



A shocking upset “win” by GOP’s Pete Flores in Texas Senate District 19 has again brought to the forefront the troubling debate as to why in 2018, with all the fears of Russian hacking, Texas is still using unverifiable voting machines to conduct its elections. Election integrity advocate Jennifer Cohn went behind the numbers of Pete Flores “poll defying” win and as is always the case with GOP’s upset election wins, there appears to be some chicanery involved. Jennifer Cohn’s excellent thread goes into the details of Pete Flores’ upset win, but it all boils down to this one Tweet.

10/ In other words, more than half of the votes in the Texas District 19 election, which surprised everyone by flipping RED, came from paperless 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting machines. — Jennifer Cohn (@jennycohn1) September 19, 2018

17 Texas counties voted in the Texas Senate District 19 race. GOP’s Pete Flores received 23,576 votes to the Dem’s 20,911 votes(a 2,665 vote margin).



But here’s where it gets really fishy. Turns out that 2 counties out of the 17 use totally paperless, unverifiable voting machines. It is from these two counties(Bexar and Brewster) that half of the roughly 44,000 votes cast came from. Even more importantly, the GOP candidate “defied the polls” in blue Bexar county garnering 10,215 votes to the Dem’s 11,915 votes–and therein lies the GOP election chicanery you must not miss.



Folks if you miss everything else do not miss this because this is how the GOP “defies the polls” using unverifiable voting machines. Bexar County is a reliably blue county(San Antonio area). As Yours Truly warned you in a previous post, the GOP “>has packed Bexar and many other blue counties with unverifiable paperless voting machines. So in “poll defying” GOP wins like the one that happened in Texas Senate District 19, most people just look at the fact that the Dem candidate carried Bexar County and overlook the more important question as to how the GOP candidate got so much votes in this blue county. And there’s the trick–nobody knows/can verify just who in reliably blue Bexar county voted for GOP’s Pete Flores in his “upset” win. Think about that folks, the GOP candidate for Texas Senate District 19 won the election by a 2,665 margin but the 10,215 votes he got in blue Bexar county, a strangely high number, cannot be verified. Folks this is exactly why we must have election machines that leave a verifiable paper trail.





This trick is also very effective in Texas statewide elections–for Governor and U.S. Senate races and Texas High Courts. As Jennifer Cohn correctly points out, Dems should be very concerned about the upcoming Beto v Ted Cruz U.S. Senate race.

11/ Looking ahead to @BetoORourke's Texas senate race against Ted Cruz, we have a serious election integrity problem because all of the counties shown in dark brown use paperless unverifiable voting machines. https://t.co/2uXVYWwT3w pic.twitter.com/sOiW47muk1 — Jennifer Cohn (@jennycohn1) September 19, 2018



In Texas it is well known that when it comes to statewide races, “it’s the metroplexes stupid.” Whoever performs very well in the metroplexes–Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio wins the statewide races. The Texas metroplexes vote overwhelmingly for Dem candidates but the Texas GOP has figured out a way to deal with that– pack the metroplexes(Dem urban counties like Harris, Dallas, Tarrant etc) with unverifiable voting machines. After that it just becomes a game of numbers.

A Dem statewide candidate for example almost always wins in counties that house the big cities like Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. The fact that is often overlooked however is the number of votes the Republican candidate got in these metroplexes–usually unverifiable due to unverifiable voting machines. In other words when the election results come around most people just look at the fact that the Dem candidate won say Harris county(Houston area) but forget to ask the more important question which is, “how the hell did the Republican get so much votes in blue Harris county?” We just witnessed this scenario in Texas Senate District 19. The Dem won blue Bexar county as was expected with 11,915 votes but nobody knows/can verify how the hell GOP’s Pete Flores got 10,215 votes in blue Bexar county leading to his 2,665-margin upset “win”. Sadly as it stands right now there is no way to answer these questions–a totally unacceptable standard for deciding very consequential elections in 2018.

Bottom line, Texas’ unverifiable voting machines present a clear and present danger for Dems in the 2018 elections and beyond. How/why the DNC continues to remain silent on this grave issue is at this juncture, a serious dereliction of duty. These are questions the DNC could easily take up with the Texas Secretary of State and indeed other state Secretaries of State nationwide but will not do so. Strange indeed!!

For those of you very happy with @Emolclause’s activism don’t shy away from the “tip jar” below on your way out







