Blogged by Brad on the road…
As The BRAD BLOG reported last week, a Conservative Republican former Texas Supreme Court Justice had been considering an Election Contest after electronic voting machine problems and inexplicable tallies plagued the first-in-the-nation March 7th primary in the Lone Star State.
Steve Smith — who ran for election to the state Supreme Court, Place 2, in the Republican primary against an opponent backed by both Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry and the Bush family — will be filing an official Election Contest this afternoon in Travis County District Court, The BRAD BLOG has learned.
Since our previous report, the Smith for Supreme Court campaign has been examining election tallies around the state and report that they continue to find anomolies in virtually every county they look into.
“The more research we do, the more irregularities we find,” campaign manager David Rogers told The BRAD BLOG this morning.
The problems are being found on machines made by both Hart InterCivic and Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S) — the two major Electronic Voting Machine vendors supplying the state of Texas.
Rogers says the campaign plans to file the Contest before 5pm (CT) today. The Contest (to be posted in full here when available) will outline some of the many problems they have found so far including counties “where there were more votes than voters.”
They hope the Election Contest may allow, for the first time, a closer examination of both the Hart InterCivic and ES&S electronic voting machines used in Texas elections, as well as elsewhere around the country.
An earlier statement from the campaign had detailed a number of the campaign’s initial findings including several mysterious totals in Smith’s home county of Tarrant where officials admit some 100,000 votes were incorrectly added to the reported results on Election Night.
Smith had outperformed his statewide average in Tarrant County during the 2004 Election by 13%, but this year, his campaign reports, he underperformed the statewide results by 23%. One other such puzzling number reported previously by Smith’s campaign:
Says Rogers, “We are contesting the state as a whole, but looking at specific larger counties where there are problems and a few of the smaller counties where the mistakes were absolutely egregious.”
The BRAD BLOG has also previously reported on whistleblower William Singer who had worked at both Hart InterCivic and then as an “Election Programmer” in Tarrant County. Singer had attempted to alert the Texas and Ohio Secretaries of State and Attornies General about concerns, including possible criminal fraud by Hart, ES&S and Tarrant County, as long ago as July of 2004. His letters were all virtually ignored by officials in both states. The Texas Secretary of State was recently forced to shutdown a mandated recount in Tom Green County when it was discovered that recount numbers from the machines differed by some 20% from results reported on Election Night.
Up until now, many critics who have doubted or ignored the many concerns about the hackable hardware and secret software used in Electronic Voting, as expressed for some time by Election Integrity Advocates, have said that it is only Democrats who seem to be concerned about results as tallied on such machines which are now blanketing the country in the wake of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
That flawed law was written and sponsored in large part by Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) and passed in 2002 along with heavy lobbying by Voting Machine Vendor Diebold, Inc. of North Canton, OH and their top lobbyist, Ney’s former chief of staff, David DiStefano. HAVA’s full impact kicks in by statute for the first time this year. Ney recently stepped down from his chairmanship of the U.S. House Administration Committee after being named in one of the plea bargains by disgraced former Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Smith’s election challenge, by a conservative Republican Supreme Court Justice from Texas, may well help to change the tenor of the debate over Electronic Voting, as is becoming apparent in several national mainstream publications of late including USA TODAY who published a front page story finally touching on these matters today.
We are on the road for the bulk of today and this evening, but if one of our friendly Guest Bloggers can update this item with a copy of the full Election Contest as filed by Steve Smith later today — once we receive it — we will do so.
UPDATE 3:50pm PT: Campaign managaer David Rogers has contacted us to let us know the campaign has found additional information that they wish to investigate before filing their contest. Due to this new information they will be delaying the filing by 24 hours.
UPDATE 4/1/06: The complete Election Contest filing is now attached here. [PDF] We hope to have a new report on the details/specifics later.
Brad
Well, just ask Alice … one electronic voting machine makes you larger, another makes you small …
Hey, thank you, BBV, VR, and all of us bloggers for bringing "conspiracy theories" to the TEXAS SUPREME COURT.
