TX voter fraud: prosecuted 26 cases – all against Democrats almost all involving blacks or Hispanics

[rainbow4321]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/state/stories/051808dnpolvotefraud.3c75dcb.html


More than two years ago, Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott pledged to root out what he called an epidemic of voter fraud in Texas. He established a special unit in his office, tapped a $1.4 million federal crime-fighting grant and dispatched investigators.


Since then, Mr. Abbott has prosecuted 26 cases – all against Democrats, and almost all involving blacks or Hispanics, a review by The Dallas Morning News shows.

The cases usually have resulted in small fines and little or no jail time, and for all the extra attention, Mr. Abbott has not unraveled any large-scale schemes with the potential to swing elections. Democrats accuse Mr. Abbott of a partisan operation to discourage voters, especially minorities.


<snip>

Democrats sued Mr. Abbott two years ago in federal court, accusing him of intimidating minority voters. The suit cites a PowerPoint presentation used by the attorney general's office to train Texas officials in voter-fraud cases. One slide features a photograph of African-American voters standing in line to vote. Another shows a sickle-cell anemia postage stamp that depicts a black woman holding an infant.

[dkofos]

1. He should have spent the money on investigating Diebold, Sequoia

and the rest of voting machine companies!!

[But....]

2. The number one fight this fall...

getting and keeping people registered to vote.:tinfoilhat:
This has to be a landslide, if it's close we'll have a three-peat.
Florida, Ohio, ?

[L. Coyote]

15. Still waiting for Dems to investigate Ohio 2004! Still waiting, still waiting

for the FBI and the No Ohio USA to reply too!

The 2004 Ohio Presidential Election: Cuyahoga County Analysis
How Kerry Votes Were Switched to Bush Votes
http://jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html


"... we find that there were massive and unprecedented voter irregularities
and anomalies in Ohio. In many cases these irregularities were caused by
intentional misconduct and illegal behavior...."

Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio
Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff, Jan. 2005.

[tbyg52]

3. Kick - I think this belongs on the "Greatest" (travesties)

Then again, what else is new in TX.....?

[rainbow4321]

4. Scary thing is...this all seemed to start when Dems were making head way

on the local level...Dallas County, in particular. 2 yrs ago ALL the repuke judges were fired by voters and DEM judges were brought in.

We had a Dallas County Dem judge as a speaker at our Collin County convention this year. He said that when the Dem judges got to see their dockets what they found was that the repuke judges had let everything pile up over the years...so the Dem judges plowed thru their cases and cut the docket list in half. That's what happens when "you actually GO TO WORK", he said.

If the TX repukes were sent into a panic because of the local Dem wins, what do they have up their evil sleeves for Nov 2008 given the HUGE Dem turnout in the primaries and the same expected turnout in Nov? You know they are pissing their pants worrying about it.

[tbyg52]

5. They sure are. They know they can't get anything now except by stealing it. nt

[tbyg52]

6. One more kick, then I must go. nt

[lifesbeautifulmagic]

7. This is a prime example of why i think Repubs are evil - this and their

"repub math". Oh yes, it so worth tracking down and prosecuting 26 case of democrats doing what, voting in the wrong precinct, not crossing every t and dotting every i when registering, but the systematic denial of thousands and thousands of dem voters by repub election fraud and caging schemes is too insignificant to investigate. These people ARE evil, and that's not just hysteric or over-reaction.

[rainbow4321]

8. Which is why I hope that the Dem party keep their eye on TX

come this November...the TX repukes seem to be in a defcon level 5 stage of panic and most likely will stop at nothing to keep TX as red as possible on a local, state, and national level. Down ticket repubs are screwed even more than they were in 2006 and they came to realize with the Dem turnout in our primary.

They had a GOTV recently. When the TX repuke party feels a need to have a GOTV for TX repukes, you know that THEY know, they're in big trouble.

http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/05/knock-knock-whos-there.html

The state GOP. And it's going blockin' and knockin' in 50 counties on Saturday. Volunteers, along with a few big-wigs, are aiming to reach out to 100,000 households. The GOPers will hand out literature, register folks to vote and also ask homeowners who they plan to support come November.
This will help Texas Victory 2008, which is organizing the event, to identify and target likely GOP supporters and get them to the polls.
Even if the folks who answer the door say they're Democrats, "we'll register anyone and everybody to vote," said Bech Bruun of Texas Victory. "Now, I can't guarantee that we'll go back and encourage them to vote come closer to November."

