Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas boasted on Twitter last month that his attorney general had launched the state’s largest ever voter fraud investigation — targeting allegations of illegal electioneering in Fort Worth’s Tarrant County. “Texans will crack down on cheating at the ballot box,” Abbott wrote. “We will crush illegal voting.”
Coinciding with weeks of speeches in which Donald Trump implored Americans to distrust the results of this year’s election, news of the investigation was seized upon by outlets like Breitbart, Fox News, and Townhall as evidence of endemic voter fraud. Summing up the implications of the state’s investigation, Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said that fraud-obsessed Republicans “may finally have their white whale.”
Yet, in late October, a different narrative began to emerge about the investigation, which is being led by the state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton. Members of Fort Worth’s Hispanic community charge that Paxton’s investigators are working with a vigilante Republican operative on a campaign aimed less at rooting out fraud and more at causing Texas’s fast-growing Hispanic population to fear voting.
In a civil rights complaint submitted last week to the U.S. Department of Justice, Tarrant County’s United Hispanic Council (UHC) alleges that Paxton’s investigators went into Fort Worth’s Hispanic neighborhoods and deployed interrogation tactics that left elderly voters “in fear about voting and whether they may be accused of committing a crime by casting an absentee ballot.”
In an email to The Intercept, the Department of Justice said it is currently reviewing the United Hispanic Council’s complaint.
Paxton’s office did not directly address the claims of suppression and declined to give The Intercept any further information regarding its operation in Tarrant County. But in recent weeks other players in the investigation have been more forthcoming about its details. On October 17, at an event held by the local chapter of the 9-12 Project, a conservative group founded by Glenn Beck, a Republican political consultant named Aaron Harris told attendees that he was one of the masterminds behind Paxton’s historic fraud investigation. Harris has worked in collaboration with state investigators, he claimed, to uncover a wide-ranging voting scheme in the county’s minority communities.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks to reporters at a news conference outside the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill on June 9, 2016, in Washington, D.C.
Photo: Gabriella Demczuk/Getty Images
The crimes, Harris told the audience, involved “Hispanic or African American or demographic-appropriate women” hired by an unnamed political group to approach elderly voters at their homes and trick them into voting for candidates of the canvassers’ choosing. The result, Harris said, was that two Democrats had won their seats based on stolen votes. “Everybody in these communities knows this is happening,” Harris said. “The only people that don’t are us.”
“There will be years of litigation and prosecution on this,” said Harris, who works for Direct Action Texas, a political advocacy group that earlier this year set up its own voter fraud hotline where callers can attempt to claim a $5,000 bounty for any tip that leads to a felony conviction.
UHC’s civil rights complaint alleges that by appearing to work closely with Harris, the state’s attorney general’s office has blurred the lines between official law enforcement and partisan vigilantism. The complaint coincides with a wave of incidents in which Republican-connected groups, inspired by Donald Trump, have taken powers of election law enforcement into their own hands. Last week, Democrats sued the Republican parties in four states, alleging that Trump and his allies are pushing a “coordinated campaign of vigilante voter intimidation” at polling sites. Last Friday, a federal court ordered election officials in North Carolina to immediately stop granting the requests of private voter challengers who, with the help of local boards of elections, were purging voters off the roles with little evidence of ineligibility.
“Using unofficial, non-trained private officials to conduct ballot security operations or challenging people’s right to vote is very dangerous and it can lead to intimidation, disruption, and discrimination,” said Jonathan Brater, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program. “This is something we’re particularly worried about this year.”
In its complaint to the Justice Department, UHC alleges that Texas, in conjunction with Harris, is seeking to criminalize get-out-the-vote workers’ attempts to help elderly voters with their mail-in ballots. “This assistance is particularly critical for Spanish-speaking seniors who do not understand the multi-step process to request and return absentee mail ballots,” the complaint states. “Assistance for seniors is allowed.”
Paxton’s operation in Tarrant County is not the first time the Texas attorney general’s office, which has vigorously championed the state’s strict voter ID law, has been accused of using its position to impede voting among the state’s rapidly growing minority populations. Since 2012, the office has prosecuted 15 cases of voter fraud, most involving mail-in ballots. Critics have pointed out that the majority of these have focused on the state’s Hispanic population, which generally votes for Democratic candidates.
