Vote Harvesting in Harris County? Beyond Coincidence ?

Disclaimer: All persons mentioned in this post are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

The Texas Democratic Party has filed lawsuits to use COVID 19 to force Texas to allow everyone to vote-by-mail. A quote from the Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa, “Republicans have opposed vote-by-mail without providing any credible justification.”

For the past two years, I’ve been researching vote harvesting in Harris County. My reply to Mr. Hinojosa, “How’s this for credible justification?”

After the 2016 Democratic Primary, a candidate for Harris County Constable (Pct 3), Jasen Rabalais, filed a lawsuit claiming that a campaign worker for another candidate,Michel Pappillion, “deliberately falsified, illegally completed or unlawfully influenced the ballots and early voting applications of elderly residents in Harris County.”

The lawsuit was dismissed. But the following audio tapes had been made by the  Rabalais campaign  after he found out that an “alleged harvester” was working for an opponent’s campaign.

Link to Audio #1:  Gives name of “alleged harvester”

Link to Audio #2:  “Alleged harvester” explains the services provided (phone # redacted)

Then during the 2018 Primary, the following video was posted by Direct Action Texas. It appeared to show a campaign worker for Texas State Rep Harold Dutton Jr harvesting ballots of 400 elderly voters.

After viewing the video, I decided to do some research. I figured, if there was any evidence of mailed ballot voter fraud to be found in Harris County, the more recent one - Dutton’s race - was the best place to start.

I filed a request for public information covering the 1359 voters who voted by mail in Harold Dutton’s race. I requested electronic copies of the voters’:

1. applications for ballots by mail and
2. returned ballot carrier envelopes.

My first thought was to match each voter’s mailed ballot application with the voter’s ballot envelope and compare signatures to find those which may not match. But as I reviewed the documents, something else jumped off the page…

32 hand written applications for mailed ballots – all from different voters – but all written in the exact same handwriting.

Looking closer, something else jumped off the page.

All 32 returned their application for a ballot by mail in the same pre-printed envelope with the same style stamp.

So I counted the stamps used by all the applications for ballot by mail returned by voters in this race. Could it be just a coincidence that only 7% of all voters used this stamp to return their ballot by mail applications but 100% of the 32 voters with this same handwriting on their applications used the same stamp?

 But then I printed out the envelopes which carried their returned ballots and the BIGGEST COINCIDENCE of ALL  jumped off the page…

ALL THESE VOTERS LIVED

 IN THE SAME PRECINCT!  

 Precinct #259

And 90% used two of the same stamps

used on the application.

 Only 23% of total ballots returned for

 this race used that stamp combination.

 Additional research showed this same handwriting on multiple ballot by mail applications from precinct #259 every year going back to 2008.

If that wasn’t enough to cause concern, I had to title this set of applications “Alleged Harvester A” because I found two more sets of multiple applications with similar handwriting, envelopes and stamps from varying precincts. I titled those “Alleged Harvester B” and “Alleged Harvester C.” 

Samples from Alleged Harvester B

Applications	Envelopes

Samples from Alleged Harvester C 

Applications	Envelopes

Some Democrats say the applications don’t matter. All that matters are the ballots themselves.

So, my next step was to file a public information request to view the actual ballots from Dutton’s race. I had to wait until the “22 months after the election” retention policy had expired in order to gain access to the ballots, which was January of 2020.

The cost to copy all the mail ballots was astronomical, so I had to settle on copying the mail ballots from just 11 precincts - the precincts covering the multiple applications I had found along with some surrounding precincts for comparison.

Harris County has the longest ballot in the country. There were over 90 races on the 2018 Democratic Primary covering about 150 candidates.  A small team of patriots spent days comparing the ballots.

Our shocking find:

30 ballots from Precinct #259 – in which the voters voted for ALL the same candidates - and they ALL used the same style “X” to mark their ballots.

We compared that voting pattern to all the ballots we copied and could not find that pattern repeated even one time in another precinct.

So, 32 ballot applications from one precinct - all in the same handwriting  - and 30 ballots from that same precinct all voting for the same candidates using the same “X”…can that really be just a coincidence?

AND…We also found…

Three ballots with votes for only 2 of the 150+ candidates:

                  TX Rep. Harold Dutton, Jr     and      US Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.

Another remarkable coincidence?

The next obvious question – was there any way to track the persons who had acquired multiple mail ballot applications and pre-printed return envelopes from the County Clerk’s office?

I filed another public information request and received a handwritten sign out sheet for persons who had picked up packages of 50 or more applications for mailed ballots in 2018.

Two concerning issues from that list.

1. The FIRST PERSON to pick up multiple applications for ballots by mail in 2018 is the SAME WOMAN from the 2016 audio tape who explained how she accesses nursing homes to acquire mailed ballots for candidates.
2. TWO of the first three persons who picked up multiple applications for ballots by mail in 2018 have FORGERY convictions.

Does anyone really think it is just a coincidence that TWO convicted FORGERS are some of the FIRST persons to pick up packages of 50 or more ballot by mail applications during the first weeks of an election year?

The next step was to see if the candidates these two convicted forgers claimed to represent, actually paid them for services.

Federal Election Commission records show that US Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee did make multiple payments to convicted forger Gloria Palmer in 2016:

Harris County Election records also show that Justice of the Peace Sharon Burney made multiple payments to convicted forger Sheree Harris Fisher in 2016:

So US Rep Sheila Jackson Lee and Justice of the Peace Sharon Burney did pay convicted forgers who picked up multiple applications for ballots by mail in the names of their campaigns.

