Andy Taylor wants election reform, but who will reform Andy Taylor?

[gmoses]

I spent a couple days reading carefully the "Bettencourt Audit" of alleged illegal voting in House District 149 (thick as my middle finger is long). It helps you see how aggressively voters were pursued through official channels (why did Bettencourt hand this over the District Attorney in the first place?) and through the added initiatives of Andy Taylor (who came up with even more stuff to throw around.) Preliminary report posted at Texas Civil Rights Review weekend edition:

http://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke/

[gmoses]

1. without the Voter Registrar's playbook, Republicans would have done worse

Of the 167 voters named in the Bettencourt Audit, 125 would find their names listed in the legislative challenge, 90 would eventually be served with subpoenas to reveal their votes, and of those, 73 would see their votes deducted from the election. In the end, 33 voters from the Bettencourt Audit would see their ballots subtracted from Republican Talmadge Heflin. And another 42 would see their votes taken away from Democrat Hubert Vo, winner of the original election, the recount, and the legislative challenge. So we might say the Bettencourt Audit changed history by taking eleven votes away from Hubert Vo. No biggie, perhaps.

--snip--

On one hand, it appears that Republican attorneys did much better scoring hits with illegal voters when using names matched to the Bettencourt audit than when using names that fell outside the audit’s list of 167. Out of a total of 268 ‘problematic’ voters presented to the legislative challenge, 68 were ruled legal by Master Hartnett. That’s a 25 percent miss rate for the challengers. But among the 125 names imported into the hearing from the Bettencourt audit, there were only nine legal voters found. That leaves 59 legal voters among the 143 names nominated by attorneys outside the Bettencourt Audit, a miss rate of 41 percent.

What this means, sports fans, is that chasing down illegal voters in the race for House District 149 was a very sloppy business when not assisted by the Voter Registrar himself. The Bettencourt Audit may have had flaws and contradicted some items in the Republican case, as Democrat attorney Veselka warned, but it was a list not nearly as flawed or contradictory as the one that Republican attorneys generated all by themselves.

http://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke/

[sonias]

2. Great review Greg

You do good work sir. I really appreciate your updates on this issue.

Please let us know about your open records request on how routine these audits really are. Do you have any idea about the political leanings of
Harris County Voter Registrar Paul Bettencourt?

Sonia