-By Warner Todd Huston
At one of the last poll watcher training sessions held by the King Street Patriots on November 1, Assistant Harris County Attorney Doug Ray made an admission that contravenes the media meme that charges KSPs poll watchers with harassing voters here in Harris County, Texas.
All week the media and Democrats have charged that voters were being harassed by King Street Patriots poll watchers and thus far county officials have not countered the claims being made by KSPs opponents. But this evening the myth has been busted.
During an address to those attending a late training session, attorney Ray admitted that most of the reports the county has gotten about “hovering” over voters has been blamed on poll judges and workers, not the King Street Patriots poll watchers.
In his first address to the room, witnesses heard Ray say, “There were lots of reports about poll watchers intimidating or ‘hovering’ over voters. We learned that those were actually poll workers for the county.”
After he spoke to those gathered, I asked Attny. Ray about his comments.
I asked Ray if he would say that most of the complaints his office received of “hovering” were blamed on the KSP poll watchers. Ray replied that, “many” of those complaints were of KSP poll watchers “hovering.” But he said that investigations proved the complaints to be baseless.
I said that many of the complaints that we got [were of KSP “hovering”] not most. There’s a variety of complaints, the complaints that you all have filed have come to us too. But many of the voter complaints were of poll watchers hovering over them but there have been cases where we investigated and found that it was the poll worker that was hovering and not the watcher.
This means that claims of rampant “intimidation” being perpetrated by poll watchers is a false claim. The admission also means that reports filed by King Street poll watchers are true. Poll watchers have filed numerous first hand accounts saying that they witnessed poll workers and judges intervening as voters tried to vote. Simply put, the “hovering,” as Attorney Ray put it, has been perpetrated by poll workers, not poll watchers.
This is a startling admission by the county attorney, one that wholly destroys the claims made against the King Street Patriots.
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.