Showing posts sorted by date for query texas voter fraud cases. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query texas voter fraud cases. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Monday, December 20, 2021

A Wrangle Before Christmas


I'll be adding to that list, here in this post and in the coming days.  Yes, there's lots of ground to cover; I'll open with the exploding omicron variant/COVID numbers.


Distressing news as we approach the holidays and planned gatherings.


We are three times jabbed, with the Pfizer following two Moderna shots exactly on schedule (one month ago, 7 months ago, and the first last April).  We are masked, KN95, every time we leave the house, and have recently stopped dining out again despite all these precautions.  I support mask mandates, but I oppose vaccine mandates.  People who don't want to get the shot shouldn't be forced to.  Neither should their employers keep them on payroll, or their health insurers pay for their treatment if they contract the virus.  These are the choices.  Everybody should clearly understand by now what's at stake.

The greed of Big Pharma, the waiver of liability from damage, the federal government's refusal to share the vaccines with poorer nations, the patents being protected and all of that bullshit also extends the pandemic.  For some reason we cannot compel people to do the right thing.


This does not give me hope for resolving climate change or social inequality.  Way down the list from there is worrying about whether the Democrats can figure out how to appease Joe Manchin in order to save their asses in the midterms.  As Tony Soprano might say, "Whaddaya gonna do?"

Be of good cheer anyway.  Mine comes from laughing at the foibles of the intellectually feeble, the terminally corrupt, and the uber-demagogues.





After all, I'm just here to document the atrocities.


There have been some developments regarding redistricting -- or gerrymandering, if you prefer -- since my last Wrangle.  Also the new SOS has been efforting to "clean up" (sic) the voter rolls.


Will Wilder and Elizabeth Hira for the Brennan Center show how the Freedom to Vote Act would defang Texas' voter suppression law.  Too bad that's not going to happen.  And Ken Paxton has a sad that he will not be able to go after these "criminals".  If they should break the law, that is.  His track record was poor anyway.


The War on School Libraries is the new War on Christmas.


Our school board trustees do have other things to worry about.  "Things" being legal problems of their own making.


It's not as if potential school shootings are a concern, after all.


The power grid has been in sharp focus recently.  Let's round up the latest.


I've run long here, so I'll put the criminal and social justice news in the next Wrangle.  And more calm-me-downs.  Here's one to close.

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Thursday, December 16, 2021

As the Filing Dust Settles Wrangle


Really am enjoying everything Nick Anderson and his gang are doing.

Beto's wave is building.


Candidly I've seen this before.  First in 2006 when David Van Os went to every single county courthouse in the state in his bid against Abbott for attorney general.  And nobody in my estimation had more momentum to defeat Governor Fish Lips than Wendy Davis in 2014, when she delivered a filibuster that shook the Capitol.  Literally, some will recall.

A lot of things have changed in the Lone Star State since then, not the least of which is that it's gotten redder and more extreme.  And now, of course, there's fresh gerrymandering and voter suppression to contend with.  So you'll have to forgive me if I don't deem this early enthusiasm all that contagious.


The marquee race remains, IMO, the state's attorney general contest, in both the GOP and Democratic primaries.  Just yesterday K-Pax was rebuked by the appeals court for overstepping his authority in prosecuting alleged voter fraud charges.

An election code provision granting the Office of Attorney General the ability to prosecute criminal election fraud cases is unconstitutional, the Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in an 8-1 decision. The case arises from an alleged campaign finance violation by the Jefferson County sheriff, a case the county district attorney declined to prosecute.

Section 273.021 (of the Texas) Election Code provides that the “attorney general may prosecute a criminal offense prescribed by the election laws of this state.” The Court ruled that power properly resides with county and district attorneys, who are part of the judicial branch, and not the attorney general, which is part of the executive branch.

“Absent the consent and deputization order of a local prosecutor or the request of a district or county attorney for assistance, the Attorney General has no authority to independently prosecute criminal cases in trial courts,” wrote Judge Jesse McClure for the majority (PDF). “Any attempt to overlap the Attorney General’s constitutional duties with county and district attorneys’ constitutional duties in the sense of a Venn diagram of sorts is unconstitutional.”

The CCA is all Republicans.  And none of them are moderates.  They're death penalty freaks like Sharon Keller.  (Sidebar: Regarding the death penalty, there's good news on that front.)  So let's hope the TXGOP primary voter can scrounge around and find enough logic to follow their lead and rebuke Paxton themselves in March.


Without straight-ticket voting it might be easier than in the past to dislodge some of these squatters from office in November, but that's too far away to be concerned with just yet.  Focus on spring turnout, Ds.  Media will make hay if your numbers are lower than the Pachys'.

Stace reviews his favorites for the statewide Donkey races and also Harris County, linking to the Erik Manning spreadsheet.  The San Antonio Report profiles the race for Bexar County judge, sure to be as spirited as the one in Harris.

I have some catch-all items.


A couple of environmental headlines:


An expansive collation of border and immigration developments.


And the criminal and social justice news.


Two items regarding critical race theory.


And today's soothers.

