06.09.09

More on the fraud of Voter ID

Posted in Around The State, Bad Government Republicans, Elections, Right Wing Lies, Uncategorized at 10:53 am by wcnews

The site Texas Watchdog has been trying to “out” cases of voter fraud in Texas almost from its inception.  But they’ve been unable to make anything stick as a recent post states, Dead Dallas voter controversy comes on heels of state voter ID debate.

Our story about how someone may have cast a vote for a dead woman in the fiercely waged Dallas District 1 city council election could renew the debate on voter ID legislation, which House Democrats managed to shelve this session. But, in fact, the bill would’ve had no relevance here since that proposal focused on what happens at the ballot box.

In our reporting about Juana Rodriguez, a woman who is believed to have died in February, the questionable vote came from a mail-in ballot. (Read more discussion about our story on Unfair Park and CBS 11’s coverage here.)

Interestingly, mail-in votes may be where the most notable cases of fraud occur, and yet nearly all the debate this legislative session centered on fixing elections at a local polling place.

That’s basically going the long way around to say that election day voter impersonation fraud doesn’t exist – which is what the GOP’s whole Voter ID/voter suppression debate was about all session – and that where fraud does exist is in mail-in ballots. And nothing is being done about that, or would have been done about that if Voter ID/voter suppression legislation was passed this session. Oh, and bad record keeping by county election departments is a big problem too, which isn’t being addressed.

In that vein Kuff has a post up on the link between a GOP state representative, an associate Harris County voter registrar, and an election data company.   Ed Johnson’s conflict of interest.

As you know, there was a lawsuit filed against Paul Bettencourt and the Harris County Tax Assessor’s office over allegations of illegal mishandling of provisional ballots in the past November election. That suit was later expanded to include allegations of voter disenfranchisement by Bettencourt’s office. According to KHOU, some mighty interesting facts have come out so far in the deposition phase.

“This is as blatant a case of election corruption that I have seen,” said Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project, a Democrat activist group.

The Lone Star Project’s complaint revolves around Ed Johnson.

Johnson is the associate voter registrar at the Harris County Tax Assessor Collectors office, but according to state documents, that’s just his day job. Johnson is also a paid director of a small company that provides voter data to Republican candidates for office. That company, Campaign Data Systems, billed at least $140,000 in 2008.

Campaign Data Systems happens to be owned by Republican State Rep. Dwayne Bohac, who also happens to be one of the big pushers of voter ID bills. Johnson testified before the Senate about supposed instances of vote fraud. He tells the Republicans what they want to hear in the guise of a nonpartisan election official, while being on their payroll. Nice little scam they’ve got going there, no? I think we all have a better idea now why State Reps. Garnet Coleman and Ana Hernandez called for appointed Tax Assessor Leo Vasquez’s resignation over Johnson’s (and George Hammerlein’s) testimony, and it makes Vasquez’s response look that much weaker.

What all of this goes to show is that the Voter ID debate was never about keeping fraud out of elections.

[UPDATE]: The Lone Star Project has much, much more on Ed Johnson, Documents Reveal Johnson Paid by Republican Candidates.

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