ago, but the County’s website finally has its sample ballots up. They can’t seem to find me by name—in this place where I’ve been a registered voter for 24 years. So I use the VUID (voter unique ID) on my voter registration card, and then they recognize me.

Will your vote count? We watch for voter fraud here. There’s an army of people daily looking at the voter list of unqualified voters (dead people, people who have moved away) who have been identified but not removed from the voter rolls as they should have been. If any of those people vote, they’re immediately flagged. Also, there’s an army of trained poll watchers, in addition to the army of trained Presiding Judges, Alternate Judges, and Clerks. If you vote in person, you can believe it will be counted. And if we can get enough of us to vote to exceed their ability to cheat, that’s how we beat them.

So, vote! Vote Republican! Vote all the way down the ballot. This is indeed the most important election of our lifetime.

Public Speaking

I spent last Thursday’s writing time preparing a presentation of the Spherical Model for the local Tea Party meeting. It’s put together now as a video, such as it is, below. I did video, on my phone, of the other speakers at the meeting. But all I could do for myself was press start and go speak. And then we had issues with the projector, which had cycled off during the other speakers. I had to stand on a chair and reach it up near the ceiling—because I’m taller than any of the men who were handy. And then I totally didn’t think about whether I was standing in view of the camera, because I was talking to the audience. So there’s quite a lot of time I totally wander out of view. But no problem; we just use the slides (Mr. Spherical Model helped me edit), which makes them a lot clearer than a video of the screen in the room.

And then we couldn’t get the microphone to work. I don’t have a very loud voice, even though from my perspective I was talking really loud. But the room was small enough that going without a microphone went OK—except I was 15 or so feet from the camera, so not great sound.

Enough apologies. It’s yet another effort to explain these ideas. I hope this is helpful. The presentation is called, "There's No Such Thing as a Right-Wing Extremist."

Our Constitutional Republic Has Suddenly Become a Fascist Tyranny

The other day Glenn Beck had a panel discussion, mainly about midterm elections, and polling, and related things. But in that discussion he asked the question, “Do you believe we are still living in a constitutional republic?” The answer all four gave was "No." Steve Deace added, “The social compact is broken.” 

If we’re no longer a constitutional republic, then our government has been overthrown. How did that coup happen? And when? And a whole lot of other questions. I think the answer is similar to a Hemingway quote about how you go bankrupt: “Gradually, then suddenly.”

We’ve been fighting against tyranny for a long time. We had the best thing going in the history of the world. And yet, almost since the beginning there have been hidden (and not-so-hidden) forces, cabals, groups, ideologies, factions that have wanted to wrest control back from the people and place it in the hands of chosen-behind-the-scenes elites.

Despite our long resistance, we are now a country in which regular citizens can be arrested for disagreeing with the ruling powers. Recently we had two examples of political arrests related to pro-life issues.

In Pennsylvania

On September 23, 2022, the FBI conducted a SWAT raid at the Philadelphia home of Mark Houck, a pro-life activist. (Epoch Times story here.) A year ago, while he was doing his usual sidewalk pro-life work, along with family, a pro-abortion escort (a person who escorts the abortion seeker inside to keep her “safe” from pro-life people) came the 100 or so feet from the facility and zeroed in on Houck’s 12-year-old son, getting in his face and yelling profanity at him. Houck, as a normal father, stepped in to protect his son. In the single shove, the 70-year-old pro-abortionist fell down. Police investigated and found no need for criminal charges. There was a civil suit, but the complainant didn’t show, and the case was dismissed. 

FBI agents arrive at a home,
photo by Robyn Beck/AFP via GettyImages, found here

A year goes by. Then suddenly the feds have 15-20 armed SWAT agents make the arrest at the home, in front of the wife and children. The charging documents—to which Houck has pled not guilty—claim Houck hit the man twice—intending to imply aggravated assault, which the facts of the case do not bear out. They also claim he violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, but if that had been so, the pro-abortionist would not have had to travel 100 feet down the street to accost Houck’s son. By the way, there was no one to escort—or block—during the altercation.

