These scriptures came to mind as I was thinking about my
writing today:
Luke 8:17 For nothing is secret, that shall not be made
manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.
Luke 12:3 Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness
shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in
closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.
Doctrine & Covenants 1:3 And
the rebellious shall be pierced with much sorrow; for their iniquities shall be
spoken upon the housetops, and their secret acts shall be revealed.
I’m pleased when the truth comes out. That is happening, at
last, in a couple of places. One is a news story beginning to have the name
Obamagate attached to it; I’m going to wait for another day for that.
Instead, I’ll start with a more local story, related to
ballot security here in Texas—with lessons, hopefully, to help voters
everywhere.
Last Saturday, mid-afternoon, I started seeing notices that our County Clerk, here in Harris County (where Houston is) had resigned. Diane
Trautman, who was elected in November 2018, has the main responsibility of
handling elections.
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| Diane Trautman, Harris County Clerk, until May 31, 2020 image from the HarrisVotes.org website |
During her relatively short time in office, she made a number
of missteps—some from inexperience, some from attitude.
There had been a lawsuit, from 2016, against the county regarding
disability accessibility, which had been held off indefinitely by the previous
county clerk, Stan Stanart—because there was not a single case of
discrimination brought as evidence. No individual had been affected; some
activists just went around and speculated where a problem might have been
possible, and sued based on that. County Clerk Trautman decided to settle the
lawsuit—costing the county taxpayers about a couple million dollars, and
requiring hours and hours of tedious training for absolutely every poll worker,
regardless of previous experience, regardless of lack of issues at their
polling places—but the poll workers were paid for this training, again at
county taxpayer expense.
The training could have been done in five minutes: “Remember
to treat everyone with respect and courtesy. And if your polling place has
issues that need remediation, we provide materials and instructions when you
pick up your voting materials.” Done.
The hours and hours of training didn’t totally replace voting
judge training, but did replace other poll worker training, including bilingual
training.
Also, even though there was an election in November, we were
required to get training again (this time shorter and online) before the
primary election—after which we learned that we only need the training no more
than annually. So, another error at county expense and poll worker
inconvenience.
The only change at our polling place was the use of a call
buzzer for curbside voting. In November it didn’t work, so we just went back to
the usual protocol, having a poll worker watching outside to address needs. While
I have seen curbside voting used at a location where I was a poll watcher, we
have never, in all our years of running elections at our precinct’s polling
place, had a request for curbside. But we were provided a temperamental machine,
just in case—plus a technician to make sure it works, or to pack it away if it
doesn’t—paid for by the county taxpayers.
Trautman changed the county website quite drastically, from
one that worked well and was easy to navigate to one that was quite glorifying
of her but was difficult to use. I had occasion to help a friend update her
voter registration after a move to a nursing home, which also included needing
to change the address on her ID. This involved a phonecall to someone in a
state office to help us iron out some detail—because we hadn’t been able to get
what we needed on the county website. He tried using the site himself and said,
“What have they done to this website? It didn’t used to be this difficult.” So,
it’s not just me.
She instituted countywide voting—which has been quite
popular for voters, but less so for poll workers, who tend to be people from
their own precinct. She tried to cut out precinct chairs from their role of providing
judges and workers, so that all would be hired directly by the county for their
personal list. They also tried (mostly unsuccessfully because of Republican Party
intervention) to eliminate polling places, further cutting off precinct chairs
from their ability to reach their voters. And she vowed to throw out the very
safe and successful Hart e-Slate voting system, with the new and more secure e-poll
books (a tablet dedicated to the purpose), and return to paper only—at the
expense of several million dollars and reintroducing many old fraud practices
inherent in paper only ballots. So far she hasn’t been successful at this. Also, her system has failed repeatedly to meet requirements for updating in time to prevent a second vote by the same voter, which means it makes in-person voter fraud possible in ways it wasn't before.
