I'm from Webb County

[WolverineDG]

& no, I'm not a Cuellar supporter. He's a DINO who runs because he's funded well by Republicans who get their buddies here to vote in the Democratic primary. The sooner we can get that asshole voted out of office, the better. While my not-disabled profile doesn't say where exactly I'm from, enough of you have met me in person to know I'm legit.

Having said that, a lot is being said on this board about how "corrupt" Webb County is. Oh yeah? What about YOUR county? I'm sure Bexar County elections are run pure as driven snow, as are the elections in other counties, so it must be that only Webb County is corrupt in this entire state. :sarcasm:

You are talking about & casting aspersions on people I know & work with. People, like Oscar Villarreal, who will bend ass-over-backwards to get you any information you want or need. When he says there was a problem with the software & the programming, I believe him. This was a brand-new system being used for the first time by the County. The County Commission & the County Attorney are up in arms over this mess & are considering suing ES&S over it. As for the hand counting, yes there was hand counting done last night, but the other poster is mistaken by asserting that the electronic ballots were counted by hand. We had a choice to vote with the machine or a paper ballot. The paper ballots were the ones that were hand-counted.

As for the "fraud" in the Cuellar-Rodriguez race: If there's corruption in that race, it should have shown up in another; that's how the Partido Viejo works. However, that wasn't the case. There were 2 other important races that were also ripe for election fraud & guess what? Didn't happen. The 49th District Judge race (which encompasses Webb & Zapata Counties---hmm, where did those 200 ballots mysteriously show up last time? :think: )--The incumbent was defeated & the outstanding votes in Zapata County won't have any effect on that. The County Judge race? The incumbent came in dead last in a field of 4. If there had been any corruption, he would have won OR been part of the run-off. He wasn't.

dg

[acmejack]

1. If the people who live there are happy, I'm happy (kinda)

You guys might as well sue ES&S just to be vindictive!

I think I may have mentioned something about rumors of past skulduggery in your neck of the woods and I likewise believe history indeed does bear that out. As I live in the Capitol of our fair State you can always find corruption in THIS County. If you want to see some come up & I will personally take you to see all you can stand.

[GOPisEvil]

2. I know people are upset and lashing out. It's not really fair.

But the border counties have had a colorful voting history. Add that to the electronic voting issues, and lots of questions pop up. I still think Henry stole 2004, this time, maybe he just got more votes. If the people down there are happy with a DINO, that's their issue, but his votes affect us all.

[MagickMuffin]

3. A quick observation:

I noticed that the SOS's office for the Repub's site doesn't have anyone who ran in that district. So, my conclusion is the Repubs voted for Cuellar.

End of story?

[sonias]

6. You have an excellent point MagicMuffin

There weren't really a lot of hot races on the republican side. I mean they knew it was MoFo Perry in a blowout, so I bet a lot of them did cross over in the primaries just to vote for Cuellar. The Club for Growth probably suggested to the republicans in this district that they do just that. It's not unheard of as a tactic.

Sonia

[sonias]

4. I know dg, and this DUer is for real

I'll vouch for WolverineDG and I do think we should all take a breath and stop the infighting. And I certainly do not support Henry "Chulo pero Feo" Cuellar.

We have good people all over this state. Let's stop taking these broad swipes at entire populations of good Democrats. And I would agree with what dg says about Bexar. Are we forgetting that the Bexar Democratic party chair and party is under an injunction in a lawsuit brought by Bexar Democrats? We have problems all over this state and within our own party.

As much as it pains me to believe that pretty boy Henry won, he did. He got more votes out than Ciro did. That's how elections work. The people in Webb county just like the pretty boy more. And the people in Bexar needed to get more people out. Simple as that. Even if there were 50+, 100 year old people that voted for Cuellar. Even if we suspect there may have been some unusual election activity (fraud) it probably did not make up for the margin of the race.

There was a big glitch on software programming for DREs and it was reported well in advance of the March 7th races. Here's the link to the SOS emergency letter from 2/16 on that issue.

http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/laws/urgent.shtml
Status of Ballot and Programming Card Orders
I want to thank many of you for contacting our office regarding your ballot status, letting us know that you have still not received your programming media or, in some cases, your ballots, for the March 7, 2006 primary elections. Please be advised that the Secretary of State’s office is communicating with the vendors about the situation, and we regret that you are experiencing this problem.