Even tho they will not embrace us, they can no longer ignore us.
WE ARE THE BLOG … resistance is futile …
Thanks for the breaking news. Glad you’re hot on the heels of this story.
Having honest elections is not a partisan issue, and it should matter to people of integrity of all political persuasions. It’s great news that Steve Smith will be filing an Election Contest. Has anyone got some contact details so we can express our support?
I look forward to hearing more about the various irregularities that are being discovered throughout the state.
Steve Smith may have politics backwards (from a liberal view), but he is like a rabid dog when he gets onto an issue.
He’s the attorney that brought that class-action about reverse-discrimination in the UT Lawschool admissions system. He brought the case that forced schools to stop using race as a basis for admissions. Not that what he did was a good thing, but just an example of how he is a crusader for issues he believes in.
You may not agree with his politics, but he’s dogged, and if they pissed him off, and he feels like he was defrauded, my bet is that he’ll keep on the issue, and work hard to expose any injustice he feels was committed.
I guess when a Republican complains about voting irregularities, something happens?
yeah, something will happen alright. Right after he goes hunting with Trigger.
Voting irregularities?
I’m SHOCKED! SHOCKED, I tell you!
Maybe this will set a precedent for other states for things to come.
And Moses said "let the waters part" … and the red sea divided …
Will the republicans come back together before November?
Well … depends if the act is over or not … doesn’t it?
… and there were red islands amidst the red islands … (what happened to the blue states?)
… and then the lord created the blues brothers …
Post Above,…
Was that in the Bible ?
Old Testament or New Testament,…
Did not realize God was so "COOL",.. I’ll be.
I miss Jake!
The meltdown seems to be accelerating! More and more we are beginning to hear of problems which aren’t being brushed off as "Glitches".
Perhaps the MSM will wake up and realize people are becoming interested and therefore there is $$$ in the reporting of these things.
Well – I can hope, can’t I?
Along with Katherine "Roger" Williams, the SecState of Texas, here are some other names you may like to mock:
Katherine "Ann" McGeehan, Director of Elections
Katherine "Melinda" Nickless, Assistant Director of Elections
Katherine "Elizabeth" Hanshaw Winn, Legal Section
Katherine "Kim" Kizer, Special Projects
Katherine "Karen" Richards, Voter Registration
Katherine "Shelia" L. Latting, Election Funds Management
I hope someone puts a cactus on their chair when they testify to the Grand Jury.
Catherine-
You asked for contact info for Steve Smith. Here is the e-mail address for his campaign manager. David Rogers, who will get all messages to Steve:
info@smithforsupremecourt.com
Good for Steve Smith. Actually, it’s not surprising to see a conservative Republican complaining about rigged elections in Texas.
Remember "Landslide Lyndon?" Without a stolen primary election (from another Democrat) in 1948, we’d never have had the pleasure of LBJ’s company as Senate Majority Leader, V.P., and president. We might never have had the fraudulent Gulf of Tonkin resolution or the Vietnam War.
Many people believe the Kennedy-Johnson folks rigged Texas in 1960. Crooked elections are so commonplace there that they’re almost taken for granted. Once in a while someone gets pissed off about it.
RLM #14
There were some rigged elections in 323 B.C. too, however, they will not assist us in our current dilemna. Furthermore, the current election cycle is one of republican cheating republican.
Smith is obviously the better qualified jurist, and his opponent is a political hack, so now we know why Smith is opposed and Willett is favored by the regime (link here).
Finally, they notice that not all of our votes are being counted. Since at least 2000 we Liberals have been demanding that "Count Every Vote and Every Vote Counts". For this we have been called whiners and sore losers. Maybe now patriotic American’s will see that you can not have a Constitutional Republic if the elections are not Democratic!
It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.
~Tom Stoppard~ (1937 – ) Jumpers (1972) act 1
Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.
~Joseph Stalin~
Link