Her first night of polling, returning tallies was
disastrous. It took more than all night to tally, because she had failed to
follow the practices of her predecessor, and thought she’d just send results over
an insecure internet line—even though the state had warned her repeatedly that
this would not be allowed. So she gathered the tallies from the various locations in person, rather than give an unofficial count by phone followed by a (hopefully matching) official count after everything arrived at the central location and was verified.
For the Primary, the parties gave her estimates for voting
machine needs at the various polling places, based on previous elections. But
she decided that every polling location needed the same number for each party.
So in some heavily Democrat areas, Republicans were given far more machines
than they had requested, and Democrats had extremely long lines. Because of
countywide voting, locations were harder to predict, and she was afraid of
backlash for not being equitable to both parties. Instead, the backlash was
from angry mostly Democrats, with Republicans rolling their eyes and trying not
to speak aloud, “I told you so.”
Anyway, all of this is to say—hurray! She’s stepping down.
Why is she stepping down just a little over a year into a
4-year term? She says it’s because of her age and the Covid-19 threat. From her
statement:
After much deliberation and discussion with my family and
physician, I am resigning from my position as Harris County Clerk due to
personal health concerns. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, my age, and
underlying health issues, I do not feel I can safely continue to carry out my
duties as Harris County Clerk.
I was surprised to learn she is 70; she appears younger. But
this comes among more than a pandemic.
She has been pushing for mail-in ballots for all upcoming
elections—particularly the primary runoff election, which was postponed until
July, and then the presidential general election in November.
There’s a problem with mail-in ballots: getting proof that
the person voting is the person entitled to the ballot. The only security Texas
has so far is a signature comparison between the application for mail-in ballot
and the signature attached to the ballot when it comes in. Someone (of both
parties?) has to visually examine each signature to determine if it appears
likely that the same person signed both. If there’s a question, then signatures
going back several years can be compared. But this is often difficult to
determine. And, unless there’s an additional reason to question a ballot, it’s
usually just accepted and counted. Once the paper ballot is separated from the
envelope it came from, there is no retrieving it. And, as with other paper
ballot systems, this is how an additional couple hundred ballots just happen to
get added to the stack.
Trautman planned to send ballots, unrequested, to every
voter age 65+ in the county. That would mean no original signature to compare
to when the ballot was returned. The only security measure would be
eliminated.
There’s been a particular problem with ballot harvesting in nursing
homes. Activists request ballots for voters at nursing homes—with or without
permission of the residents—and they can receive, fill out, and return those
ballots sometimes without the residents even seeing their own ballot, possibly not even
knowing it was being done in their name. The only way to prevent this fraud is
to compare signatures—but, beyond that, to compare multiple signatures from the
same place, because, examined individually, since the deceptive activist would
have signed both, application and ballot signatures would technically match.
If the same writing style happens to appear on many at the
same location, that’s an indicator of fraud.
But who’s going to do that work?
It turns out Colleen Vera is the person.
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| Colleen Vera's blog, where she detailed her findings April 22, 2020 |
She has spent the last two years digging into ballot
harvesting in the Harris County. That was her goal, and she was finding it. But she
found much more.
She found, for example, a location where it was being done,
and the persons requesting the ballots were from a particular consulting company—in
other words a name to hide the harvesters names— paid out of campaign funds by,
among others, Diane Trautman.
And there’s more. The ballot harvesters in at least three
cases were convicted forgers. Forgers being paid to write signatures. What
could go wrong?
Other officials who had paid for forgers? US Representative
Sheila Jackson Lee, a Justice of the Peace and several District Judges, a
Constable, and a Harris County Board Trustee. Vera points out that, while she
names names, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of
law.
She details her investigation—with plenty of visual evidence—in
her blog, Texas Trash Talk, posted April 22, 2020. It’s thorough, and lays out the evidence and
what it means, ready for easy prosecution.