Harris emphasizes that his investigators conducted their interviews last year, before Paxton began his probe, and says that it is primarily Democrats who have supported his campaign against voter fraud. He claims that the leaders of the illegal voting operation — not him — are the ones who have targeted the area’s minority communities. As evidence, Harris boasted that the elected officials he has accused of stealing their seats have not yet sued him for defamation. “I want them to — I beg them to — sue me,” Harris told The Intercept in an interview. “Let’s do it. I’m going to beat their ass.”
At last month’s 9-12 meeting, Harris seemed confident that his findings would result in serious consequences for those participating in illegal voting practices. Addressing anyone in the crowd involved in the alleged crimes, Harris made a curious offer: Give him a helpful tip to advance his investigation, and he would go to bat for you with his friends in state law enforcement.
“There’s no greater ally to have when negotiating with the attorney general right now than me,” Harris said. “The guys with the badges are coming.”
Top photo: A bilingual sign stands outside a polling center at a public library ahead of local elections on April 28, 2013, in Austin, Texas.
No matter who wins, there will be demands for recounts in Florida and North Carolina.
ps- hypocrit lying hellary will contest the election if she loses.
Trump wins Florida?
dems will challenge the count citing bush v gore
north carolina is looking wifty
man oh man ih schevitz!
i wonder, do you hear the people in mexico complaining about the invasion of Americans?
In America, Americans will make the country work better. What do they do in mexico?
Will decency and fair play actually win with a Trump VICTORY, or will be at war with the brain dead democratic zombie Borg?
It sounds to me like both sides are taking liberties. I mean, I just went in a polling place that banned campaigning to the people inside, which seems very dubious to me constitutionally. But here we have private individuals “helping” folks fill out their votes, versus other private individuals “helping” catch voter fraud? I want them all to keep their grubby hands off our ballots.
Meanwhile, an off topic the Intercept MUST look into:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/india-invalidates-large-bank-notes-in-crackdown-on-crime/2016/11/08/cc705ee2-a5c6-11e6-ba46-53db57f0e351_story.html?tid=pm_world_pop_b
Apparently India’s PM out of the blue said surprise, your bank notes are worthless, you have to trade them all in at a bank in the next 50 days, and even then its all being counted and used as evidence against you. It seems worth noting that it is the most Third World of Third World countries, starting with Zimbabwe, that have embraced the “cashless economy”, while those in better straits cling to their money for now, but for how long???
Yesterday I would have said oh, I think gold is going to drop way down as the Great Recession continues to recede and people get bullish again. Today, I’m wondering if it’s going to hit $10,000 an ounce. I mean, all over the world people are going to look at this and say no fucking way are we trusting paper ever again. It appears that barbarous relics will reign supreme after all.
All this proves to me is that some, not all, of the republican party (sic) is so afraid of the minorities (only white people should have the right to vote) casting their vote that they will stoop to the absolute gutter tactics that we see year in and year out.
I voted for Jill Stein!
Me toooo!!
YEEEEESSSSSS!!!! We’re gonna wiiiiinnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!
a vote for an independent like Jill Stein is a triple win!
1. it’s a vote for your self, your voice, your ownership
2. it is a message to the corrupt dc warmakers that they are standing on the brink
3. when any independent in any office anywhere is elected, you have MUCH MORE POWER than party nuts.
Elect real independents and CHANGE THE GAME!
All those who voted third party: Thank you. You made me proud. It’s good to see people standing for honesty and principles. (If only there were more…)
All of these Republican “tactics” should not be merely disallowed by by the courts, they must be fully prosecuted as the severe election crimes they truly are if we wish to preserve any semblance of a democracy.
It’s telling how this screed tries to portray older Hispanic citizens as ignorant and helpless needing the assistance of altruistic democrat operatives to cast a ballot. The logical extension of this attitude, for the democrats, is that these poor people also need assistance in picking the correct candidate to vote for.
This is the one of the Voting fraud programs the republicans are clumsily and overzealously attacking not the extremely rare individual Voter fraud the democrats try to claim is the issue.
Tony Hillerman wrote about how democrat Voting fraud worked here in NM in the ’60s with this simple explanation. The Census Bureau reported there were about 12,000, eligible to vote, residents in Rio Arriba county and of these about 14,500 were registered democrats according to the party. This type of ballot stuffing is probably not possible today so the democrats seek new improved methods to rig the system.