-------------
Yeah, sure they will "register" Democrats...and then try to purge their vote thru "voter fraud" in November, no doubt.

[tbyg52]

9. >>Yeah, sure they will "register" Democrats..

and drop it in the trash on their way out....

[TexasObserver]

10. The GOP is using such tactics nationwide to suppress the vote.

Gregg Abbott has fallen a long way from the clean guy twenty years ago who was going to bring a fresh, fair way to handling district court cases in Houston, Texas. Now he's just another GOP hack, using every dirty trick at his disposal to suppress Democratic votes and help Republicans cheat their way to unearned wins.

[struggle4progress]

11. And such cases! Two-thirds of them are cases where somebody actually helped a voter

by mailing the ballot for them -- BUT *gasp* WITHOUT WRITING ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE ENVELOP THE NAME OF THE SECOND-PARTY WHO ACTUALLY DROPPED IT IN THE MAILBOX!!1!11!

No actual fraud was found in those cases, but it is a minor technical violation of Texas law (insert dancing fatass elephant gif here) -- and of course Republicans will happily drag poor folk into court, if that will discourage them from helping their housebound friends or family to exercise voting rights

[McCamy Taylor]

12. Abbot deliberately allowed PEDOPHILES to molest kids at TYC to protect Gov. Perry while he did this

See this link

http://brainsandeggs.blogspot.com/2007/04/texas-youth-commission-scandal-is-much.html

to get to other links.


The fact that he was engaged in a ridiculous partisan snipe hunt for Democratic vote fraud that did not exist is only the tip of the iceberg. He and federal attorney Johnny Sutton were told that people in authority at Texas Youth Commission were raping and abusing the kids---some sent there for misdemeanors like skipping school---and they decided not to act, because it would have embarassed Republican Governor Rick Perry right before an election in which a right wing third morals candidate was giving him grief.

Abbot and the others could have been protecting kids but instead they let them suffer an additional year of abuse while they intimidated voters to keep Perry in office.

I think that this needs to be emphasized when people talk about what Abbot was doing. He was not doing his job.

[rainbow4321]

13. Going after Dems/minorities but ignored Highland Park "ballot stuffing"

Highland Park sound familiar? It's where chimp and pickles are moving to once they are out of the WH..forget them saying "Dallas"..they are headed to HP.


http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2738

Hebert cited a 2005 election in Highland Park, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country with hundreds of million-dollar homes and where both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney once lived. In 2005, two election judges, both Republicans, and a 10-year-old boy handed out over 100 ballots, Hebert testified, without checking any voter registration or ID cards. The ballots were filled out and turned in, he said, quoting from several Dallas district attorney memos. The memos suggested a strong basis for prosecuting the judges for not following procedures and counting “over 100 more ballots” than there were “signatures on the roster.”

In other words, here was a serious case of apparent ballot-box stuffing—voter fraud—by Republicans, albeit in a state where the GOP holds all the constitutional offices, most judgeships, and controls most county election boards. “Here we are nearly three years later, and Attorney General Abbott’s office has done virtually nothing,” Hebert told Texas legislators. “Rather than exercise his discretion to act directly on the request and immediately investigate the voting irregularities and potential voter fraud in Highland Park, Mr. Abbott’s office has instead used his office’s resources to prosecute elderly political activists whose only ‘crime’ was assisting elderly and disabled voters cast a vote by mail.”


==========================================
And the funding that Abbott used to target minorities in his "voter fraud" cases..same grant that was used in falsely accusing/charging the Tulia, TX African Americans of dealing drugs
====================================


The funding was provided under an Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Grant, which is a federal program providing criminal justice money to states. It was a Byrne grant in 1999 that funded Tom Coleman, the itinerant police investigator who falsely accused many African-American residents of Tulia of dealing cocaine. During subsequent legal battles that lasted four years, Coleman was exposed as a liar and Gov. Perry pardoned almost all of his victims. In 2004, Congress said the Byrne grants could be used for broader categories of law enforcement, giving states new leeway in deciding how the funds could be spent. Like the drug task forces that falsely accused minorities to run up arrest numbers and thus justify funding, Abbott’s use of the money to pursue voter fraud among the state’s minority communities seems to carry ulterior motives beyond ferreting out alleged individual crimes.

[and-justice-for-all]

14. Mr. Abbot must be on the rethug payroll...nt