As predictable as the end of Daylight Saving Time around here.
Three Houston-area Republicans have filed a lawsuit alleging that “tens of thousands” of people should be purged from the Harris County voter roll amid a national push to cast doubts on the November election.
Steven Hotze, Joseph Trahan and Caroline Kane are accusing Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Ann Harris Bennett of failing to remove ineligible voters, claiming that the list of Harris County registered voters includes people who are disqualified from voting for a broad range of reasons, including those who have moved out of Harris County, are deceased or are registered at a commercial address where they do not reside, according to court documents.
[…]
Hotze is no stranger to election lawsuits. A federal judge rejected Hotze’s effort in 2020 to toss out 127,000 ballots cast by Harris County voters at drive-thru locations. Hotze is also facing multiple felony charges in connection with an assault related to conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, in which he is accused of conspiring with others to threaten an air conditioning repairman they believed had fake ballots in his vehicle. The man was allegedly held at gunpoint.
The two other plaintiffs are candidates on the November ballot. Trahan is the Republican nominee for Texas State Senate District 15, while Kane is running as the Republican nominee for U.S. House of Representatives District 7.
According to their petition, the plaintiffs are seeking a judicial declaration that Bennett has repeatedly violated the Texas Election Code “due to multiple instances of ill-advised and illegal alterations of election procedures.”
They argue “countless” discrepancies have arisen when comparing the list of Harris County registered voters against the National Change of Address database, a resource that contains records of individuals who have filed a change-of-address with the U.S. Postal Service.
The petition goes on to say those alleged discrepancies could be used in court to toss out election results: “A Court will be unable to ascertain whether these specific voters did or did not cast a legal vote in the specific election that is eventually contested in Harris County.”
The lawsuit was filed on Oct. 18, three days before the start of early voting in Texas.
Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee reacted to the lawsuit in a social media post Monday, telling the plaintiffs: “My office will fight back — see you in court.”
But just last week, Secretary of State Jane Nelson, a Republican appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, put out a news release reassuring voters that Texas elections are secure.
“Texas leads the way when it comes to election security, and I want voters to know our state and county officials are ready for the November election,” Nelson said in a statement.
Hotze is a felon-to-be, the others are non-entities. I guarantee you the lawsuit in question is hot garbage, the sort of thing that would embarrass a first-year law student. The point is to put on a show for the dead-enders. I’m old enough to remember when Hotze was just another moralizing scold, warning anyone who couldn’t get out of earshot about the imminent demise of society at the hands of degenerates and scofflaws. Bigger names, like Bill Bennett, wrote books on the subject. They were right about the threat to our civilization, they were just completely wrong about who the degenerates were. I like to remind myself of that every once in awhile. Anyway, this will be headed for a legal trash can in short order. And hopefully Hotze will be headed for the jail cell he deserves not long after.
UPDATE: This is an excellent point.
The most glaring issue with these non-citizen voting efforts is the timing. If non-citizen voting and voter list maintenance is as big of an issue as Republicans claim — which experts have explained time and time again that it is not — why did Republicans wait so long to address it? The answer, of course, is that there is no real issue with widespread non-citizens voting or voter list maintenance, David Becker, the executive director and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research told TPM. These various efforts are merely attempts to sow seeds of distrust in the election system in case Trump loses next month, he said.
“There’s good reason for suspicion as to why these cases were filed when they were filed,” Becker said, “and that’s knowing that they would almost certainly lose. And that’s because it’s being done more to fuel false claims about an election being stolen that presumably they expect their candidate to lose.”
Justin Levitt, an election law scholar and professor at LMU Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, also pointed out that the fact that the courts have so quickly shut down these programs and dismissed lawsuits challenging voter rolls is simply evidence that the justice system is working as it should.
“This is exactly what you’d expect, that programs that are clearly unlawful that we’re known to be clearly unlawful are getting shut down and shut down quickly,” he said. “Despite the efforts of a few to sow confusion and disorder, the most important thing for the public to know, the most important thing for the voters to know is that the attempts to create chaos aren’t working.”
That story is about how similar efforts have been easily defeated in courts around the country. This one should meet the same fate here.
Have they tried to kidnap any air conditioner repairmen yet?
I will be very happy on the day when Hotze has to wear all white and black plastic glasses.
I’m looking forward to that civil suit. I hope he gets a big payout.
Don’t know you can accuse Ann Bennett of anything, good or bad – she hasn’t been at her job in years, apparently.
CL, did it.