I was shocked to learn from my friend and colleague, Alan Vera, of the reversal and repeal of the nursing-home voting law (designed to prevent voter fraud) by the House during the current special session. Now, having read this article on the website for the Austin American-Statesman, Texas Two Step: House stiffens penalties for nursing home ballot fraud while repealing a bipartisan solution, I think the public record needs to be corrected about how this bill evolved to passage during the 2017 Regular Session.
I have served as the Legal Counsel to the Harris County Republican Party since July, 2014 (this post is not an official statement by or on behalf of the HCRP, but instead, contains my own personal statements and opinions). In that capacity, I have worked closely with Alan Vera and with our county election officials during each election cycle since (and including) the 2014 General Election, Immediately after that election, Alan discussed with me reports he had heard about abuse of mail-in ballot applications and voting at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities in Harris County, across the state, and across the country, and he introduced me to the law that Wisconsin had adopted to address this issue. Convinced of its merit, I worked with Alan to prepare an initial draft of a similar law for Texas.
Simply put, this bill changed the process from one that created the conditions by which persons other than the voter could fill-out the applications, obtain access to the ballots and “vote” for the voter, to a process whereby an election judge and representatives of each political party met with and witnessed the vote of each voter to assure that they wanted to vote, had the capacity to vote, and were casting their own vote. Although the process of recruiting and training such election officials would add some burden to local governments, the financial impact would be minimal while the benefit to the integrity of the voting process and the protection of vulnerable voters would be priceless.
Prior to the 2105 Regular Session, I discussed this proposal with a GOP member of the Texas Senate and worked with his office to prepare a draft of such a bill. Unfortunately, the draft prepared by the Legislative Counsel and the Senator’s office was not completed in time to introduce the bill in 2015; but Alan and I continued to work with the draft over the next year to have it ready to introduce in the 2017 Session. In the meantime, we obtained further input from our local election officials, the Secretary of State’s office, and lawyers with the Republican Party of Texas to improve the language of the bill.
This draft was circulated to members of the Harris County legislative delegation in 2016, and Rep. Oliverson enthusiastically supported the bill and agreed to sponsor it in the House. Additionally, Rep. Schofield supported our effort and prepared an alternative draft for introduction. Our local election officials, and a counsel for the RPT, Eric Opiela, supported our effort and worked with Alan and Rep. Oliverson, as well as Rep. Schofield to improve the bill both before and after it was introduced. Eventually, Senator Joan Huffman threw her support behind the bill in the Senate, and worked with Alan and Eric to further improve the bill. Prior to that time, no Democrat had participated in the preparation of the proposed bill.
However, through the efforts of these legislators, some local election officials, Alan and Eric, the bill quickly drew bi-partisan support because the corruption of the mail-in ballot process at nursing homes and long-term care facilities apparently had impacted some Democratic primaries races. In fact, the only real opposition to the bill during its movement through the legislature came from certain county election administrators who either did not understand, or chose to ignore, how the law would work, and how it had been successfully implemented in Wisconsin—in a bi-partisan way. These people proved to be impervious to any reasonable discussion of the merits of the bill, and simply folded their arms and stomped their feet in opposition—they obviously preferred the status quo rather than have to do a little bit more recruitment and training of election volunteers in their counties.
And, as an aside, it is nonsense to believe that this law would benefit one party (Democrats) over another (Republicans) in the General Election. In fact, the evidence in Wisconsin has shown that the Republican Party has grown in that state, and won more state and local elections, after implementation of the law (which makes sense when you consider that the GOP usually polls better in the over-65 age group than the Democratic Party).
Unfortunately, some people have chosen to give credit to the rhetoric used by some Democratic supporters to persuade their colleagues to support the bill, rather than actually learn who drafted the law, why the law was drafted, and to see and understand the merits of the law that was passed. These critics have elevated the sausage-making, partisan rhetoric during the heat of the legislative process to gospel, and then used such rhetoric as an excuse to kill this landmark law. This is the gutless legislative equivalent of being scared by your own shadow, and says more about the bankrupt views of these critics than it does of the law they want to kill.
The bi-partisan support for and passage of this bill, which would have addressed a real voter-fraud problem acknowledged by both parties and public officials, should have been a proud moment for our state and our elected officials. Instead, it has been hi-jacked and repealed by those who now must own and defend a status quo that takes advantage of some of our state’s most vulnerable voters.
I want to thank Rep. Oliverson, Rep. Roberts, and Senator Huffman, as well as all of those legislators from both sides of the aisle who bravely supported this bill. Likewise, the next time someone from our party complains about voter-fraud, Governor Abbott and Rep. Goldman need to take a long look in the mirror and realize they now have endorsed continuation of voter fraud, rather than having embraced a proven way to stop it.
As for the person quoted in the Austin American-Stateman article—Aaron Harris, whoever he is—if Rep. Oliverson or Alan Vera don’t take him up on his offer to debate the merits of this bill, I’ll gladly meet him in any public forum to do so—his position is simply ridiculous.
I”m Aaron Harris and I’m your huckleberry. The bill is horrible, not based upon facts and you and Alan have no record to run on. I on the other hand a proven track record of fighting voter fraud resulting on 4 on going criminal investigations and arrests. Numerous parts of your “op-ed” are simply not true. You or Alan could have picked up the phone at any time, but didn’t. You might know election code, but you have no demonstrable understanding of election fraud. None. I’ll debate you. Alan and Oliverson all at once because it’ll take the three of you.
