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Our VoteRescue director Karen Renick last week had communicated to the Texas GOP a comprehensive list of recommendations on how to assure that the hand-counted paper ballot Straw Poll election could be executed with the highest security and transparency possible. Due to the last-minute nature of these e-mail exchanges with Texas GOP Party Communications Director Hans Klingler, we do not know (yet) if he ever received or read these recommendations before going to Ft. Worth to oversee the Straw Poll, or if he did in fact see them but chose not to act on them. (This e-mail exchange, including Karen's specific suggestions, will be posted on our website within the next day or so: www.voterescue.org.)
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What we do know is that there were many vulnerabilities in the "chain of custody" of the official ballots from the point at which the election ended until votes were being counted; and that neither media, nor any citizen observors with videocameras (or otherwise) were allowed in the room where counting took place. Our videographers Terry Melton, Kathleen Winn, and Gregory Gory, as well as any other interested parties, had to satisfy themselves with quick glances through small windows in the doors of the counting room, with a policeman on the other side who glared at anyone whose face was in the glass for more than a few seconds.
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Delegates/voters being turned away at the door
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Other anomalies included: Instructions that had been e-mailed from the Republican Party to delegates stating that the event began at 10 am, but in reality, registration ENDED at 10 am, so many who arrived just after 10 am were turned away, including delegates/voters who arrived from out of town. (This also included a delegate who was hosting me and Karen Renick as guests, and she did not get in to vote, nor did we get our guest passes, for which we had each paid $25). Our would-be host is the Lady in Red in a YouTube video of a collection of Ron Paul supporters being turned away from the door is being circulated right now, called "Tyranny at the Texas Straw Poll - Ron Paul", (which has not been proven to have specifically targeted Ron Paul delegates but certainly they are in the majority in this clip):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDnWT4gCJSE
Neither my friend in red, nor another friend who is in this video, believe this was an intentional policy to prevent Ron Paul delegates from entering and voting, but an across-the-board screwup on the part of the Texas GOP and their e-mail to delegates which was not clear as to the deadline for registration.
Other interesting information on events yesterday is still coming in, and if we learn anything further that we believe may have affected official election results, we will be doing an additional writeup. We also plan to follow up with the Texas GOP people with whom Karen had been e-mailing. We will be sending out a press release with a summary for Tuesday morning.
This was VoteRescue's first experience with an Exit Poll, after doing several parallel elections. We found it simpler, easier, and more gratifying in that we got a larger percentage of voters to respond than we have with parallel elections. There is some demographic information we also collected on each voter, and if we glean more from that, we will post it to the list.
Couldn't have done it without our wonderful, dedicated volunteers!
Vickie Karp and Karen Renick
karp@mail.com - (512) 775-3737
karen.renick@sbcglobal.net - (512) 496-7408
