If Americans want to understand how genuine “voter suppression” works, they should take a look at the widespread disenfranchisement of voters in Harris County, Texas, during the 2022 midterms.
On Election Day, county election officials’ misadministration of the contest led to ballot paper shortages, delayed openings and temporary closures of voting centers, and an untold number of disenfranchised voters.
“I have never seen anything so egregiously, grossly mismanaged as the elections in Harris County this past year,” said Harris County GOP Chair Cindy Siegel during a recent Texas Senate committee hearing.
For context, Harris County is the third-most populous county in America. While historically favorable to Republicans, county residents have increasingly voted for Democrats in recent election cycles. During the 2020 election, for instance, Joe Biden won the county by 13 points, with Democrats also expanding their majority on the county’s governing commissioners court last fall.
Not long after the polls opened on Election Day, local media outlets began reporting that several Harris County voting centers were experiencing ballot paper shortages, delayed openings, and problems with voting machines.
What Happened in Harris County?
Nearly two months after the election, Harris County released an “inconclusive” assessment detailing the reported problems election workers and voters encountered on Election Day. In addition to ballot paper shortages, the report confirmed that some voting centers “did not open on time,” with reasons ranging from staffing problems to election officials not receiving the keys to their center’s voting equipment prior to polls opening.
The report further revealed that during the early part of Election Day, the county’s ePollbook server “lost replication,” which “prevented the wait time tool from updating the website, prevented the supply team from seeing real-time check in and disabled the sample ballot look up feature.” Such circumstances “had a direct impact on the ability [of county election officials] to see how many voters were being checked-in and what the wait times were” at any voting center.
While the assessment says that 68 precinct election judges “reported running out of their initial allotment” of paper ballots, an investigation conducted by local news outlet KHOU 11 indicates the problem was more widespread. According to the investigation, 121 of the county’s 782 voting centers “did not initially receive enough ballot paper to cover voter turnout.”
“The county allotted each of the locations six ballot paper packets, or enough for 600 ballots. But the total votes cast exceeded that amount, sometimes by hundreds of ballots,” the KHOU 11 report reads.
At the committee hearing, Siegel testified that one of the Harris County GOP’s precinct chairs developed a “heat map” purportedly showing that “the majority” of the 121 polls were in “Republican voting areas.”
The KHOU 11 investigation also found that on Election Day, 52 voting centers “received less paper in 2022 than ballots cast in 2018.” Harris County has not disclosed why voting centers ran out of ballot paper. It also remains unknown how many voters were disenfranchised as a result of such issues.
Investigations and Continued Cover-Up
Following the Nov. 8 contest, leading Texas Republicans began demanding answers from Harris County officials over the locality’s Election Day problems. On Nov. 14, GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a statement calling on the secretary of state, attorney general’s office, and Texas Rangers to “initiate investigations into allegations of improprieties in the way that the 2022 elections were conducted in Harris County,” adding that voters “deserve to know what happened.”
Not long after, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced her office had launched an investigation into the county’s Election Day problems following a request from the Texas secretary of state’s office to help with an inquiry into “possible criminal activity relating to shortages of paper ballots.” After receiving backlash from Texas Democrats, a bureau chief in Ogg’s office defended the investigation, saying Ogg was following state law.
Despite the seriousness of the matter, leading Harris County officials have attempted to stonewall efforts to uncover what led to the administrative failures on Election Day. When pressed by Harris County’s commissioners in January about the ballot paper shortages, Clifford Tatum, Harris County’s election administrator, refused to provide any details, using a lawsuit filed against his office by the Harris County GOP as justification for remaining mum.
County officials have displayed similar evasiveness with local media. Last year, KHOU 11 and a local ABC affiliate filed open records requests with Harris County over records related to the Nov. 8 election. After the Texas attorney general denied a request from Harris County to dismiss the requests last month, the locality filed a lawsuit against the AG’s office last week to keep the records hidden.
Texas Republicans Offer Solutions
In response to Harris County’s extensivetrack record of failed election administration, Texas Republicans have introduced numerous bills this year seeking to enhance the integrity of the state’s elections. If passed and signed into law, SB 1911 would allow any county official responsible for acquiring election supplies who “intentionally fails to provide an election precinct with the required number of ballots” to be charged with a Class A misdemeanor. Said officials could also be charged under the same statute for failing to “promptly supplement the distributed ballots upon request by a polling place.”