Mr. Harris, I am Ed Hubbard. Thanks for responding. You’ve been telling a lot of people the following:
“This bill opens up every nursing home in Texas to ballot harvesting. It creates an unfunded mandate on every county, and many, many other problematic details. The Democrat party has been bragging about getting this bill passed. One party official even bragged that the Dem party has already calculated this bill will get them nearly 300,000 additional harvested ballots. They did the math;, they wrote the bill;, they got it passed.”
Unfortunately, it is you who is wrong on every count. Currently, votes can be “harvested” at nursing homes because the person who sends the applications in, receives the ballot, votes, and sends it back, can not be adequately identified. The Wisconsin law addressed this very problem by requiring voting by nursing home residents in person in the presence of an election judge and a representative from each political party, who verify the identity and capacity of the voter. The only provision that broadened who could vote is the one that allowed registered voters who had not sent an application in to vote when the election officials come to the nursing home by filling out the application in their presence. This is not vote harvesting under any definition of the term. Moreover, I repeat what I wrote in my post: no Democrat authored this bill–I know, because I was one of the original authors. I can’t stop the Democrats from what they say to each other, but I know how this bill was authored and how it was amended to final passage, and the assertion that this was a Democratic bill that got Republicans hoodwinked is absurd–it was a Republican bill to end the conditions that lead to voter fraud in these facilities, which Democrats joined to support. As for the number of nursing home residents who will take the effort to ask the election officials for an application when the officials come to their facility, the idea that it will total anywhere near 300,000 is ridiculous hyperbole–that has no basis in fact or in experience. Again, I can’t stop Democrats from making these assertions among themselves, if that’s what it took to get the bill passed, but there is no basis for accepting this hyperbole as fact. Finally, the cost of this process is minimal to each county because most counties have election volunteers who can be trained specially for this work and paid at the approved rate for election workers.
As for debating this issue, I meant what I said–if neither Tom or Alan take you up on your challenge, I will. Whatever your motive or your desire to stop voter fraud, you’ve allowed yourself to be duped to stop a good law from being implemented–and you’ve set back the effort to fight voter fraud in the process.
As one who has worked Harris County early voting many times and is concerned about preventing election fraud and carelessness, I am still trying to find the results of the 2016 Hill County March primary investigation by the state’s AG regarding the 1734 ballot vs sign-in count discrepancy and the story of the Rose Bell who apparently signed in 4 times and likely voted four times.
I know more about voter fraud on my left pinky than you do on your best day. The first problem you and Alan have is you can’t show any data to support there being a problem with nursing homes being harvested. No systematic problem, the data doesn’t lie. Wrong headed people do. I look at data. I prove election fraud. I get results with law enforcement. You come up with conspiracies and bologna. Lets do it.
Bragging or puffing about yourself, what you know, and what you claim to have accomplished, is not a factual argument about the merits of the nursing home law, no matter how emphatic you describe your exploits.
As for data, a lot of information about how the law would work and the history of it in the state of Wisconsin was provided to the committees during hearings. The Secretary of State’s office has provided us with information that abuse of mail-in ballot process at nursing homes, together with the related problem of herding nursing home residents by “caretakers” to early-voting locations and then abusively “assisting” them to vote, combine to form one of the most common complaints the Secretary of State’s office receives during elections. Interestingly, you never testified, or sought to testify about the bill while it was being considered, so all the “alleged” facts and knowledge you bluster about, but never enlighten us with, were never shared with the legislature during the regular session.
Filing complaints with law enforcement, like throwing darts, can sometimes hit the intended bulls eye, but it doesn’t prove you know much about how to keep fraud from happening in the first place–that is what this law was intended to do, and it is what it has accomplished in Wisconsin..
Frankly, the more you argue about this here and on other media, the more I see that your “emperor has no clothes;” you have no facts to support your position, but instead rely on your inflated self-esteem as proof that you are correct. When you actually come up with a factual basis to challenge this law, let me know and I’ll schedule a public debate with you. Otherwise, take your huckleberry, your pinky and your bologna and enjoy yourself–but don’t lecture me about an alleged factual basis for your arguments that simply doesn’t exist..
Mr. Hubbard, I’m one of those “impervious… county election administrators” you mention in the above post. And I’m part of the group of, dare I say, subject matter experts that worked hard to defeat your bill,
I’m happy to engage in a civil disussion on HB 2815 (or HB 658) that, in retrospect, should’ve occurred before it was even filed.
And I do mean civil: no arm folding or foot stomping. Promise.
Chris,
Thanks for posting. Now that this law has been repealed, let’s give everybody a few weeks to let the dust settle. Then, I propose that we get a small group of us together to see if we can refine the bill further to address any of your remaining concerns while still allowing the law to accomplish what it is achieving in Wisconsin. Either we can reach common ground before the next Regular Session, or we will have a clearer understanding of what our differences are when we go into that session.
In the meantime, I believe that some legislators may be planning a fact-finding trip to Wisconsin in the near future to further investigate how its law works, including its costs and benefits, in preparation for re-introducing the bill in the next session. You may want to have someone from your organization participate to learn more about it. If you need me to help coordinate that, just let me know.