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Texas Fights Outloud

It's all down ballot from here

Last week the Texas Criminal Appeals Court refused to rehear an appeal by Attorney General Paxton, effectively denying the AG the right to unilaterally prosecute election law violations in criminal court. Judge Scott Walker cited the Texas Constitution’s separation of powers mandate, opining that, “The framers of the Texas constitution believed it was best to clearly separate power into three distinct branches of government, and as an executive branch official the attorney general is not a prosecutor,” and so may only prosecute election fraud cases if a county or district attorney permits and invites him to do so. 

 

In the last session the Texas Legislature begged to differ, and emphasized that very authority in Senate Bill 1, the Election Integrity Bill, reaffirming election reform law passed in 1951 which expressly granted authority to the Attorney General to originate the prosecution of election law violations.

 

An Amicus Brief filed last year by the Republican Party of Texas following the disappointing initial court decision states, “This opinion circumvents the work of the Texas Legislature and affects the security, fairness, and integrity of elections in Texas.”

 

More than that, at first blush it also appears to render a whole swath of the Texas Election Code unconstitutional. How will that work?

 

If you don’t like the system, says Walker, then amend the Constitution: The remedy is not for the courts to water down the Texas Constitution from the bench.” One wonders if it’s more in their line of work to water down duly passed legislation that’s been working for 70 years.

 

Walker went on to assert that election offenses, voter fraud and campaign violations “can and should be prosecuted by duly elected district and county attorneys.”

 

But in today’s political climate, that sounds a lot like coulda, shoulda, woulda. In the Age of Soros, the local election apparatus has been largely captured, particularly in larger cities. And there’s the rub. In the last 15 years, the majority of election fraud convictions have been won by the Attorney General, not district or county attorneys. Those are the cold hard facts of a color revolution years in the making. While we were focusing up ballot and electing Republicans, we were ceding the trenches of real politick—the school boards, the county attorneys, the DA’s, the local boots on the ground—to the radical left.

 

Paxton clearly realizes that if we don’t handle this now, we will unwittingly cede the rest of the government, the up ballot, to the likes of Beta O’Rourke by empowering the incompetence and fraud in places like Harris and Dallas counties where the tide of elections can most easily be turned blue, regardless of the actual color of the wave.

 

Just last week the Office of the Secretary of State in its forensic audit of the 2020 election found serious breaches” in Harris County elections management, detailing multiple problems with the county’s “extralegal drive-thru voting,” including chain of custody disruptions with mobile ballot boxes, and discrepancies in the cast vote records of voting machines. Rather than signaling their cooperation with the findings of the Secretary of State, however, the Harris County Commissioners are mobilizing a legal challenge against the audit. That speaks volumes about their ethics and allegiances.

 

Meanwhile, early voting starts today, and while drive-thru voting and multiple mobile ballot boxes have been discontinued pursuant to the passage of SB1 last year, the Secretary of State says the Harris County audit still leave(s) many questions unanswered.”

 

Paxton took to Twitter to take umbrage:

 

“The CCA’s shameful decision means local DAs with radical liberal views have the sole power to prosecute election fraud in TX—which they will never do. The timing is no accident—this is devastating for the integrity of our upcoming elections. Time for #txlege to right this wrong.”

 

But with an all Republican high court prefiguring unconstitutionality in any such corrective legislation, where are we to turn?

 

Here’s what the court essentially said: get the local attorneys to do their jobs, or amend the Constitution. Easy for him to say. But for us? Talk about a rock and a hard place. In Democratic jurisdictions, it isn’t even rational to expect Soros-backed judges, prosecutors, DA’s or county attorneys to be anything but militantly partisan—that’s their primary job description.

 

And as far as amending the Constitution goes, it’s fairly cumbersome. The Texas Legislature first passes a joint resolution proposing the amendment with a minimum of 100 members of the House and 21 members of the Senate. Then a majority of Texas voters must approve the amendment in a special election.

 

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Perhaps even more cumbersome is the recommendation of the Texas Public Policy Foundation to establish an Office of Election Integrity whose primary mission would be to investigate election crime. Additionally, the Office of Election Integrity would regularly conduct audits of the Texas electoral system to identify problems, then report findings to the legislators so they can reform electoral code.

 

The TPPF also proposes creating new regional District Attorneys and Judges vested with the criminal authority to prosecute election crimes and the civil authority to enforce election code requirements against non-cooperating government entities.

 

Don’t get me wrong. All this would be enormously helpful. But aren’t we ignoring, pun intended, the elephant in the room? Texas is a deep red state. What tints our elections purple is electoral malfeasance, enabled by the consent decree that shut Republicans out of the election integrity process for 40 years and emboldened the Democrats to brazen thievery. Those days are over.

 

Judge Walker is right in one sense—we have an apparatus in place to investigate and prosecute election violations, but we have given over that mechanism to our most radical political opponents. It would be nice if Daddy AG could ride to our rescue on this colossal conservative fail, but isn’t there a simpler way? Elect ethical Republicans to these positions! Come to grips with the late dawning realization that no race is “down ballot.” Every race is at the top of the roster, and it is our complacency that has conspired with the Soros agenda to turn our state purple. We can protect our elections by taking back every DA and county attorney election in the state.

 

The longer the leftist juggernaut is deployed, the more I see that the remedy lies deeply embedded within our grassroots. The actual antidote to communism, fascism, socialism or statism of any kind, is decentralization, through the power that resides in the hands of the people. We would better serve the future we would like to create by stepping up to fill those shoes, rather than empowering our leaders to do it for us. By taking responsibility rather than delegating it, by firmly grasping the levers of power readily available, rather than adding to the already bulky machinery of government.

 

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This recent story illustrates the point. Michigan Citizens For Election Integrity reviewed thousands of hours of surveillance video from 19 Detroit drop boxes used in the 2020 election during the 37 days of early voting. Certain images lend a new meaning to the phrase “stuffing the ballot box,” as footage shows one woman holding the box open for another who seems to have difficulty cramming all the envelopes down its throat.

 

But after the derisive reception of the DeSousa film, “2000 Mules,”  by both Dems and RINOS it was clear to many citizens that video surveillance as proof and after-the-fact attempts at rectification of election fraud were both moot.

 

So in a truly grassroots effort, Clean Elections USA was formed to enlist hundreds of Americans to volunteer to legally observe ballot drop boxes in several swing states.  This is the type of decentralized, grassroots, citizen driven local action that can throw a fatal wrench in the well oiled fraud machine.

 

Fortunately Texas does not have drop-off boxes for absentee ballots. In order to drop off a mail-in ballot, a voter must present an approved form of identification to a poll worker and may not turn in any one else’s ballot. We dodged that bullet.

 

But rather than counting our chickens, let’s keep our eyes on the eggs. Every race is of paramount importance. Secure a voter’s guide for your district now. Thoroughly familiarize yourself with the candidates and the issues. Do your research. And remember, there are no down ballot races, only outcomes that safeguard our Republic or that threaten it, from the bottom up.

To get a sample ballot for your district in Nueces County, visit:

 

https://www.nuecesco.com/county-services/county-clerk/elections-department/find-your-ballot