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| 32 handwritten applications for mail-in ballots, all from different voters, but in the same handwriting. One of the pieces of evidence Colleen Vera dug up and presented in her Texas Trash Talk post April 22, 2020 |
She ends her piece with this:
As a citizen there isn’t much we can do. Texas does not allow
us to challenge other voter’s signatures or ballots. All we can do is:
1. Send a complaint to the Secretary of State and hope (s)he
sends it on to the Attorney General for investigation. (Which I’ve already done
with this research.)
2. Contact our legislators and insist they tighten security
for ballot by mail.
3. Pray the Democrats
don’t succeed in using the courts to expand our currently flawed vote by mail
system.
Colleen’s husband, Alan Vera, is our Harris County
Republican Party ballot security expert. He helped found True the Vote, and has
trained people across the country so other states can improve their ballot
security. (He trained me as a poll watcher almost a decade ago.) And he lobbies
our legislature for improvements. They’re a handy couple to have on our side.
After Trautman’s resignation the other day, Alan posted this timeline on Facebook:
4/15/20: Colleen Vera files a complaint with the Texas
Secretary of State regarding mail ballot harvesting in Harris County. Among the
evidence submitted are payments by Dr. Trautman’s campaign directly to a
convicted forger.
4/22/20: Colleen Vera publishes her evidence of Harris
County ballot harvesting in her blog Texas Trash Talk (www.texastrashtalk.com)
The Trautman evidence is included.
4/28/20: Commissioners Court approves $12 Million for
Dr Trautman to use to expand mail ballot voting in both the Primary Runoff and
the November general election. The budget includes money to send mail ballot
applications to every 65+ voter in Harris County.
5/1/20: Texas Attorney General Paxton sends a letter
to all Texas county judges and election authorities warning them not to mislead
voters about using fear of Covid-19 as a “disability” to vote by mail[i].
His press release on that letter calls out Dr. Trautman and Judge Hidalgo
specifically for crossing that line. AG Paxton states that criminal charges
could result.
5/4/20 to 5/7/20: Dr. Trautman tries to get “guidance”
from the Texas Secretary of State on how to carry out the mass mailing of mail
ballot applications without crossing the line laid down by AG Paxton.
Reportedly, the SOS does not respond to Dr. Trautman’s requests.
5/7/20: The Texas SOS notifies Colleen Vera that he
has found sufficient merit in her ballot harvesting complaint to forward it to
the Texas Attorney General with a recommendation to investigate the
allegations.
5/7/20: Reporting that she has not received a response
from the SOS, in a Zoom conference planning the 7/14/20 Primary Runoff
election, Dr. Trautman announces that she will NOT mail absentee ballot
applications to every 65+ voter in Harris County. Harris County Democrat Party
representatives in the conference demand to know why. Dr. Trautman says she
won’t do it in the current environment.
5/9/20: Dr. Trautman resigns for health reasons
related to Covid-19 concerns.
So, was the reason for Trautman's resignation worry about getting the virus? Maybe that played
into it. But maybe it’s just thinking, at age 70, there might be better ways of
using your remaining healthy days (at least those not spent in prison) than doing all you can to manipulate elections
for a particular party while you’re being paid to provide free and fair
elections.
Alan Vera explained what happens from here. The Commissioners
Court will appoint a replacement—which means it will be a Democrat. The office
will be on the ballot in November to fill the remainder of the 4-year term. Then
it will be on the ballot again in 2022, when the term ends. That means we could
get someone with experience and a will to provide free and fair elections by January
2021. I don’t know how this election will be done, since our primaries are
already over. Is it done with all comers and then a runoff? Not sure. But I’m
so glad we don’t have to spend yet another 2 ½ years trying to block this woman’s
attempts to make voter fraud easier for people like herself.
Here's to hoping all the guilty parties get justice.
Thanks go to Colleen Vera for the digging. Our freedoms
depend on people like her who take good citizenship to another level.