But, while reviewing Sharon Burney’s campaign finance reports, I found something out of the ordinary. Multiple payments by the campaign to persons whose address was listed as “AB Canvassing.”

 Not being able to find any information on “AB Canvassing,” I researched the persons paid. (Because no real address was provided, I had to search by name only.)

Research showed that through “AB Canvassing,” Burney’s campaign paid a SECOND person with the same name as a convicted FORGER as well as other persons with the same names as persons with numerous criminal convictions ranging from Assault with a Deadly Weapon to Possession of Cocaine.

That made me very curious. Is it common for Democrat campaigns in Harris County to hire convicted criminals?

So a small team of patriots searched campaign financial reports online from the City of Houston, Harris County, Texas Ethics Commission, and the Federal Election Commission.

We found a variety local campaigns which paid convicted FORGERS DIRECTLY.

Some examples:        (*BOLD = Currently holding office)

1.       Gloria Palmer:

·         Sheila Jackson Lee – Congress*

·         Richard Cantu – Harris County School Trustee (HCDE)*

·         Rebeea Sultan Collier – District Judge 113*

·         Sandra J Peake – District Judge 257*

·         Christine Weems – District Judge 281*

·         Michel Pappillion – Constable (Pct 3)

2.       Sheree (Harris) Fisher:

·         Sheila Jackson Lee – Congress*

·         Sharon M Burney – Justice of the Peace (Pct 7, Place 2)*

3.       Tarasha Hollis:

·         Michel Pappillion - – Constable (Pct 3)

4.       Cynthia Bailey:

·         Sylvester Turner – Mayor*

·         Diane Trautman – Harris County Clerk*

·         Borris Miles – Texas State Senate*

·         Audia Jones -  Harris County District Attorney

·         Jolanda Jones – Harris County Tax Assessor

·         Cheryl Elliott Thornton  – Justice of the Peace (Pct 7, Place 2)

We also found a backdoor way convicted criminals work for campaigns in Harris County - --

--- via organizations and/or PACs.

An example of an organization is “AB Canvassing” which we found in Burney’s campaign financial reports.  There we found  five persons paid via AB Canvassing with the same names as persons with criminal records from Harris County.  (Again, because no real addresses are given, the actual persons cannot be confirmed.)

Sample of Harris County campaigns which have reported payments to "AB Canvassing":

                   ( *BOLD:  Currently holding office)

·         Sheila Jackson Lee – Congress*

·         Sharon M Burney – Justice of the Peace*

·         Shawn Nicole Thierry   – State Representative District 146*

·         Rabeea Sultan Collier  - District Judge  113*

·         Charles Leonard Collins   - District Judge District 246*

Following some of the convicted forgers we’d already identified as having been paid by campaigns and/or "AB Canvassing," we were led directly to TOP PAC – Texas Organizing Project PAC.

We reviewed the names of persons paid by TOP PAC in 2016, the last Presidential election year, and found over 100 with the same names as persons with criminal records ranging from “Theft” to “Participating in Organized Criminal Activity” - 19 of those included FORGERY convictions.

An example:

Like "AB Canvassing," it is difficult to identify actual persons paid because most all persons paid by TOP PAC in each city have the same address listed.

In Houston the address given is: 

2404Caroline,  Houston, TX  77004.

Sample of Harris County campaigns TOP reports supporting with personnel:

                   (*BOLD:  Currently holding office)

·         Sylvia Garcia – Congress*(pg4)

·         Lizzie Fletcher – Congress*(pg3)

·         EdGonzales – Harris County Sheriff* (pg 4)

·         Lina Hidalgo –Harris County Judge*(pg3)

·         Rodney Ellis – Harris County Commissioner (Pct. 1)* (pg5)

·         Adrian Garcia - Harris County Commissioner (Pct. 2)*(pg3)

·         Kim Ogg – Harris County District Attorney*(pg3)

·        Ann Harris Bennett - County Tax Assessor-Collector&Voter Registrar*(pg3)

·         Christian Menefee – Harris County Attorney (pg5)

·         Morris Overstreet – Harris County Commissioner (Pct.3) (pg5)

                           

Back to the Beginning

My original plan had been to compare the voter’s signature on the ballot by mail application to the voter’s signature on the ballot envelope to see if any may not have been signed by the same person. But I found so many other issues that I got sidetracked from the signatures.

Unlike some other states, Texas does not require photo copies of ID to accompany the ballot by mail application. The only “security” Texas statute has in place for ballots by mail is a comparison of the voter’s signature on the application to the voter’s signature on the ballot envelope. Previous signatures going back 6 years may be compared if needed. If the signatures could have been written by the same person, the ballot is approved. 

After reviewing all the applications from Dutton’s race, I have concerns that Texas needs much more ACTUAL SECURITY for our mail ballot system.  Signature comparison isn't enough. - especially now that voters over 65 are receiving pre-printed applications for ballots by mail from the parties, candidates, and PACs. The only information the voter supplies is a signature - so that is all that can be compared.

In reviewing the pre-printed postcard applications from Dutton's race, we found numerous voters whose first or last names were the same as another voter, and their signatures were remarkably similar.

Some examples of signatures on applications for ballots by mail from TWO or MORE DIFFERENT VOTERS:

What can citizens do?

As a citizen there isn’t much we can do. Texas does not allow us to challenge other voter’s signatures or ballots.  All we can do is:

1. Send a complaint to the Secretary of State and hope she sends it on to the Attorney General for investigation. (Which I’ve already done with this research.)
2. Contact our legislators and insist they tighten security for ballot by mail.
3.  Pray the Democrats don’t succeed in using the courts to expand our currently flawed vote by mail system.

Colleen Vera