Hillerman was clearly a skilled fiction writer. His political-demographic bona fides are less apparent.
The Census Bureau has never reported anything other than estimates of eligible voters, because its data and statistical methods would never permit anything else. Also, with each year after a census count, the estimates, necessarily, become less reliable.
If that’s true, and the number of eligibles is close to the Census Bureau estimate, so what? Political parties aren’t the keepers of registration records. County and state elections officials do that.
Just for fun, you might want to review the registration breakdown, by county and precinct, as of January of this year, at the NM Secretary of State’s site:
http://web.sos.state.nm.us/uploads/FileLinks/c2426e22e02d478ca940282b232f0647/STATEWIDE_BY_JURISDICTION_JAN_29_2016.PDF
Or maybe other readers, who may thing your unsupported claim is simply bullshit, will want to take a look.
BTW, there actually is one precinct in Rio Arriba with a Republican majority. Precinct 25 is 61% Republican — 115 registered voters out of 190. Next closest is Precinct 29 at 45%, which is 28 of 62 total registrations.
On average, Democratic registration in a Rio Arriba precinct was 76%. Full data in the PDF at the provided link.
Fun fact: Rio Arriba County hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Eisenhower.
DS you’re a beast brother. I’d ditch fight on your side any day.
You must be an old time democrat if you don’t see anything unusual about an extra 2500 registered democrats in a small county where families and histories are well known.
Tony Hillerman was a journalist known for his meticulous research on his stories which he then applied to his fiction writing. The crooked incumbent democrat this vote splitting story was about even wrote to Hillerman complementing his accuracy and wishing he had used his real name.
More of the false mime that Republicans hate Latinos and Democrats love them. Democrats only love using them every four years. It is never mentioned in the mainstream media that Obama has deported more people than any president in history, tearing many families apart:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/11/08/immi-n08.html
“Over the past six years the United States and Mexican governments have collectively apprehended nearly 1 million refugees fleeing to the United States.”
“In immigrant communities, Obama has become infamously known as “deporter-in-chief.” Since 2008 there have been over 2.5 million deportations, an average of more than 1,000 per day. This is roughly double the rate that occurred under Republican president George Bush.”
“Obama vastly expanded a program begun under Bush called Secure Communities. The program united federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in an effort to deport immigrants who were already living in communities.”
“Prior to the Obama administration, there was very little interior enforcement, it was almost all near the border. By the end of 2011, arrests near the border and interior were equal.”
“only 52 percent of individuals arrested through the program were slated to have a hearing before an immigration judge and that 39 percent of individuals arrested had a spouse or children who were US citizens, causing an impact on 88,000 families that included US citizens.”
“In 2010, Obama signed into legislation a bill that granted $600 million to further militarize the US-Mexico border through the buildup of thousands of border agents and the use of Predator drones to patrol from the sky.”
” As his presidency comes to a close, we should add to the balance sheet immigration “reform” that has turned out to mean the ruthless deportation of more immigrants than any other administration in US history.”
“Clinton is on record in January of this year trying to distance herself from Trump by dishonestly quibbling over semantics and stating that she supported the building of a “fence” and not a “wall.” Based on the Obama experience, it should be clear that whatever rhetoric is decided upon, the reality will be increased attacks on defenseless migrants.”
The greatest virtue of Hillary is that it is not Trump
greatest virtue of Hellary, screwing everyone but husband and donors
DEFINITELY NOT TRUMP.
In an act of supreme disrespect, Republicans are doing all they can to make it difficult for elderly people to vote.
perhaps, try a different search engine. many can be found at freeality.com
After almost two years of American style democracy in action, it comes down to Americans choosing between a candidate they’ve come to loathe, and a candidate they are (or should be) embarrassed to vote for.
Both candidates have a history of pandering to racists (blatantly or through ‘dog whistles’) and have pledged not just support for, but loyalty to, an Apartheid regime.
Both candidates have a history of support for Hood Robin economics (robbing the poor to give to the rich)
Both candidates have hidden things from the American public, and claimed it was a crime to dig those things out.
Both candidates have made it clear that their definition of democracy is based not on the process, but on the result.
Truly, the US is an example of democracy that the world should pay attention to, though this year in particular, mainly for lessons on what to safeguard against.