Individuals convicted of a Class A misdemeanor are subject to a fine of up to $4,000, a maximum of one year in jail, or both.
Also introduced is SB 1039, which mandates local election officials address inquiries related to election irregularities and provide “explanation[s] and “supporting documentation” when such information is requested by local and state party chairs, candidates, or election judges.
“This is about a catastrophic lack of performance in Harris County,” said bill sponsor and Republican Sen. Paul Bettencourt during last month’s State Affairs Committee hearing. “It’s too big to ignore. The state can’t afford this type of problem in Harris County and neither can the residents.”
Additional election integrity bills introduced by Texas Republicans would make illegal voting a felony, withdraw Texas from the leftist-controlled voter-roll management system known as ERIC, and grant the secretary of state the power to suspend and replace an election administrator, among other reforms.
The kinds of Election Day failures displayed in Harris County are notably problematic because of the partisan difference in how Americans vote. While Democrats have made unsupervised, mail-in voting a key facet of their electoral strategy, Republicans prefer in-person voting on Election Day.
If this trend grows, it means that any election misadministration on Election Day will continue to disproportionately harm GOP voters over Democrats. Such circumstances would only further contribute to Americans’ waning confidence in U.S. elections, making accountability for what happened in Harris County all the more necessary.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Sheriff Mike Jolley of Harris County, Georgia put up a sign years ago that is now going viral for obvious reasons. I suspect it’s one of the reasons his county has a low crime rate. Cities, counties, and states are always looking for ways to drive the crime rate down and often the simplest answers are the best ones.
The crime rate in Harris County is about half the average rate for the state of Georgia, which is a remarkable feat.
“Every morning the children of Harris County gather around the welcome sign to recite the county pledge.”
Sheriff Jolley said:
“I think the sign speaks for itself. Citizens here have weapons and that’s legal.”
“The citizens have a legal right to protect themselves and their property. If you come into our county and kill someone, you might get killed back. Weapons are a tool. They’re not intended for someone to use in a criminal act.”
“It’s a way to say people in this county have a Second Amendment right and if someone uses a weapon, they’re likely in danger. Don’t do anything crazy. We’re likely to shoot back.”
Do guns really matter to criminals? Consider these examples. Let’s take James Holmes the Aurora movie house killer:
So why did the killer pick the Cinemark theater? You might think that it was the one closest to the killer’s apartment. Or, that it was the one with the largest audience.
Yet, neither explanation is right. Instead, out of all the movie theaters within 20 minutes of his apartment showing the new Batman movie that night, it was the only one where guns were banned. In Colorado, individuals with permits can carry a concealed handgun in most malls, stores, movie theaters, and restaurants. But private businesses can determine whether permit holders can carry guns on their private property.
Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent– the LORD detests them both. –Proverb 17:15
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness. –Isaiah 5:20
The first thing you must understand, if you don’t already, is that we live in a nation devoid of justice and hostile to truth. We live in a nation that acquits the guilty, condemns the innocent, calls evil good and good evil. That is America in 2016, and it’s been this way for quite sometime.
Once you come to terms with this fact, you will no longer be surprised by anything that happens, no matter how outrageous, depraved, preposterous, or wicked. You will not be surprised that a billion dollar corporation called Planned Parenthood mutilates and murders over 300,000 children a year for profit, and you will not be surprised that our government gives these genocidal killers over half a billion dollars a year of free money, and you will not be surprised when an undercover investigation reveals Planned Parenthood officials selling the corpses of their victims, and you will not be surprised when the justice system clears the corpse-sellers of all wrong doing but indicts the undercover investigators for investigating them.
A sign hangs in the offices of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America on December 7, 2001 in New York City. Image source: Mario Tama/Getty Images
That last one is a recent development. If you haven’t yet heard, on Monday a grand jury in Harris County, Texas, allegedly tasked with investigating Planned Parenthood’s well-documented practice of pawning the body parts of murdered children, decided to give a pass to the abortion wholesaler and charge the journalists who reported on it instead. This is one of the most remarkable miscarriages of justice I have ever witnessed in my life, but still unsurprising.
