Posts by Direct Action Texas

Last week Ron DeSantis outlined election integrity measures to further safeguard Florida’s elections from fraud and protect voters from disenfranchisement.

The three areas DeSantis is focused on are ballot integrity, transparency in the elections process, and transparency in reporting; within each of these broad headings, multiple policy items are housed.

Two of the three areas map well to the needed reforms identified by Direct Action Texas as we work to rebuild trust in Texas elections.

Let’s take each of DeSantis’ proposals in turn and decide if the Texas legislature and Governor Greg Abbott need to move similar measures in Texas.

Mail-in ballot drop boxes – Texas doesn’t and should not have mail-in ballot drop sites. Any attempts to institute them should be DOA this session, and Texas must reject the federal government’s efforts to force them on the states.

During the 2020 election, Texas narrowly avoided the abuse of mail-in ballot drop-offs after a poorly crafted executive order allowed bad actors administering elections, namely in Harris and Travis county, to collect and count mail-in ballots before early voting even began.

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Flordia Congressman Matt Gaetz is working with Look Ahead America to secure elections, and Axios is here to attack these efforts.

Specifically, the D.C.-based news outlet “reporting” on Gaetz is engaging in revisionist history on the topic of electronic voting machine distrust.

It’s an anti-truth stance to suggest that distrust in elections generally and specifically on the topic of electronic voting is a 2020 phenomenon.

Reality check: Distrust of electronic systems being used in elections is a bipartisan and long-running issue.

In fact, it was just four years ago that the left was critiquing election systems ramping up a fabricated Russian boogeyman propaganda regime.

While some of the theories floated following the 2020 election were on their face, inaccurate they aren’t any more far-fetched than the left’s Russian fever dreams.

Unfortunately, with the propaganda machine going brrr, inaccurate claims undermined legitimate issues that should have been examined in the wake of the November election.

Polling conducted in Texas in 2019 showed a continued hemorrhaging of faith, especially when it comes to who is participating in elections.

The left is setting up to try and block needed election integrity reforms in Texas.

Their plan is, in part, a retread of the one used to slow and kill SB9, an omnibus election integrity bill proposed in 2019.

The tactic, vilify a person who will prominently feature along the path to reform, is in this case aimed at Chairman of the House Elections Committee, Rep. Briscoe Cain.

Before the snowstorm last week, a coordinated attack by multiple progressive media outlets against Cain sporting identical liberal talking points was launched.

Since election integrity is a priority of the grassroots and Governor Greg Abbott, expect this drumbeat to continue and grow. In interviews following his State of the State, Abbott stated SB9 would be a good starting place for legislation this session.

Several of the provisions in SB9 would have limited exposure to fraud and lowered distrust, exacerbated by the progressive’s bum-rush on election systems in 2020.

That’s bad news for would-be hacks looking to disrupt future elections as they were upended 2020.

Grassroots activists interested in the passage of the election integrity need to start bolstering lawmakers who will be integral in the process, including Chairman Cain.

His office phone number is: (512) 463-0733.

The Elections Committee should prioritize reforms that build trust in elections, and bills headed to the floor should be meaningful, not performative, and include at a minimum:

• Reforms to list maintenance, including enforcement
• Reform mail-in balloting to protect against abuse
• Stop big tech companies from interfering in elections.

There are other strong measures but these represent an axis of reform that will ensure fair elections in Texas in 2022.

Democrats ditched their impeachment fever dream last weekend. This latest lash-out, a failure like the rest of their unhinged witch-hunts, is of a more trivial strain of activities planned for 2021.

Fresh off this second impeachment defeat and without a mandate (electoral wins in 2020 are legitimately questioned), some on the left are setting their sights on a heavy lift, rigging future elections.

In a “serious” piece published in New York Magazine, Andrew Cohen argues desperate for power Democrats should leverage their second impeachment loss to push for election legislation (For The People Act) they have zero business proposing, let alone cramming down the collective throat of the citizenry. The majority of Americans do not trust the 2020 election was fairly administered.

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Did you notice there were no specifics in Greg Abbott’s state of the state address on the topic of securing Texas elections?

If you’ve been paying attention, some of the needed reforms are easy to rattle off.

List maintenance, protecting against mail-in ballot fraud, and riding our elections of outside influence, specifically from big tech oligarchs buying election officials and prescribing how elections should be run.

It would have been nice to hear these and others advocated for strongly. That they weren’t should have activists on bait-and-switch alert.

Since his State of the State address, Abbott has put a little meat on his election integrity emergency item’s bones.

Specifically, in an interview with the progressive news outlet Texas Tribune, a great “starting place” is Senate Bill 9, an election integrity measure that failed to become law in 2019.

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