Congrats, everyone…Today is the day we all lose!!
No different than yesterday or the day before.
Why does the left support election fraud so much now?
The left supports cutting out the wingnut’s bullshit about (nearly non-existent) election fraud. And not just now — we’ve been opposing it for quite some time.
Too bad Woodman didn’t publicize the Direct Action Texas’ hotline number. We could have inundated it with bogus calls all day today. i tried googling for the number but got no hits.
It’s the link right at the top of the page on the Direct Action Texas web site. It links to this page – http://directactiontx.com/election-fraud-hotline/
VOTING FRAUD HOTLINE NUMBER
817-893-8502
perhaps try a different search engine. many can be found at freeality.com
Texas prisons are bulging with Mexicans. Voter fraud now way! you trust them.
Election fraud including voter intimidation and necessity of registration itself that discriminates against those who often move have been well documented and among another 100 reasons making credibility of these elections equal to near zero.
German Federal Court said that if election results cannot be 100% reliably audited they must be discarded and hence all electronic voting must be banned. 25% of US results must be discarded hence.
For anyone who is readying to participate in the today’s sham:
Ask yourself first, do we trust the results of elections? Are they credible in itself, are they expression of the will of the majority of the people. The answer is no. there is not independent auditing of the results unless court orders it and not always. Second about 25% of all eligible voters cast a vote and about 43% of registered voters (active and inactive) participates in elections and hence in vast majority counties the results such that would have been rendered invalid, when “winning” candidate gathers about 13% of all eligible voters or 22% of registered voters (mostly non existent category in majority of countries).
The US citizen are allowed, even invited to monitor elections in over thirty countries all over the world with full support and even funding from US Dept of State that defines fair elections on its website. Application of DOS criteria would immediately render US elections unfair.
Why US citizen are not allowed in the US to monitor their own elections making sure that they are free and fair and instead are threatened with lawsuits, as international monitors even from Western Europe/Australia are threatened as well.
What is the election establishment hiding?
If they have nothing to hide and their hands are clean they should not object to independent monitoring of the elections. If they are honest, they have nothing to hide, however, if they are dishonest and they are covering up election fraud they would understandingly oppose to any form of verification of their claims by independent means. There are no two ways about it.
In fact, for those who still do not know it may be shocking but everything is rigged from beginning to the end of this farcical spectacle called election. The crime of fraud is so enormous that most cannot believe it.
In fact US ranks about fifty in elections freedom, access, fairness and transparency. Such a appallingly low ranking makes the outcome of any US elections problematic and lacking of sufficient credibility to rely on, especially in face of over the years/decades reporting of vote rigging in the US.
Having said that, it does not even matters in 2016 mess called elections.
It is shockingly disappointing that, this blog’s readership exhibit a trait common to overall American anti-intellectual sheeple constituency as Gore Vidal posited decades ago, having no shame expressing their utter confusion and ignorance about one fundamental fact of reality they are facing.
THE FACT: The US elections are a staged political farce with NO MATERIAL IMPACT on the US imperial policies, domestic or international WHATSOEVER. And that’s the fact based on rock solid empirical evidences that only a mental patient can deny.
SO WHAT THE F. ALL OF YOU PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT? “Voting” for this or that? NONSENSE;
Those political puppets, stooges of oligarchy are no alternatives to the calcified imperial system itself, they never have been and they never will. They are new/old faces of the same old 240 y.o. Anglo-American imperial regime based on ancient and modern slavery and they already declared it by submitting to it via pledging to run in this farcical rigged electoral fallacy.
All at the end will openly pledge unwavering support for the regime and their rotten deeply corrupted parties while abandoning their gullible voters.
Supporters of any of these plastic puppets of oligarchy not unlike a cargo cult, are impatient, nervous, excited and scared sitting and waiting before an impregnable curtain of political deceit, lies and manipulation by the ruling elite in front of their wide shut eyes , turning to magic, superstition, appeasement, making up stories, poems out of their incoherent utterances filed with tautologies, innuendos and absurd, begging for mercy or praying for a caprice of good will to save them ultimately in a form of fake, meaningless political turds passing as empty “political” platform promises while blatantly abandoning their unalienable rights to independence, self-determination and democratic system of people’s rule, based on equality in the law, and one voter one vote principle, for a role of a meddlesome spectators to their own execution.
