Stealing Texas

The Democrats’ efforts to turn Texas blue, Battle Ground Texas, has gone full ACORN.

This week we learned election workers in San Antonio engaged in voter intimidation.

According to the San Antonio Express-News, two election workers were chastised for steering Hispanic voters to vote Democrat during this week’s early 2014 primary voting:

“Two election workers at a Southwest Side polling site were chastised this week after Hispanic Republican voters complained the workers attempted to steer them to the Democratic primary.

Republican officials said one GOP voter claimed she was told Hispanics are supposed to vote Democrat.

[. . .]

Bexar County GOP Chairman Robert Stovall said the GOP received two complaints from Collins Garden, one from the Hispanic woman who claimed she was told ‘you are a Hispanic, you’re not a Republican.'”

In a written statement dated February 26, 2014, Chairman Stovall made the election workers’ misconduct sound much worse than did the Express-News:

“Two days ago we had three separate instances of VOTER INTIMIDATION at the Collin Gardens here in Bexar County where Hispanic voters who asked for Republican primary ballots, but were being pushed Democrats ballots because they were Hispanics. This unfairly stereotypes all Hispanic voters as being Democrat, when clearly there are not. There are many Hispanic Republican voters and Hispanic vote who wish to vote a more Conservative option.

This intimidation is just another ACORN tactic used by Battle Ground Texas.”

There are plenty of Hispanics in Texas who support conservatives. One organization looking out for their interests is the LIBRE Initiative, which has jumped on this story. Daniel Garza, Executive Director of The LIBRE Initiative released the following statement:

“The nonpartisan officials charged with protecting the integrity of the election process must not politicize it. This is a fundamental rule of our democracy. American Hispanics hold a diversity of views. They don’t belong to just one political party. It’s insulting and patronizing to act as if they do, and to try to tell them to line up behind candidates who don’t reflect their views or advance their interests.

Elections are about the choices of individual Americans. If we can’t count on election officials themselves to respect those choices, there are serious problems. The LIBRE Initiative recognizes the diversity of thought withing the Hispanic community, and continues to be committed to advancing those principles.”

In the Express-News report, the voter intimidation is downplayed by Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen. He called it “an isolated but regrettable incident.”

Is that all it is?

In his statement, Chairman Stovall pointed to the “misappropriation” of voter information by deputy registrars working in Bexar County as Battle Ground Texas employees. That’s a reference to Jessica Longoria, a Deputy Voter registrar in Bexar County, admissions on video that she and her paid Battleground Texas staff took data from new voter registration forms. You can watch Langoria’s admissions in the following video:

As Stovall states, “It appears Texas laws were broken” by this malfeasance and flagrant abuse of personal information collected under the guise of registering voters. Stovall has asked for a “full investigation into the facts is necessary to reassure the public as to the integrity of the registration process.” He has also filed a complaint with the Texas Secretary of State.

I tend to credit Stovall’s voter intimidation concerns.

After all, the Romney campaign had to request an investigation into potential election fraud in Virginia because of the shenanigans of the DC-based Voter Participation Center which mailed voter-registration forms to deceased relatives, children, and even pets.

Also in the 2012 presidential election the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office investigated complaints that voting machines switched votes from Romney to Obama.

And there was the voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party members in 2012 and 2008.

Then there was the voter fraud practiced by ACORN in the 2008 presidential campaign in Ohio, Indiana and other states.

Hopefully, someday the lefties who say that voter ID laws and other anti-fraud measures are not necessary will be overcome by all the evidence of voter fraud and other instances of ineligible voting.