Election Reform Ignored by Texas Republicans?

As Election Integrity Chair for Texas Eagle Forum and a member of the Texans for Election Integrity Team, I want to go on record about my thoughts on how the 87th Legislative Session, 2021 has gone for election reform.

Let me start right out of the gate by saying that I’m furious. Overall, the whole process of addressing election integrity has been an abject failure. The process, the delays, the politics, the unnecessary complexities, and the obvious unpreparedness on the part of the Republicans is more than disappointing. Here we are at the end of the session, and we don NOT have a single solid election reform bill passed.

Does it really take this long to do the right thing? What’s the hindrance? The Democrats or the Republicans? Just recently,

1. The House Elections Integrity Committee Republicans suffered a massive shellacking on May 7th when the Democrats got 11 of the 20 Amendments adopted and the Republicans got 7 of the 20. Approximately 140 amendments were filed, mostly by the Democrats, as their way of making SB7 more difficult to pass. They won; we lost.
2. Representative Jeff Leach pulls his “let’s punish the Senate for not passing our bills, so let’s go on recess for 3 days” stunt, essentially killing many of our conservative bills…., including election integrity bills. We’re still waiting, and it’s May 28th.
3. All of the election bills in the House and Senate that were even close to passing are seriously devoid of any real, measurable election reform. Why? Because they do not address the monster in the other room: the election system vulnerabilities with computers in the polling place and in central tabulation. 

We tried to get computers out of the election process, but our pleas fell on deaf ears.  At the beginning of the legislative session, we had 6 simple asks, well, 7 if you include our asking for Keith Ingram to be fired.

This list addresses the 6, well 7, major attack surfaces of voter fraud and electronic fraud in the most uncomplicated, direct way, and yet the majority of our state legislators have managed to monumentally fail in protecting the ballot by giving us convoluted, complex  bill language that does not address wholesale election fraud through electronic ballot manipulation.

Given that cyber intrusions happen in all major sectors, including, financial institutions, large commercial enterprises, government and military facilities, why do we think it wouldn’t happen say in Navarro County Elections Department or Midland County or Montgomery County? One of my colleagues asked the question: “why would we let the horses out of the barn and then close the barn door.?”  Said another way, why would we wait for it to happen in an election, and then try to fix it. Oh wait. Maybe it already happened in the 2020 Presidential. The question is not IF our election systems will be hacked, but WHEN and HOW MUCH DAMAGE will be done?

Unless and until we get the computers out of the election process, we will never have enough laws to protect us from wholesale election fraud. And we will never again have another chance to win enough seats to win liberty and conservative victories in any sector. (Life, education, tollroads, statues, gender, 2nd Amendment, etc.) With perfectly clean legitimate voter rolls, the strictest of strict mail ballot qualifications, limited EV, and zero waivers, we still cannot guarantee that our vote results are authentic and believable.

As an election judge, I can have the most perfectly run polling location, with only qualified voters voting. But I cannot guarantee that their vote selections are counted properly or that the flash drives that I turn in are read properly. Where is the outrage from our elected officials? In Early Voting, our vote result tapes are not printed, so no one can guarantee that the votes are counted properly because we have no audit paper trail. This is unacceptable.

With the loss of confidence in our election process, we add to the growing list of key early warning indicators of conflict. Our country has already checked all the boxes on the instability data analysis scale. Fraudulent elections is the death knell. Civil unrest - or worse - is not far behind. The Democrats know it and they are fighting the “life or death” - “do or die” fight on these bills. Are the Republicans prepared for the fight? The clue to their unreadiness and un-seriousness was first seen when they ignored the major large scale attack surfaces in our election management systems. Even the major policy influencers wouldn’t touch the electronic ballot manipulation concern. This is just weird.

Rumors abound. Is there an outside force in play here? Is it the kingmakers? The RNC? The Deep State?

Well, it doesn’t really matter who it is. It only matters what we are going to do about it. The ball is in our court. It’s their mess, but it’s our job to clean it up - or better yet, clean them out. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s get back to the particular bills. SB7 was the stronger of the 2 omnibus bills, but HB6 language completely replaced SB7 language. The Senate did not agree to this committee substitution and called for a conference committee made up of 7 Rs and 3 Ds. They have only a few days left to get the stronger language back in place. We are waiting.

There are other bills we are watching, but some died with Jeff Leach’s stunt and others are hanging on by a thread.

If we don’t get computers out of the election process, then our legislators will have failed us. We will lose Texas, and who knows what will happen to our Republic. I’m not optimistic that our legislators will come through, so here’s what we must do:

1. The 4 Ms: March on Austin, Melt the phones, Mail our postcards (see above), Make your voices heard.
2. Demand a Special Session to address electronic fraud.
3. Raise up conservative candidates and primary the bad actors (Rinos).
4. Withdraw your support from the milquetoast Rinos NOW.