“Harris County had 70,000 voter registration applications rejected,” said Texas Democratic Party attorney Chad Dunn. “That’s exponentially higher than anywhere else in the state.”
See the full story here: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/6469960.html
By TERRI LANGFORD and MATT STILES
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
June 10, 2009, 11:10 PM
A high-ranking employee in Harris County’s voter registration office also moonlights for a company that sold nearly $60,000 worth of information on those voters to Republican candidates during the last election cycle, records show, angering Democratic activists.
Ed Johnson is associate voter registrar at the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector’s Office, where he’s worked since 1999. He’s also a paid director for Computer Data Systems, a venture started in 2003 with state Rep. Dwayne Bohac, R-Houston. The company sells the same voter information Johnson is paid by taxpayers to manage in a nonpolitical manner.
“No question this doesn’t smell,” said Harold Cook, a Democratic political consultant in Austin. “It’s a government official who has duties involving the election process who is a political consultant who has clients who are on the same ballots he is handling.”
Neither Johnson nor Bohac returned calls for comment.
According to a recently dismantled Web site, CDS sells voter data to Republican candidates. No records indicating information was sold to Democrats could be found. Secretary of state records show Bohac as the registered agent and Johnson as a director.
Johnson’s party affiliation was not known on Wednesday, but he is known in political circles as a Republican consultant.
Complaints dismissed
Leo Vasquez, Harris County tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, issued a statement that dismissed complaints that Johnson’s job, which can include approving or rejecting voter applications, conflicts with his side business.
3 comments:
It is not surprising that Harris County had that many rejected “voters” since Houston is a sanctuary city for illegal aliens and houses thousands of Katrina refugees. It is also not surprising that Democrats are the ones complaining about the diligence of the officials in checking qualifications of suspected fraudulent attempts to vote. This would have been more effective if “Voter ID” had passed out of the Legislature this session. Sadly, it was stalled by the Democrats.
#1: You're comments smack of pure bigotry. Victims of Katrina who came to Texas and chose to stay in Texas are Texans now which means they have the right to vote just as I assume you do. They are not 'illegal aliens'. Crawl back under your rock please!
#2, I was thinking along the same lines. Plus, #1 appears to be afflicted with "blinders syndrome", very typical among class conscious Republican die hards. They see only through lenses of racism and self-entitlement. The larger point of the story, as I see it, is insider use of voter data for purely Republican political gain, off the taxpayers' dime – and they profited from it to the tune of $60,000! This guy Johnson should be fired, period, end of discussion. And the Republican state rep should, at the very least, get tarred and feathered and rolled out of the village on a cart pulled by a donkey.
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