As you recall, journalist Dave Daleiden, founder of an organization called the Center For Medical Progress, spent several years infiltrating the abortion industry in order to investigate its human trafficking operation. During the course of the project, Daleiden obtained hundreds of hours of footage, and much of that footage proves beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that Planned Parenthood serves made-to-order organs to motivated buyers across the country.
Among many other pieces of incontrovertible evidence, the videos capture Planned Parenthood officials saying they’d like to “see how much they can get out of” each “item.” Another reveals a different official admitting she wants to “diversify revenue streams” by selling dead children. In another, a Planned Parenthood worker discusses carving up intact babies to hock on the black market. Another catches an abortionist detailing how she can preserve the baby’s head during an abortion for harvesting. The video taken at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast — the affiliate at the center of this case in Texas — shows a high ranking official admitting that she alters her abortion procedures in order to obtain “intact fetal cadavers,” which is a serious crime.
Of course, apologists have always pretended the videos were “doctored” or “deceptively edited,” but Planned Parenthood itself already disqualified that claim. The abortion superstore hired its own experts to analyze the video and their report confirms that none of the footage was doctored, and there is no “widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation.” That’s Planned Parenthood’s own report. NO WIDESPREAD EVIDENCE OF SUBSTANTIVE VIDEO MANIPULATION.
But the supporters of baby murder have no problem ignoring the truth, even as it yells and screams and flails its severed arms right in front of them. Despite the courageous work of Dave Daleiden, nothing could force the repugnant defenders of infant genocide to face the reality. They just plugged their ears, hummed a tune, and kept marching into Hell right over top the mass graves of dead children.
All that remained was the legal case. But the good guys can only win a legal case in a nation where justice exists, and sadly, we do not live in such a nation. So today Planned Parenthood remains unscathed while Dave Daleiden faces the prospect of a decade in prison.
The grand jury indicted Daleiden on one count of “tampering with government documents” and one count of attempting to purchase fetal tissue.
To review: Planned Parenthood is innocent of selling baby parts to Dave Daleiden, but Dave Daleiden is guilty of buying baby parts from Planned Parenthood.
But how could the buyer be guilty of buying but the seller not guilty of selling?
But how could the buyer be guilty of buying but the seller not guilty of selling?
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And how could the seller be not guilty of selling even though the seller was caught on camera multiple times offering to sell?
And how could the buyer be guilty of buying when he was clearly not actually trying to buy anything, but merely trying to prove that the seller was trying to sell something?
How does any of this make any sense? And if it’s illegal for investigative journalists to assume false identities, why isn’t Chris Hansen in prison? Hansen and his team pretended to be little girls in order to catch older men attempting to molest children. I suppose if the Harris County DA had a crack at them, all of the pedophiles would be cleared of wrongdoing, but Chris Hansen would be charged with fraud, harassment, and solicitation.
But if you look deeper, this case is an even greater farce than it first seems. Apparently, one of the prosecutors at the Harris County DA’s office also sits on the board of Planned Parenthood. Not only that, she’s a board member of the particular Planned Parenthood affiliate that Daleiden exposed.
I guess if I want to keep my “To Catch a Predator” analogy going, this would be similar to a situation where a prosecutor investigating suspects from that show also happened to be a serial pedophile. And before you accuse me of comparing Planned Parenthood board members to pedophiles, just realize that, yes, that’s exactly what I did.
Two other notes on this story:
I don’t believe that Dave Daleiden committed a crime, but no decent, rational person should care if he did.
It’s obviously an assault on justice and basic common sense to exonerate one party of selling body parts while charging the other with buying them. As for the “tampering” indictment – stemming, I assume, from Daleiden using fake documents and identification to gain access to Planned Parenthood – I believe his actions are consistent with what many investigative journalists have done. To put him in prison as if he were some run-of-the-mill identify thief or fraudster would have a chilling effect on free speech and provide even more cover to powerful organizations that engage in illicit activities.
