Yesterday, I predicted that I would support George Clayton over Angie Chen Button in the GOP primary election for Texas House District 112. For reasons, I mentioned her membership on the DART audit committee in 2008 when DART surprised everyone, including the audit committee, with a $900 million budget shortfall that had been building for years. More importantly, I can't support her attitude towards school finance in particular and the state budget in general. She is a safe vote for underfunding schools, health care, roads, water, and other necessities of a modern state.
Now, it's still early and Clayton still has plenty of time to lose my vote, too, but while I wait to hear from him, Button continues to rack up reasons for me not to support her.
After the jump, Button on Voter ID.
Button forwarded a tweet from the Texas House Republican Caucus: "With 1.8M dead people voting, Voter ID seeks to restore confidence in Texas elections npr.org/2012/02/14/146..."
What's wrong with this claim? It is an outright falsehood to say there are "1.8M dead people voting." The purported evidence, an NPR article, is headlined, "Study: 1.8 Million Dead People Still Registered To Vote." See what she did there?
The story is about dead people still registered to vote, not "voting." In other words, the cemeteries don't get the word to the voting registrars. Button conveniently leaves out the part of the article that says, "There's little evidence that this has led to widespread voter fraud." In other words, the gist of the article is pretty much the exact opposite of the scare story that Button's tweet makes it out to be. It may take longer than Button would like to get dead people removed from voter registration lists, but there's little evidence of dead people actually voting.
If there's a lack of "confidence in Texas elections," it's being manufactured by Button and the Texas House GOP caucus by making false charges like the one in this tweet.
If voters would vote out of office politicians like Angie Chen Button who undermine faith in the American electoral system for their own partisan political gain, that would do more to restore my own confidence in Texas elections than anything Button is trying to do with Voter ID.
6 comments:
Mark,
I fail to see why any lawful citizen would argue against making the election process as secure as possible, no matter how small the threat. Would it make sense to leave out even one area where dishonest people could exploit one of the most important aspects of life in the United States? Without pristine free and fair elections, we may as well be living in tyranny because someone will figure out a way to deprive the people of their rightful choice.
I would have loved to see Jim Shepherd there. You might consider looking at the support Angie received and against Mr Shepherd.
Well it seems Clayton lost everyone's vote.
http://dallasisdblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2012/03/disd-educator-george-clayton-d.html
"Clayton, R-Richardson, sent me an e-mail today saying that unfortunately he was drawn out of District 112 and cannot run for the House seat. He said he will remain a candidate for SBOE District 12."
I expected Shepherd to win the seat in 2008. Instead he finished third (27%) in the GOP primary to Button (38%) and Randall Dunning (35%).
Clayton didn't announce he was running for District 112 until just about the time the courts released the new maps. Why he didn't wait a day or two until he was sure what district he would end up in is ... well, a fiasco for his campaign. Funny how that word transfers to anyone who even gets close to Button. ;-)
Texas elections officials released reports that show approximately 20% of registered voters do not have matching Department of Transportation records. Some small problem, eh?
Of those, almost a million voter registration records have been discovered to have had invalid credentials submitted on the application forms. Still, voter ID cards were issued, and now the 20% unlawfully registered electorate may well be pushing public policy in a direction the majority of legal voters would not take it. Imagine that.
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