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Texas Prosecutes Little Old Ladies for Voter Fraud
By Steven Rosenfeld
AlterNet
Sunday 31 March 2008
State's Attorney General has prosecuted Democrats
who help seniors vote by mail while ignoring documented Republican ballot box
stuffing.
Willie Ray was a 69-year-old African-American City Council member from Texarkana
who wanted her granddaughter, Jamillah Johnson, to learn about civil rights and
voting during the 2004 presidential election. The pair helped homebound seniors
citizens get absentee ballots, and once they were filled out, put them in the
mail.
Fort Worth's Gloria Meeks, 69, was a church-going, community activist who proudly
ran a phone bank and helped homebound elderly people like Parthenia McDonald,
79, to vote by mail. McDonald, whose mailbox was two blocks away from her home
(she recently died), called Meeks "an angel" for helping her, a friend
of both women said.
And until he recently moved out of state, Walter Hinojosa, a retired school teacher
and labor organizer from Austin, was another Democratic Party volunteer who helped
elderly and disabled people vote by getting them absentee ballots and mailing
them.
Today, Ray and Johnson have criminal records for breaking Texas election law and
faced travel restrictions during a six-month probation. Gloria Meeks is in a nursing
home after having a stroke, prompted in part, her friends say, by state police
who investigated her - including spying on Meeks while she bathed - and then
questioned her about helping McDonald and others to vote. Hinojosa, meanwhile,
has left Texas.
Their crime: not signing their name, address and signature on the back of the
ballots they mailed for their senior neighbors, and carrying envelopes containing
those ballots to the mailbox. Since 2005, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott,
a Republican, has been prosecuting Democratic Party activists, almost all African-Americans
and Latinos, as part of an effort to eradicate what he said was an "epidemic"
of voter fraud in Texas.
"These guilty pleas demonstrate precisely why it is so important to uphold
the integrity of our election process in the state," Abbott said, speaking
of Ray and Johnson's conviction in a press release. "We will visit justice
upon any who ignore the fact that we have election laws in Texas and they apply
to everyone."
But Texas Democrats, such as Lisa Turner of the Lone Star Project, onestarproject.net
a political action committee that first exposed Abbott's prosecutions, issued
reports on it and maintains a staff to fight voter suppression in the state, said
Abbott's goal is not merely to prosecute little old ladies. Rather, Turner said
it was to send a message to Texas' minority communities, which lean Democratic,
by sowing fears among the elderly about voting by mail.
"It's the equivalent if when a gang moves into a neighborhood and spray paints
their graffiti or their marker; it's not to deface one building. It is to send
a message," Turner said. "You have agents of the attorney general, walking
through a neighborhood, walking past three crack houses, to go talk to a voter.
Think about that. What does that say their priorities are? It's about holding
onto the levers of power."
Attorney General Abbott and the election laws that he has used to bring the prosecutions
have been challenged in federal court under a suit that is slated to go to trial
this spring. In September 2006, Gerry Hebert, a former chief of the U.S. Department
of Justice's Voting Section - which oversees the nation's voting rights laws
- and now executive director of the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center, filed
a suit challenging the Texas attorney general, secretary of state and a 2003 Texas
law that criminalized practices often used to help the elderly to vote by mail.
Abbott's office would not comment on the suit, but Texas Solicitor General Ted
Cruz, who works for Abbott, issued a statement in September 2006 saying it "has
no basis in law" and "the plaintiffs are combination of political operatives
and individual criminals who have already pleaded guilty to voter fraud."
Meanwhile, Texas' attorney general has continued to prosecute middle-aged and
elderly political volunteers under a law his office says stops people from impersonating
voters and taking advantage of seniors by falsifying ballots. The accused are
almost all African-American and Latino and likely Democrats.
In February 2008, Abbott indicted four Duval County residents, Lydia Molina, 70,
Maria Soriano, 71, Elva Lazo, 62, Maria Trigo, 55, for allegedly delivering "mail-in
ballot applications to numerous residents in Duval County, many of whom were ineligible
to vote by mail," his press release said. Under Texas law, only the disabled,
people 65 or older, or people expecting to be out of state on Election Day can
vote absentee. The accused checked a box saying voters were disabled "when
they were not," he said, referring to their actions in the 2006 election.
"The voter registrar's office then mailed the actual ballots to the residents,"
Abbott's release said. "Once the ballots were completed by the residents,
the defendants allegedly retrieved these and mailed them to the registrar to be
counted without identifying themselves on the carrier envelope." They face
six months and a $2,000 fine.