Here's a longer post I made on the ES&S issue on BOR about the Rodriguez/Cuellar race

http://www.burntorangereport.com/showComment.do?commentId=1822
Computer security experts like Dan Wallach, are saying that ES&S DRE counties require the services of ES&S for their ballot programming, but ES&S requires more than a month to get the programming job done. Likewise, it can take more than a month to get printed paper ballots for the optical scan systems. The official ballot was delayed, due to lawsuits filed to gain ballot access for some candidates.

Lots of bad things happened in this race. Ciro started with a bigger disadvantage this time out.

Sonia

[WolverineDG]

7. Another thing about the senior citizens vote

one of the contested judges races involved a judge who does a lot of work with the senior citizen community, so it makes sense that they turned out to vote in high numbers. And there are a lot of 100 yr old people here. It's not uncommon to read an obit of someone who is 104, 102, etc. It doesn't happen every day, but often enough.

dg

[sonias]

15. That's great DG

I love that people are still voting well into their old age. And I love that there are so many people over 100 in Webb. Life must be good in Webb to live so long.

:hi:

Sonia

[okasha]

12. Another Webb County person here

*Even if there were 50+, 100 year old people that voted for Cuellar.*

There weren't. The default date on the software for voter's registration is in the early 1900's--1905, if I remember correctly. If you don't give your date of birth on your application, you come out as 101 on your new canary yellow 2006 voter's registration card.

The two upsets mentioned by Wolverine are pretty much proof that the vote was at least relatively honest this time around. The 49th District Judge who lost and the County Judge who went down really, really hard are both tied in to the old, corrupt Martin/Old Party machine. The District Judge just had one personal/family scandal too many. The candidate who came out on top in the County Judge race was the only one who waged a positive campaign.

[sonias]

16. Thanks for the explanation okasha

Good news about old corrupt party machines going down too.

Sonia

[crispini]

5. Please, take a bite out of ES&S for us.

We have their equipment and it still makes me vaguely suspicious even though we have optical scan AND electronic. Strangely enough, it sounds like we voted on exactly the same equipment you did. We did optical scan with the Model 100 optical scanner at the precinct, and we also had the iVotronic at our precinct, but we were ONLY using them for the visually impaired, so virtually NOBODY voted electronically on election day. Thank goodness. That machine was a pain in the ass!

[Zen Democrat]

8. But if the Rovians took a big interest in this one race ...

they wouldn't be interested in fixing any other race. They don't want to be obvious about it.

I have no idea whether there was fraud in that election, but Cuellar seems be a special friend of the White House and it's not too much of a stretch to believe that Rove's operation could have intervened.

[WolverineDG]

10. With whom?

There is no Republican Party presence in this county really. If Rove & his henchmen wanted to "fix" this race, they would have had to work with a faction of the Democratic Party, which would have wanted a favor in return. That didn't happen.

dg

[WestHoustonDem]

9. I know you're the real deal WolverineDG!

:hug: There's corruption all over this state and country. But if you think the Webb County results were as legitimate as any other, that's good enough for me!

[WolverineDG]

11. Thanks!

It just really gets my goat when outsiders come in & pretend to know more about my county than I do. I'm not saying there's never corruption in Webb County, or that there was none this time around, it's just that it didn't show up in other places where it logically would have. The Repubs took advantage of the fact that they didn't have a highly contested primary & got their folks to vote for Cuellar.

dg

[WestHoustonDem]

13. I know how I feel when DUers bash Texas when we've got

the absolutely, beyond a doubt BEST Progressives in the world right here in the Lone Star State. We should never do that to one of our own!

[Avalux]

14. Thanks for your post -

I have a feeling it's directed at my post from yesterday - and maybe I should have written it differently. Emotions are tough to convey sometimes - and I wasn't a happy camper after Tuesday night.

That said - I think our entire state is fucked up; the way the lines have been drawn, and the systems we are using to vote. All counties using the ES&S system need to be challenged and we have to push for paper verification - or better yet, paper ballots. As Democrats, we have to be united on this.

So I'll put aside my accusations and work for November, and work for a better way to vote.

:hi: