Blog Post
My last blog highlighted the significant, unexplainable issues Dallas County experienced with the ES&S E-Pollbooks in the November 2022 and November 2023 elections. Despite the submission, both in writing and verbally, of valid questions to the Dallas County Elections Department about the numerous and consistent problems, few acceptable answers were received. It is my opinion that the Dallas Countty Elections Department may not have answers because it does not control the server to which the E-Pollbooks are connected. Rather, the privately held, for-profit, third-party entity, ES&S, controls the E-Pollbooks. I believe that it is unacceptable to allow a third party to have any access or role in our elections in Texas or throughout the United States for that matter. I do not think we can achieve effective change at the local level, so I believe we must take our fight against the E-Pollbooks and county-wide voting to Austin. I did just that on Tuesday, November 28, 2023.
Yesterday, I traveled to Austin to meet with Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson with Dallas GOP Election Integrity Chair Wes Bowen, State Senator Tan Parker, who helped facilitate the meeting, and well-known election integrity expert Russ Ramsland.
We met face-to-face with Secretary Nelson and her senior staff for well over an hour. The specific purpose of the visit was to discuss the E-Pollbook failures and/or manipulation that Dallas County experienced in the November 2022 Midterms and again in the November 2023 Constitutional Election. It is just the beginning of an in-depth discussion about the vulnerability of machine voting. The goal is to set the path for elections in regionally combined precinct centers that have hand-counted paper ballots.
The Secretary of State is the chief elections officer for the State of Texas.
I am not aware of any other such meeting directly with the Texas Secretary of State about election integrity in the last five years – since Texas made the mistake of changing over to the machine voting systems. I took many affidavits from our loyal, hard-working Republican election judges, alternate judges and clerks as evidence of the unreliability, malfunction, and lack of transparency and trust embodied by the E-Pollbooks. In addition, I called numerous other county chairs to inquire about the function or lack thereof of the E-Pollbooks in their counties and to gage whether or not those counties also desire to eliminate the E-Pollbooks and county-wide voting. Most of the county chairs I spoke to share our concerns and support the effort to end E-Pollbooks and county-wide voting. Specifically, including Dallas, I believe we can count on the support of Harris, Bexar, Tarrant, and Travis counties – five of the largest in the state of Texas.
Wes and I began the meeting with the Secretary of State with a detailed description of the 2022 post-election surges followed by continued movement in live E-Pollbooks seven days after the election. We then described the inexplicable and significant lack of internet connectivity, the fact that very few E-Pollbooks synced, and varying reports of the number of registered voters in Dallas County all throughout the 2023 election. Next, our election integrity expert presented a PowerPoint presentation that presented significant evidence from Dallas County and other jurisdictions of the ability to corrupt and manipulate the machine voting systems. Our presentation was well received by the Secretary and her staff. We discussed possible alternatives and the need for legislation in order to move toward a plausible trustworthy paper ballot hand-count voting system. With that in mind, Senator Parker has agreed to try to recruit fellow legislators to support him in asking Governor Abbott to include election integrity law changes either in the current Special Session or another Special Session. In order to encourage the Secretary of State’s Office to assist Senator Parker with Governor Abbott in bringing forth such legislative changes, I am drafting a follow-up letter to the Secretary of State in which Wes, our expert and I will request the Secretary’s support for our efforts to obtain the changes needed to begin what we hope can and will be a transition back to secure elections. I believe that with the support of five of the largest counties not only in Texas but in the United States, we can influence our legislators and leaders in Austin that we need to lead the charge in moving away from machine voting to secure hand-counted paper ballots. I will keep you updated on the progress of our efforts.
In the meantime, please assist us by contacting your state representatives and senators and telling them how important these issues are to each of you. You may look up the contact information for your legislators on the following link: https://wrm.capitol.texas.gov/home Then, click on the link for each Senate and House of Representatives website to send each your message.
Jennifer Stoddard Hajdu
Chairwoman
Dallas County Republican Party
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