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Monday, December 13, 2021

The Filing Deadline Wrangle


Filing for partisan nomination or an independent candidacy for the 2022 general election concludes at 6 p.m. local time (today).

As far as we can tell, all incumbent statewide officials, legislators and members of Congress who announced plans to run for re-election (or at least didn’t announce plans to the contrary) have filed except for Reps. Claudia Ordaz Perez (D-El Paso), Ana-Maria Ramos (D-Dallas) and Ron Reynolds (D-Missouri City). Ordaz Perez is paired with Rep. Art Fierro (D-El Paso), who has filed for re-election.

It generally takes a couple of weeks for all the filing activity to shake out completely. County and state party chairs are not required to submit candidate information to the Secretary of State until December 21. The Secretary of State has an additional day to post certified candidate lists on its website. In rare cases for which extended deadlines are triggered, these deadlines shift a few days later. It can take longer to obtain information on independent candidates, who must file declarations of intent by tomorrow (Monday), but their actual application is not due until June 23. Write-in candidates cannot begin submitting their applications until July 23.


Another filing update tomorrow.  Local school board election results from Saturday:


Didn't see any whining about delayed returns posted by Harris Votes, but didn't look very hard, either (had much better plans for my Saturday night).  Relative to the outcomes: it must have been those two non-votes from my household that turned the the tide red.  Wait; nope.  Don't live in those jurisdictions.  Blame other Green Party members, or maybe Susan Sarandon.

For those who have offspring who will be educated in the state's public school systems, better get out there and hustle up your preferred electorate in the next election.  Because the fundies certainly are.

Back to the future (2022).


Fifty-five million dollars and more every day in the coffers and Governor Helen Wheels still grinds on the telephone like an extended warranty salesman.  Are you impressed by his determination?  Is this the type of person you want re-elected?

IMHO it's the result of a political system long gone rancid.

Another example: the ridiculousness of the latest goobernatorial poll underscoring the lack of value of this so-called science.  Braddock again with the hammer on the head of the nail.


Gambling on another Uri that does not come to pass probably ruins Texas Dems -- or at least their consultants -- for another generation, which is to say forever (when the climate fries us all).  Yes, I have blogged recently that the grid issue is paramount for Team Blue.  But they need to fight on multi-fronts, and on some bipartisan topics that Abbott won't risk touching, like cannabis legalization and civil asset reform (or better yet, abolishment).  Maybe even damage to the state's economy.


Meanwhile ...


I would imagine Diaz gets very favorable treatment from the state's political media.  How that translates into electoral success is to be determined.  This seems like a vanity play.  The TexDem Latin@ base vote might push her into a runoff with Beto.  Won't that look great for everybody.

Prescient from the TexTrib's James Barragan and Cassi Pollock.  Or was it Brett Kavanaugh?


Since I got a few days behind again ...


Kuff also reviewed the state and federal rulings on SB8.


SocraticGadfly also blogged about the latest suit against the Texas election law, the minor parties over filing fees (trust me on this: SG hates everybody).  Jessica Huseman at VoteBeat.org reported on the insanity of the Potter County Republican Party and its plans for an all-analog primary.


One environmental update ...


... and one social justice update today.


More tomorrow.  Ending with the calm-me-downs.


The Austin Chronicle has a South by Southwest update.

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Monday, October 25, 2021

The Monday Morning Wrangle from Far Left Texas


Dan Solomon's excuses are as good as any for me to skip this fall's elections in favor of more trivial pursuits.  And since I don't have children or grandchildren, the Houston school board races are a non-starter for me.  YMMV, of course.

Elsewhere, frying bigger fish:


We're left to our own devices as to why the other so-called liberals, Kagan and Breyer, declined to join Sotomayor in dissenting.  That's enough to project a more ominous fate for Roe once the Supremes collectively pass judgment.

There were some reactions to Governor Strangelove's latest chat with Breitbart, which happened at the 50-yard line of Darrell K. Royal Stadium.


And to think that all this time I thought it was the Aggies who were the conservative darlings of higher education in Texas.  Silly me.

Alas, on the state's corruption scale, this barely registers.


Still anxiously anticipating a long break from having to report this shit.


I'll take that as my segue to the criminal and social justice updates.


A Lefty Gamer has been relentless in Tweeting about the MAGAts running the Magnolia ISD.


That gets me to the environmental headlines.


And the soothers.  There was MuertosFest in San Antonio over the weekend ...


... and another festival just like it this weekend.


With a 5–0 statement in Game 5 Friday, Houston is returning to the World Series for the third time in five years because over the final 26 innings, it outscored Boston, 22–1. That was after the Red Sox had become the first team in postseason history to run off six straight games with 10 hits or more. A gullywasher became a drought. It ... just ... stopped.

Asked to explain the whiplash-inducing turn to the series, Boston manager Alex Cora said, “Brent Strom and Martín Maldonado. Two of the smartest people in baseball. They completely changed their strategy against us midway through Game 4.”

[...]

It was during that game that Strom, the chief navigator of pitching, decided to tack to the starboard side. The change Cora referenced was a decision by Strom to have his pitchers attack the Red Sox with fastballs.

