It sounds simple and straightforward, but in reality is an antiquated, flawed system. Examination of this process clearly shows that anyone can register, then vote, without ever unambiguously proving eligibility nor showing a valid photo ID. However, a valid photo ID is needed to rent a car, buy a six-pack or take a short hop on an airplane.

The only official oversight is by the tax assessor, who has neither the resources, ability nor inclination to execute a thorough evaluation of the validity of specific voter registrations. What checks are routinely carried out? Is the address checked to make sure it exists, has a residence attached or is not claimed by multiple people? Is the person checked for true identity, eligibility or other registrations? The public needs to know the details now.

A Houston conservative group, the King Street Patriots, took some time to examine the voter rolls and found many clear examples of voter registration fraud. When six different people claim a common address that is a vacant lot as their residence, and all six are registering to vote, there has been fraud. When a single person is registered to vote in multiple precincts, there is also high probability of either fraud, ineffectiveness of the Assessor’s office, or both.

These voter registration inconsistencies can potentially be exploited in an election. There have been precincts with more votes cast than there are voters–when cheaters get sloppy, I suppose.

These recent examples are likely just the tip of the iceberg. If sufficient resources were deployed to clean up the all the voter rolls, the results would certainly be shocking to the voting public.

I grew up in Illinois, a state which is dominated by Chicago, a city that exemplifies the perfect marriage of big city government and Mafia-esque institutions. In Chicago, thousands vote from the grave, and last-minute votes routinely appear as needed. We do not want to allow Houston to become another Chicago.

In the last Minnesota election, Al Franken won a senate seat by a razor-thin margin after a recount in which “misplaced” votes miraculously appeared in car trunks following the initial count. Moreover, it came to light after nearly two years that there were thousands of votes cast illegally by jail inmates and felons. These votes are more than sufficient to swing this election.

What good are investigations after the vote? At that point, the public usually doesn’t have the stomach for the contentious removal of sitting politicians months or years after the election, no matter how grievous proven voting offenses.

Skeptics and defenders of the current system say there is little evidence of voter fraud. In one sense, that is a correct statement: there is little evidence of voter fraud because there really hasn’t been much energy expended to investigate the vote. Why were private citizens able to find massive voter registration problems so easily if the system is policed appropriately? Why don’t our public servants take the time or energy to do what private taxpayers are willing to do on their own?

The integrity of our sacred voting process begins with legitimate voter rolls which have been audited for consistency relative to other public records. A voting charlatan needs old, inaccurate, and bloated voter rolls to more easily cheat the system. It is a fraudulent act to submit a fake voter registration card, and this act must be taken as seriously as other crimes if our system is to survive. Otherwise, corrupt people will continue to scam the system.

Think about the six odd “voters” supposedly living on a vacant lot, taking their voter registration cards, then walking in to their local polling place to cast votes. The Election Judge can’t do anything about it even if he knows. The current system is based on a faceless process and a postcard. There are certainly many other ways to cheat such a weak system. An accurate, updated voter list is the first step to fix the process; just the voter list has been the gateway to many of the problems.

It is time for those of us who genuinely believe in the principle of “one citizen-one vote” to pay attention to suspicious events, to voting irregularities, and to start to bring on the needed change.

What can we do about it? What changes are needed? Here is a short list to get you started. I know are many more good ideas as well:

1.  Get involved. Give whatever time you can spare to check the voter rolls using the example of the King Street Patriots. Find or create such a group and start working on it.

2.  Find groups committed to showing vote cheats that their time evading justice is over. Find one and join in. Become a part of the process. Apathy is the scoundrel’s best friend.

3.  Work as a poll watcher or worker to monitor the process.

4.  Call and write your State Representative, State Senator, Lt. Governor and Governor. Demand action now.

5.  Spread the word. Let all your friends and neighbors know about the scope and seriousness of the problem. Most people are unaware of voting process and the fraud that threatens its legitimacy.

6.  Demand that the controlling governmental agencies and elected officials make voter registration as important as the collection of taxes. Don’t fall for the claims that it is harmless when voter rolls are packed with inaccurate voter information. We want databases that can be easily cross-checked and validated.

