Reply #14: Texas Election Scandal - Forty Faxes and a Whisper

[dzika]

(a few paragraphs from the article posted by gmoss. Very interesting.)

December 27, 2004

Forty Faxes and a Whisper
Texas Election Scandal
By GREG MOSES


-snip-
For the past three years the 50-year-old Texas native studied up for the position of County Commissioner by going to meetings. And she recruited the outgoing Commissioner, Ivan Johnson, to be her campaign manager. In the Democratic primary, she won handily. And right up to ten o'clock on election night, she felt pretty good about her chances. That's about the time she says she left Democratic Party headquarters in the town of Kaufman to return home to Terrell. With virtually all nine voting boxes counted, she was about 200 votes ahead.

-snip-
Deja-Vote," hollered the headline in Wednesday morning's Kaufman Herald. "A computer software glitch is being blamed for controversy that occurred Tuesday night as ballots were being counted by Kaufman County election officials," began the story.

-snip-
Meanwhile another story in that dayís Herald reported Ohio-length voting delays. At Bethlehem Baptist Church (voting box 26) lines were said to be 45-minutes long, owing to van-loads of enthusiastic young voters from nearby Southwestern Christian College.

By the end of the day, reported the paper (quoting Election Judge Russell Jones) there were "366 voters" at Bethlehem Baptist. The paper did not explain why at 10:09 p.m. that night, only 360 ballots appeared in the official, computerized tally for box 26, a precinct that Denson-Prince won handily, with 94 percent of the vote. On the most recent count of box 26, says Kaufman County Democratic Chair George Lawshe in a Dec. 7 email, there were 342 voters and 361 ballots.

-snip-
Prior to the electronic recount, Denson-Prince released her letter to the Texas NAACP. "I as an African American female, do not feel that my rights were protected," wrote Denson-Prince. "I feel that I have been discriminated against." Her letter to the Texas NAACP was reported as top story in the Kaufman Tribune for Nov. 12. But the story never leaked out of the county, and as far as I can tell, the newspaper does not make some of these stories available online.

Saturday's headline was matter of fact. The electronic recount had found 2,870 votes for Denson-Prince and 2,873 for her Republican opponent. Meanwhile, Saturday's hand count yielded six more votes for Denson-Prince (2,876) and six for her opponent, too (2,879). When commissioners met Monday morning, Nov. 15, Denson-Prince's campaign manager approved the canvassed vote. Denson-Prince had lost by three votes.

What's surprising to me at this point is the apparent lack of support or attention being given to Denson-Prince by powers outside of Kaufman County. Last year at this time, two of the four Commissioners for Kaufman County were Democrats. Next week, if nothing changes, there will be none.

Link:
http://www.counterpunch.org/moses12272004.html