“Yeah, very much so,” Strom said. [...] "I basically told the group, ‘If you’re going to get beat, throw your best stuff over the plate, then you can sleep at night. Rather than dancing around the strike zone.’ Young pitchers start dancing, and you can’t do that.”


Confession: I was among the Debbie Downers lamenting the collapse of the starting pitching, especially after Luis Garcia came up lame.

Garcia lasted only eight batters in Game 2, departing with a sore knee and a 91-mph fastball after getting only three outs. The knee injury forced Strom to study Garcia’s delivery to see if something was causing the pain. The old pitcher whisperer found it and put Garcia on the mound the next day for a bullpen session. He showed Garcia that he was creating stress on his knee by having his right foot (the plant foot by the rubber for the righthander) slightly angled, with the ball of his foot a bit closer to the plate than his heel. That caused his knee to be turned slightly inward as he lifted his front leg in the load phase.

Strom told Garcia to place his right foot directly parallel with the rubber. With a straight plant foot, Garcia would keep his knee (and thus his weight upon leg lift) over the foot.

Voila! Garcia hit 97 mph seven times in the first three innings after throwing one pitch that hard the entire season out of 1,118 four-seamers.

“I was surprised,” Strom said. “The funny thing about it, outside of that injury, if he had not hurt his knee, we might not have made that tweak. So, the tweak was made not to increase velocity but to take stress off his knee. We did it the very next day after he threw one inning and he seemed to like it. And quite frankly we probably should have done it sooner, but he was having a good year and you hate to mess with somebody who’s having a good year. It’s the dicey thing about messing with a good thing. The injury probably helped him.”

Then there was this, the backbreaker for the Sox.

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Monday, July 12, 2021

Waiting-to-Testify (*updated with Walkout) Wrangle

The lines were long, the wait lasted the entirety of Saturday and proceeded well into daylight Sunday morning ... and it was all for naught.  As expected.


Bus loads secured by Sen. Borris Miles.

A Texas House committee voted early Sunday morning to advance to the floor a GOP-backed voting bill in the Texas Legislature that includes extensive new voting restrictions, the Texas Tribune reports.

Right along party lines.



That's Sen. Bryan Hughes, far right, looking at the ceiling.  He of the egregious exaggerations.



In defending his controversial voting bill on CNN on Sunday, Texas state Sen. Bryan Hughes claimed half a dozen times that the attorney general's office had 400 open voter fraud cases.

“That's the fact,” Hughes, R-Mineola, said in an interview with CNN host Pamela Brown. “It's documented. There's no question about that.”

Yet that number is almost 10 times larger than the number of people with pending voter fraud charges in Texas, which is 43, according to data from the attorney general’s office. Only one of those pending cases stems from the 2020 election, in which more than 11 million Texans cast ballots.

Sorry, Sen. Hughes; that's not the fact.  There are more than questions about that, especially regarding your -- and Ken Paxton's -- continued insistence that this falsehood is true.


Sen. Royce West took his (graceful) shot.


You'll see and hear (I have to read with closed captions) Sen. West say '43 cases'.  The 44th occurred at the end of last week.


Greg Abbott went on Chris Wallace's Sunday morning program and chose to get, shall we say, exotic with his rationalizations.


Abbott, Paxton, Hughes, et.al. are obviously gaslighting, but Texas Democrats are trying to teach these pigs to sing by offering actual facts, truth and logic to them.  They are not going to be persuaded.  Because if it ain't in the Bible, they don't need to know it.  Exhibit A:


Back to Reality: do you think Abbott and Luis Saenz and the rest of the governor's brain trust sit around and spitball these, or does he just make them up off the French cuff?  Because I'm beginning to wonder who he/they think they're fooling.

On the other hand, I -- and everybody else -- know exactly who he's fooling.


In a survey of 446 Republican primary voters conducted between June 14-17 by Public Opinion Strategies, 77 percent of primary voters said they would vote for the Governor, while 15 percent said they would select another Republican candidate.

[...]

The poll found in a hypothetical primary race, Abbott won 69 percent of the vote, while (former RPT chair Allen) West received 13 percent and (former state Sen. Don) Huffines had 3 percent. Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller also received 3 percent, but since the poll was conducted, he has decided against running for governor and will instead run for re-election.

Abbott fares better among those who consider themselves “strong” Republicans, who represent 61 percent of primary voters. He received 75 percent of the vote, while West won 11 percent, and Huffines had 3 percent. Eight percent were undecided.

All of this business, or con job if you prefer (I do) regarding the voter suppression bill is leading in one direction; a path we've been down before.


I don't think they're bluffing, Governor.

Update: And sure enough, they weren't.


Since I've run long here, I'll put the bail bill (hearings and passage out of committee also done over the weekend), summaries of the laundry list of other neo-fascist legislation, a few more election items, the spike in COVID's Delta variant cases, criminal and social justice news -- including the surge of gun-related deaths -- and whatever else I have left in posts later this week.  Also Part 2 of the environmental collation.  Soothers to close.

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