7.  Alert your candidates and elected officials that this is one of your primary demands. Unless we force the politicians to change this broken voting process, nothing will happen. Those elected officials who get in the way of fixing the voting process should be voted out of office for this reason alone. Recall last legislative session that the Voter ID bill shut everything down as the Democrats essentially filibustered the process with parliamentary tricks.

8.  We want Voter ID, the requirement to show a valid picture ID to vote. Accept nothing less. Why don’t we leave a thumb-print when we sign in to vote until the problem is fixed? There is no way to prove that someone voted under an inappropriate name currently. We want absentee voting procedures tightened up.

Friend –

http://my..barackobama.com/MAFevents

Thanks for all you do,

 Paid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National
 Committee — 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This
communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

What are you going to do about it?  Tell us in the comments!

August 17

   PETE OLSON (TX 22)- 6-8 p.m. – 180 Island Blvd (Lake Olympia Clubhouse) Missouri City 77459

   GENE GREEN (TX 29) – 6:30 – 7:30 p.m. - 8501 Howard Dr (Chaves High School Cafeteria) Houston 77017

August 18

   GENE GREEN (TX 29) 10 – 11 a.m. - Senior Issues Forum 10918 1/2 Bentley (Northeast Comunity Center) Houston 77093

   GENE GREEN (TX 29) – 6:30 – 7:30 p.m. – 9400 Irvington (Sam Houston High School) Houston 77076

August 19

   GENE GREEN (TX 29) – 6:30 – 7:30 p.m. – 6901 Ave I (Edison Middle School Cafeteria) Houston 77011

Let us know if we miss any, and we’ll add them.

Did you know that there is a campaign from the Left to “Turn Texas Blue?”

Did you know that about 1/4 of all Texas voters are registered in the Houston area?

November is coming quickly, and conservatives will have to work hard to counter everything the Left is doing.  But where do we start?  And how do we build a long-term foundation to keep growing the conservative voting strength?  What can people with limited time and resources do to change things?

Help is on the way.  American Majority has scheduled 4 grassroots trainings in two weeks all around the Houston area to help our area get ready for November. 

Topics to be covered during the 3-hour training include:

• The System (an in-depth look at the system we’re in, how we got here, and what we can do about it)
• Grassroots Action (Building Coalitions and Organizing Effectively)
• Patriot 2.0 (Utilizing New Media and the Internet to Promote Liberty)
• Precinct Power (Hardwireing your neighborhood for political success and accountability)

Full training materials, samples and supplements will be provided to help you apply what you learn to your organization, candidate, cause or community.

Sign up for any one of these locations:

August 7

Deer Park/Baytown/East Houston - 9 a.m.

Cypress/Northwest Houston – 4 p.m.

August 14

West Houston/Katy – 9 a.m.

Missouri City/Sugar Land/Fort Bend – 2 p.m.

If you have any questions or would like additional information, call Andrew at 512-771-2355  or e-mail Andrew@AmericanMajority.org .

Don’t miss the opportunity to learn how to make a difference where you live!

You can help us by letting us know about candidate events as you become aware of them.  In addition, let all the candidates you know that we’re making this opportunity available to them, and that they can submit their events to info@houstontps.org or leave information on their events in the comment section.

Getting face-to-face with a candidate is a great way to communicate your concerns, and determine whether the candidate actually deserves your vote.  Check out the Candidate Corner often and see which candidate will be holding events near you.  If you need help learning about the districts you live in, search on your name here -

http://www.hctax.net/Voter/voter.aspx 

and find a list of the elected officials and political entities for your precinct.

“Who?” you might well ask.

A little background:

Mark Williams was a principal in the Tea Party Express organization, organizer of the multiple bus tours across the nation.  The National Tea Party Federation allied itself with TPE and Williams some time ago, in its effort to build its own tea party coalition. 

You can look up all the partners, as well as Tea Party Patriots online to get a better feel of who’s who in the national tea party scene, but you also should know that the movement is really organized with a cell-like structure, with individual groups aligned with some, none, or all of the above-listed organizations.

So back to Mark Williams.  He has been a frequent spokesperson for the tea party on CNN and Fox News, seeming to help the Left make the case that the tea party is a racist organization.  We offer the links below to provide a sampling of the history, and the reaction to Williams’ ouster.  You be the judge.