Only Likely Democrats Prosecuted
Despite Abbott's repeated declarations nobody is above Texas law, he has prosecuted
no Republicans.
"What is especially troubling is that while Greg Abbott's office has prosecuted
minority seniors for simply mailing ballots, he has not prosecuted anyone on the
other side of the aisle for what appear to be open and shut cases of real voter
fraud," Hebert told Texas House Elections Committee, on January 25, 2008,
as the panel held a hearing on a bill making the state's voter I.D. laws tougher.
Hebert cited a 2005 election in Highland Park, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods
in the country with hundreds of million-dollar homes and where both George W.
Bush and Dick Cheney lived before the 2000 election. In 2005, two election judges,
both Republicans, and a 10-year-old boy handed out over 100 ballots, Hebert testified,
without checking any voter registration cards or IDs. The ballots were filled
out and turned in, he said, quoting from several Dallas District Attorney memos
that suggested there was a strong basis for prosecuting the judges for not following
procedures and counting "over 100 more ballots" that there were "signatures
on the roster."
In other words, here was a serious case of apparent ballot box stuffing - voter
fraud - by Republicans, albeit in a state where the GOP holds all the constitutional
offices, most judgeships and controls most county election boards.
"Here we are nearly three years later and Attorney General Abbott's office
has done virtually nothing," Hebert told Texas legislators. "Rather
than exercise his discretion to act directly on the [district attorney's] request
and immediately investigate the voting irregularities and potential voter fraud
in Highland Park, Mr. Abbott's office has instead used his office's resources
to prosecute elderly political activists whose only 'crime' was assisting elderly
and disabled voters cast a vote by mail."
The bigger picture, said the Lone Star Project's Turner, was the Texas Republican
Party, assisted by the state's Republican attorney general, was using the power
of the state and public funds to create a climate for partisan gain.
"I don't believe that the Attorney General or the Governor or the Republicans
are really interested in putting old women in jail," she said. "They
see what we all see and what everybody has written about, which is Texas is trending
majority minority [where the majority of voters is no longer white]. And the Republicans
haven't figured out how to talk to minorities. So, instead of figuring out how
to talk to them on an issue basis, they have embarked on a plan to shave two or
three percentage points off the electorate and that's how they stay in power."
The Climate of Fear
On the outskirts of Ft. Worth, the Democratic Party has a campaign office for
its various local and statewide campaigns. In early March, Jane Hamilton, a young
woman who has been working on campaigns in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area since 2000,
and Dorothy Dean, 74, who has worked on campaigns for four decades, described
the real-life impact of Abbott's efforts to prosecute people for helping the elderly
and disabled to vote.
Hamilton described how the 2003 law passed by the Texas Legislature changed the
way the Democrats interacted with older people who wanted help with their absentee
ballots.
"We would get phone calls from older ladies who wanted to vote," Hamilton
said. "And they would ask, a lot of times, for people that they trusted,
their neighbors, to come over to help. I would then say, 'Well, I don't know her,
but how about us helping you over the phone?' And they would say, 'Well, I can't
see. And I can't hear good. I need somebody to come over here and help me.'"
Before the attorney general's prosecutions, Hamilton said she would find well-known
people in the caller's community to visit the elderly person's home to help them
with voting - volunteers like Ray, Meeks or Hinojosa. But after Abbott started
prosecuting Democratic volunteers for assisting the seniors, Hamilton said she
could only help elderly voters over the phone, which many callers did not understand.
"It was very difficult for me," Hamilton said. "It was very hard
to explain why a Mrs. Johnson couldn't help a Mrs. Brown, or if she did, then
she couldn't help a Mrs. Sue... I think that really started as fear. They (the
callers) were afraid, because they also started hearing about the attorney general's
office prosecuting. You had all of these things going on, however no one really
understood why. The AG's office never did a good job on the community level saying
what this means, what this means for you."
Abbott may not have been telling the public what was required under the 2003 law,
but he did tell the police. In early 2006, he announced "a statewide initiative
to work with local law enforcement and prosecutors to combat and prevent the persistent
problem of voter fraud," his January 25, 2006 news release said. The project's
initial phase would target "44 key counties that either have a history of
voter fraud or the population of which exceeds 100,000," the attorney general's
release said.