Americans should not feel safer.

In Tennessee

In Tennessee last week, Paul Vaughn was arrested at his home by FBI agents yelling and banging on the door with guns drawn. There were children in the yard, getting ready to get in the car for a ride to school, and other children in the house. Vaughn surrendered, thinking that was the quickest way to de-escalate the situation. His wife, who had been at the back of the house, took video of the officers taking her husband in their vehicle, with arms drawn on him, refusing to give a reason, show a warrant, or provide ID.

They drove Vaughn about an hour’s distance away to process him for the arrest. It took a fair amount of time for his lawyers to even ascertain what the charges were. They were concerning a pro-life sit-in that took place on March 5, 2021, a year and a half ago. Again, the were using the FACE Act law, claiming he had conspired to block the entrance to a facility.

The thing is, he wasn’t even there that day. His role was as mediator between the group and the local police. He informed the police of the planned protest and asked what the group needed to do to make sure it remained as peaceful and legal as possible. He passed the information on to the activists, telling them that they could be arrested on misdemeanor charges, which the eleven protesters decided was worth it, and is what happened. The entire thing remained peaceful. Many of the protestors were elderly and harmless. But the DOJ is now claiming Vaughn was a “conspirator”—as if a peaceful sit-in ages ago is an imminent threat of domestic terror.

They released him after processing, leaving him without a phone or wallet, and no transportation home.

The arrest of this father for a misdemeanor crime in which he did not participate should not make you feel safer.

FBI agents refuse to explain why they were 
arresting Paul Vaughn, from his wife's video

Here is the Epoch Times story, which includes the wife’s video. 

Glenn Beck gives additional details in this video. 

Coincidentally, there have been multiple attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers, churches, and other places—with no charges filed. And of course no SWAT team raids.

New Executive Order to Spy on Americans

I don’t mean for this to be simply about the pro-life issue. It just happens that these two happened one week after the other. Let’s add into the mix the many political prisoners being held, charged, and prosecuted for the dangerous threat to the country of walking through the capitol building when invited in by police. Then add in a number of people who have questioned the 2020 election, such as Mike Lindell, being followed on vacation and arrested and having his phone seized. I’m forgetting the names of others they have done this too. There’s quite a list.

Now let’s add this little detail: Biden this past week quietly gave an executive order granting himself more spy powers.

Here is the executive order. 

title page of the executive order,
image from the White House website

Here’s a worrisome part:

(C) The President may authorize updates to the list of objectives in light of new national security imperatives, such as new or heightened threats to the national security of the United States, for which the President determines that bulk collection may be used.  The Director shall publicly release any updates to the list of objectives authorized by the President, unless the President determines that doing so would pose a risk to the national security of the United States.

What does this mean? The President gets to decide on new reasons for collecting this mass data on citizens. We should feel comforted that the Director of National Intelligence must immediately apprise us of any such updates—unless the President tells him not to. So, everything is at the whim of the dictator/president.

Most of the executive order deals with foreign threats, things we hope our government is staying aware of to keep us safe. It’s just that mixed in there are things like not going along with the government line on elections, for example. Or doing something to government property, which, as we can see from the Jan. 6 ridiculousness, could be construed any way they may choose.

And this executive order comes from the man who was VP during the administration that spied on candidate Donald Trump, and carried the spying over to when he was a sitting president, and used the trumped-up, paid-for fake accusations to try to remove him from office. So that’s who we’re supposed to trust to “minimize any impact on privacy and civil liberties”?

Americans should not feel safer.

Joshua Philipp discusses this on Crossroads. 

At this point we are holding out hope that the November Midterm Elections will be clean enough, so that we have one final chance to recover our constitutional republic from the fascist tyranny it has become—so gradually, and then so suddenly.