Republican-led Harris County Voter Registration Office Admits to Voter Suppression Tactics

[ccharles000]

The Texas Democratic Party won a major fight last Friday by forcing Leo Vazquez and the Harris County Voter Registration office to admit to using voter suppression tactics. Additionally, Rep. Scott Hochberg played a key role in unearthing the details about how the office was rejecting tens of thousands of voter registration ballots. (Read more about those details below the fold...)

TDP Chair Boyd Richie released the following statement about the settlement:

“From my first days as Chairman, the Texas Democratic Party has worked vigilantly in both the legal and legislative process to protect Texans’ right to participate fully in our democracy. The Texas Democratic Party will monitor the current Harris County Voter Registrar’s practices with that same vigilance to make sure the terms of this agreement are carried out properly.

“It’s a shame that the Texas Democratic Party has been forced to go to court time and again to do what our state and local officials should be doing – protect the right to vote. As a great Texas Democrat, President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965: ‘It is wrong--deadly wrong--to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country.’”

The lawsuit settled a number of lies that Vazquez, Paul Bettencourt, and other Harris County Republicans had been pushing for months. As the Lone Star Project explains:

Earlier this year, in a hostile and dishonest op-ed in the Houston Chronicle, Leo Vasquez, responded to Lone Star Project reports detailing corruption within his office by calling Texas Democratic Party legal action a ”nuisance lawsuit” with “no merit” and saying that the “partisan attacks” were led by the Lone Star Project. (Source: Houston Chronicle, 6/16/2009) However, Vasquez was forced to acknowledge in the settlement that the TDP lawsuit was based on facts that showed the Tax Assessor's office had engaged in improper behavior regarding the handling of voter registration applications and the handling of provisional ballots.

Vasquez would not have agreed to the settlement if he did not believe that there was a strong chance that he would lose the lawsuit and more corruption would be uncovered.

http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/9223/republicanled-harris-county-voter-registration-office-admits-to-voter-suppression-tactics

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

1. Harris County, Texas Dems agree to settle lawsuit

Harris County, Texas Dems agree to settle lawsuit
Oct. 23, 2009 Harris County's voter registrar's office and the Texas Democratic Party announced Friday that they have reached a settlement in a lawsuit that originally accused former county Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt of illegally blocking the registration of thousands of voters...
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The settlement also precludes employees in the voter registration office from working for or having a financial interest in any company providing voter information to any candidate, political party or any other person or entity.
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“The county rejected 70,000 voter applications last year for technical reasons,” he said. “The most in any other county in Texas was 3,000, and we think this resolution will ensure that problem won't occur.”
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6683447.html