"Voter fraud has been epidemic in Texas for years, but it hasn't been treated
like one. It's time for that to change," Abbott said. Continuing, he announced
the formation of a new "Special Investigations Unit [that] will help police
departments, sheriff's offices, and district and county attorneys successfully
identify, investigate and prosecute various types of voter fraud offenses."
The release said the Texas governor's office, held by another Republican, was
supporting the effort with a $1.5 million grant.
According to the Center's lawsuit, where Ray, Johnson, Meeks, McDonald, Hinojosa
and the Texas Democratic Party are plaintiffs, the PowerPoint presentation used
by Abbott's office to train Texas officials was rife with racial stereotypes associating
voter fraud with people of color - communities in Texas that in recent history
have supported Democrats.
"As an introduction to a section of the PowerPoint involving 'Poll Place
Violations," a slide depicts a photograph of African-American voters apparently
standing in line to vote," the lawsuit's complaint said. "Notably, the
71-slide presentation contains no similar photographs of white or Anglo voters
casting ballots."
"Another slide in the same PowerPoint presentation, in a section involving
tactics for investigating purported voter fraud, is entitled 'Examine Documents
for Fraud.' That slide states that investigators should look for 'Unique Stamps'
and shows a prominent picture of a postage stamp known as the 'sickle cell stamp,'
which depicts an African-American woman and infant," the complaint said.
"The PowerPoint presentation thus communicates the message that minority
voters should be the focus of election fraud investigations and prosecutions,
particularly under the new 2003 criminal prohibitions."
The lawsuit continues and describes various investigating tactics used by Abbott's
special investigations unit, including the incident where two state police officers
were seen by Meeks "peeping at her through her bathroom window" while
she was taking a bath on August 10, 2006. "She later learned that these two
persons were investigators with the office of the defendant Attorney General Abbott,"
the suit said.
Meanwhile, the state office overseeing voting in Texas, the Secretary of State,
"fails to make clear that those who assist voters may be subject to criminal
prosecution," the complaint said, underscoring the point that Abbott and
Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams, also a Republican, were "engaging
in a deliberate campaign to suppress the minority vote and discriminate against
minority voters."
"That is the whole scheme of the plan," said Dorothy Dean, who has worked
on campaigns in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area for four decades. "Get it so complicated
that the Democrats will stay at home, so they will be confused... A lot of these
older people will be like, 'Oh, I guess I can't vote this year because I don't
have my neighbor that can help me. She hasn't been here for two years.' That is
really what is happening."
Dean said she has not been investigated by Abbott, but knows of others who have.
"There is one lady who used to be a precinct chair," she said. "I
refuse to give her name because she almost had a nervous breakdown. She couldn't
believe that all of her hard work as a precinct chair, and devoted to the party,
that something like this would happen to her. She still to this day cannot get
over it. She wants to be her precinct chair again. But because of the law, she
can't get it back."
The Fallout for 2008
Dorothy Dean said the impact of the attorney general's campaign is much larger
than the dozen people charged with voter fraud and the dozens more that have been
investigated.
"You have to understand that this would be 20 to 30 percent of the voting
ballots from the Democratic Party because senior citizens cherish the right to
vote," she said. "They remember the poll tax, having to pay it. And
they want to vote."
Hamilton said the 2003 law and Abbott's prosecutions have prompted the Democratic
Party in Dallas County to suspend its field program for absentee ballots, where
it once sent volunteers to voter's homes to help them apply for ballots so they
could vote by mail.
"It is absolutely fair to say there is no field program for mail ballots,"
she said. "What happens now is everything is by phone. They call up and request
one. And then you call them back and say, 'Did you get it?' And they say, 'Well,
I know I got something, but I wasn't sure what it was, so I threw it in the trash.
Can you send me another one?' And then you send them another one, and then you
call them back, and they say, 'Well, I got that one but I can't see it. What is
the line I sign on?'
"So, do you see what I am saying? You are on the phone with a process with
no field component to it. Not anymore."
While the Center's lawsuit against attorney general goes to court later this spring,
some of Abbott's recent prosecutions have been thrown out in court. In early March,
criminal charges against two politiqueras accused of unlawfully assisting elderly
voters were dismissed by Hidalgo County Court-at-law Judge Jaime Palacios, according
to the Rio Grande Valley website, TheMonitor.com.
"In 2006, Attorney General Greg Abbott held up the Hidalgo County voter fraud
case as an example of a successful voter fraud investigation that produced results,"
the website reported on March 11. "His office did not return calls for comment."
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Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and co-author of
"What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004
Election," with Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (The New Press, 2006).
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