Screengrab
But even if you can technically find the makings of a crime in the way he filled out some of the paperwork, it is still a travesty of historic proportions to give a free pass to the organization that tried to negotiate the price of baby livers, in favor of indicting the organization that filmed them doing it. No honorable, decent person would applaud such a turn of events. Unfortunately, there are a lot of dishonorable, indecent people out there.
Personally, I wouldn’t care if Daleiden broke 100 laws in his crusade against Planned Parenthood. Laws that protect and promote the murder of the innocent are not morally legitimate to begin with. Planned Parenthood itself has no moral right to exist, nor does it have any moral right to conduct its holocaust in secret. That said, Daleiden didn’t break 100 laws. I’m not convinced he broke any at all. And he certainly could not have broken the law against buying human organs if Planned Parenthood did not break the law against selling them.
The only way these charges could look even remotely honest is if Planned Parenthood had been brought up on them as well. In that case it still would have been egregiously unfair considering Daleiden didn’t actually intend on purchasing any human tissue, while Planned Parenthood did intend on selling it, but at least they would be making a minimal effort to give off the appearance of impartiality. Even that, apparently, was too much to ask.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Planned Parenthood murders human beings.
Liberals are very good at changing the subject. If deflecting were an Olympic sport, they’d win gold, silver and bronze every year. They’re so skilled in the art of obfuscation that somehow they’ve turned Planned Parenthood’s grisly human trafficking ring into a conversation about Dave Daleiden’s alleged fake ID. Naturally, the mass media never demonstrated much interest in the Planned Parenthood revelations until just yesterday. Now, suddenly, it’s front page news.
That’s why we have to work even harder to remain focused. And when in comes to Planned Parenthood, we should never forget that Planned Parenthood slaughters children. Whatever you think about Daleiden and his work — and personally I think he’s a true hero and one of the most significant civil rights champions in American history — if you are a good person, you will not celebrate the way Planned Parenthood has repeatedly escaped justice. They kill children. Whether they sell the tissue or not — and they do, for certain — they should not have anyone rooting for them or taking their side under any circumstance. They kill children. Over the three years that Daleiden investigated them, they killed over a million children. A million.
Image source: Screenshot
If you would take their side and cheer them as they evade accountability, you are a deeply troubled and cruel human being. It doesn’t matter that abortion is legal. Slavery was also legal for a long time. Many evils have been legal, but the evildoers deserve no champions and no safe harbor.
Far be it for me to play Monday morning quarterback, but there is a part of me that wishes the Center for Medical Progress had simply focused on exposing the (legal) barbarism of the abortion industry, rather than the various crimes that are committed surrounding the abortions themselves. As we’ve discovered, Planned Parenthood will never be brought to justice on this Earth, no matter what they do. It was certainly a valiant effort to hold them accountable for illegally trafficking in severed baby limbs, but the fatal flaw is that holding them accountable requires the cooperation of our government. And our government is almost as morally bankrupt as Planned Parenthood, so there was never any chance of that happening.
So, in hindsight, maybe it would have been better to put the legal practices of Planned Parenthood front and center in this investigation. Indeed, the most compelling piece of video captured by the Center For Medical Progress wasn’t even officially released, and it had nothing to do with fetal tissue sales.
A few months ago, raw footage taped during an abortionist convention was leaked online. Many explosive conversations were captured, but perhaps none as devastating as the abortionist who stated very explicitly that abortion is “violence, it’s a person, it’s killing.”
She wasn’t caught in a crime. Even better: she was caught in a truth. In fact, that one statement, uttered by an abortionist who thought she was speaking only to a sympathetic audience, singlehandedly debunked and destroyed the primary pro-abortion argument. Many of the people who defended Planned Parenthood over the fetal trafficking allegations did so by insisting the babies aren’t people anyway. Well, guess what? The abortionists who kill the children disagree with you.
To me, that should be the headline.
But either way, Daleiden did prove for certain that Planned Parenthood sells baby parts, and that should be enough to take the entire organization down. What Daleiden didn’t account for, however, is that our government is corrupt to its core and many of our citizens are self-absorbed cowards. He didn’t account for the fact that justice is dead in America. In fact, it died long ago. It died the moment they legalized the mass murder of babies.
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