Mark Williams’ blog post, captured and editorialized upon by another blogger:

http://blog.reidreport.com/2010/07/tea-partier-mark-williams-writes-open-letter-to-lincoln-from-the-coloreds/

A history of Mark Williams’ statements:

http://newspoodle.posterous.com/tea-party-express-mark-williams-king-of-accid

Tea Party Express financial information with payments to Mark Williams and his firm:

http://www.resistnet.com/group/lonestarpatriots/forum/topics/robin-stublen-reports-on-tea-1?xg_source=activity

Huffington Post on Mark Williams’ background:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-brantzawadzki/mark-williams-tea-party-l_b_563133.htm

Our own original posting, referring to (but not naming) Williams and his outrageous behavior on the TPE tour:

http://houstontps.org/?p=957

On Larry King the other day, Ben Jealous, president of the national NAACP, stated the following:

“I had a black tea party member from Texas, who is also an NAACP member, come up to me after my speech, put his arm around me and say “Thank you.  I know there’s space for me here.  I’ve been active in the tea party.  In recent months I’ve begun to feel uncomfortable.  I’m glad somebody like you is speaking out so I can stay active in the tea party and there’ll always be a good space for me.”

In the interview, Jealous continually calls out Dick Armey for his “silence” on the matter, as though Armey were the Commander in Chief of the movement, a movement that actually operates with many leaders rather than one national figure.  It’s easy to understand Jealous’s confusion; it’s difficult to speak intelligently about a subject when one knows little about it.  Has Jealous attended any events, and seen the movement for himself?  We humbly point Jealous to any number of analyses of the problem with that argument, but we also decided to focus on the more pressing issues.

Jealous’s charge that tea parties do not “speak up and speak out” about racist members and state “there’s no space for racism in the tea party” are just absurd.  Here at Houston Tea Party Society, we’ve dealt with our own pet “nutjobs” from Day One.  DAY ONE.  Yes, at our very first tea party event in February of 2009, this piece of work strolled in with his awful sign, attracting the lone media camera and sentencing us to an eternity of disassociation.  We dealt with him on that day, expelling him from the event.  We dealt with him again when he bought up all manner of DBAs to “corner the market” on local names of organizations.  We dealt with him yet again when he started agressively billing himself as the Founder of the Tea Party.  We couldn’t create more “space” between us if we tried, and this has been documented time and time again.

In the interest of tracking down the truth, members of tea parties from around the nation started tracking down the details of the story.  If indeed a member of one of our groups had concerns, we were eager to hear them, and work with them to air the differences and find a solution together.

So some investigation by Texas tea party members elicited from the NAACP national office that the name of this person was Chris, and that he was from Houston, but a call to the Houston NAACP resulted in their obvious confusion, and an admission that they had not heard anything about the issue, nor did they know the individual’s identity.

Calls to some other local groups in the Houston area were met with the same report; none were able to report the existence of an active, or even formerly active, African-American member named Chris in any of their ranks.  To be fair, not every group in the area has had a chance to respond, so the search goes on.

This is getting to be more difficult than Where’s Waldo.  Eventually you DO find Waldo.

Please drop by Liberty Juice and comment on my post about lessons learned.  And check out all their other great posts – these folks KNOW LIBERTY!

What I Learned at the Revolution

(With apologies to Peggy Noonan)

It’s been almost eighteen months since the beginning of my involvement with the Tea Party movement, and it seems as good a time as any to step back and review as we move into the 2010 election cycle.  I’ve spent much of my time in this past year and a half travelling, training, learning, researching, speaking to groups and talking to people both in the movement and outside of it, but it wasn’t until I was asked to speak to a local professional club that I began trying to draw these experiences into a single list of Lessons Learned.  Everyone involved in the movement has their own list, which I hope they will share, but my Tea Party Takeaways are these:

1.  We have a short window of opportunity – the November election is less than four months away, of course, but I’m also talking about the advantage that tea party has with the current momentum.  We want to strike while the iron is hot, and yet there is often such a steep learning curve to overcome.  Every minute spent working towards getting out the vote between now and November is also spent working on our credibility as a movement, because in the end, nothing in politics is respected like the ability to provably turn out voters.