THE FACT: The democratic electoral system worth participating does not exist in the US but none of the candidates would utter this truth as long as they can benefit from the fraud and that includes third parties. If this was a true change or revolution, that we desperately need, honest leaders would not run their campaign within the corrupted system set up by and for two oligarchic parties but they would decry and utterly reject it.
Think people, all the so-called candidates even third party candidates are just nibbling on the behemoth of abhorrent and brutal US imperial power mostly with utterances that they never intended to follow if they wanted to survive terror of the US security apparatus, while peddling the lies about small incremental changes and stealing ours and our children future by asking us to wait, be patient, and begging ruling elite for mercy and may be for some crumbs from an oligarchs’ table after they are not able to gorge themselves anymore with our blood sweat and tears.
Unfortunately, this time as well, millions of irrational, desperate and helpless in their daily lives electoral zombies such as those, under a spell of exciting political masquerade, regrettably also on this blog, will be aligning themselves with one or the other anointed by establishment winner [whoever it will be] of a meaningless popularity/beauty contest, in a delusional feat of transference of a fraction of elite’s power to themselves just for a second of a thrill of illusion of power, illusion of feelings that something depends on me, that I can make a difference, a delusion of holding skies from falling and by that saving the world common among paranoid mental patients.
And they will continue to authorize their own suicide mission, since even baseless, continually disproved hope of Sisyphus, of any chance of influencing of the political realm via means of begging is the last thing that dies.
THE LOUD POLITICAL BOYCO..TT OF THIS FARCE, UTTER REJECTION OF THIS FACADE OF DEMOCRATIC CHOICE, REJECTION OF ANY POLITICAL LEGITIMACY OF THIS SORRY SPECTACLE IS THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE AVAILABLE TO ANY DECENT PERSON, INDEPENDENT, SOVEREIGN CITIZEN WHO TAKES A MORAL STAND REJECTING ENSLAVEMENT RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW.
THE REST WILL JUST PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THEIR OWN CHAINS.
MAKE YOU CHOICE.
Don’t Vote, ReVolt:
https://twitter.com/PopResistance/status/795981944810934272/photo/1
Well written in the Fox/Limbaugh/Alex Jones style of misinforming through exageration and adamantly stated ‘truths’ that have no basis or evidence in reality. Appreciate your early start to try to keep voting down to the few fanatics in the hope Trump can win if Americans stay home.
Care to address any single point I am raising or you just trolling your partisan talking points .
Have you ever been to an antiwar protest? Have you been to a civil rights protest? Have you ever been to a 99% protest? Are you currently in the Dakotas protesting the pipeline? I would bet that you have not. Look around the world. There are no perfect countries. No perfect solutions. So I say to you what has been said to me many times by angry rednecks! AMERICA LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT! If you hate AMERICA that much get the fart out! That would be one less ignorant internet troll to deal with! GOD as a progressive I can’t believe I used a REDNECK slogan but. AFTER YOU VOTE get ready to hit the streets!
Spare me you patriotic rant devoid of any merit.
Over 130 millions of flash and blood Americans who love America as much as you claim or even more are withholding their votes as their patriotic duty requires having not found anyone among corporate candidates, millionaires,and their oligarchic sponsors anyone , anyone at all , who would represent their vital economic interests but stooges of not imperfect union but the most reprehensible and backward ,inhumane Imperial regime and that includes those exterminated Indians fighting for their rights to their own land taken away from them by attitude of phony Americans like you. And you call yourself progressive? Progressive backwards into a stone age.
Excellent rant, S Man but when you mention Despicables monitoring our rigged elections or sovereign citizens Liberals get a belly ache when the milk they suck from the Beast curdles in their tender stomachs.
Although I agree with much of what you write I selfishly hoped that Clintonism could be humiliated and destroyed by a Trump victory but that was just wishful thinking.
I do not take sides because principally both major candidates represent the same oligarchic class and they will do their deeds.
What I care about is that Americans have broad spectrum of political choices and political as well as electoral system that expresses their democratic will and not such a rigged farcical spectacle like this.
Wallstreet thieves need to falsify election results in favor of their whore just as they falsified values for homes just as their whore media falsified WMD just as they falsified the quid pro quo deal with Hellary.