Once all the players on the political field see tea parties racking up victories in the election of more fiscally conservative, constitutionally-minded candidates, they will be forced to take the movement seriously.  In addition, a few well-placed victories will continue to fuel the momentum into the next few election cycles, proving the movement more than a one-hit wonder.  It took years to get into this mess, and it will take years to get out, but the victories have to begin now if the movement will have credibility and energy going forward.

****

 Read the rest HERE.

It’s time to go local! 

Several groups in the outlying areas are doing their best to get involved in their local parades and community Fourth of July events.  For instance, both Katy Tea and North Houston Tea Party are getting involved in parades in their communities.  Other groups are deciding to host neighborhood gatherings and sign people up for the e-mail lists and the precinct teams.

So what are you going to do?

We’d like to keep a running list in the comments (to be added to the body of this post) of your ideas on how to spend Independence Day in a way that spreads the tea party values of limited government, free markets and adherence to the Constitution.  Post your suggestions in the comments and comment on each other’s suggestions.  Together we can create a list of great ideas for smaller, more local groups, and practice integrating tea party activities into our daily lives.

From Felicia:  I talked with Paul Bettencourt this weekend at convention in Dallas, and he’s asking for our help to protest the city of Houston’s hearing to increase the water rates by 30% in the Houston area.  It appears that the city of Houston has been trying to work around the provisions of the charter that limit rate increases, and that the hearing has been scheduled in Austin to avoid public outcry.  He’s asking for our help in bringing as many people as we can to appear at the courthouse tomorrow morning at 9 in Austin in order to demonstrate our opposition.

I know it’s last-minute, but I walked in the door from driving back from Dallas today and sat down to write and let you know this was happening.  If you can make it to Austin in the morning, please let me know by e-mailing me at fcravens@houstontps.org, or just show up at the courthouse and someone will direct you to the hearing. 

We’ve stood against big government and out-of-control spending since the beginning; here’s another chance to thwart the Big Spenders who are taxing us to death.  Water rates affect everyone, whether homeowner or renter or business, and no hearing should be held on this important cash grab without the people of Houston having a say!  Please join us and let your voice be heard!

-f

 Thanks to Robin Lennon of Kingwood Tea Party:

 http://kingwoodtps.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/action-needed-in-austin-this-monday-61410-at-9-am/

 FLASH MOB NEEDED in AUSTIN this Monday, 6/14/10 at 9 AM

 CLICK HERE for flyer in .pdf. : http://kingwoodtps.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/city-of-houston-sleight-of-hand_flyer__6-14-10.pdf

 to attend Houston’s hearing with the 261st Judicial Court’s sitting Judge to increase our water rates 30%!

 WHEN: Monday, 6/14/2010 at 9 AM

 WHERE: 261st Judicial Court in Travis County

                   1000 Guadalupe, 3rd Floor

                   Austin, Texas 78701

                   Phone: (512) 854-9309   (512) 854-9309   (for directions, to check schedule/venue)

                   Fax: (512) 854-9332 Docket Number: Docket Number D1GN 10001296

  If you can drive to Austin, please contact: 

 Bobby Jordan – 713-451-1492 713-451-1492     

  We will try to carpool if possible. 

 The City of Houston has scheduled a hearing concerning the 30% water rate increase in Houston, Texas IN AUSTIN on Monday!  A Houston city council member has said that this was partly done to muffle the taxpayers and to stifle the outcry from Houston.

 This is being done in an underhanded way to thwart the voters of the City of Houston who passed a proposition to prevent just this from happening.

 At this time in these economic times, it is a burden on all, but most especially on the poor of the city. WATER IS NECESSARY FOR LIFE.

 Mayor Parker’s Chief of Staff: Ms. Appel (a PELL): 832-393-1078 832-393-1078     

 Although HOUSTON TAXPAYERS are NOT REPRESENTED, MAYOR PARKER has hired the following contract attorneys to represent the city.

 •J Wiley George (Houston):   713-220-3928 713-220-3928     

 •Kelly Sandill (Houston):   713-220-4181   713-220-4181     

 •Dave Whittlesey (Houston):   512-320-9200             512-320-9200