{"id":5714,"date":"2008-02-19T15:55:53","date_gmt":"2008-02-19T23:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=5714"},"modified":"2008-02-19T23:43:43","modified_gmt":"2008-02-20T07:43:43","slug":"texas-election-official-pushed-out-after-warning-of-concerns-with-county-e-voting-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=5714","title":{"rendered":"Asks for Paper, Gets Pink Slip: Texas Election Official Pushed Out of Job After Warning of Concerns With County E-Voting System"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/JRPerez_FortBendCountyTX_OutOfJob.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"left\">Another Election Director with the temerity to speak out with concerns about E-voting has been done away with. This time in Texas.<\/p>\n<p>As Early Voting starts today in the crucial Texas Primaries, it looks like we&#8217;ve got yet another new martyr &#8212; from the rare ranks of Election Officials &#8212; who has reportedly been taken out by &#8220;the powers that be&#8221; during a fight for the ideas of Election Integrity, which he even went so far as to mention <a href=\"http:\/\/abclocal.go.com\/ktrk\/media?id=5951021\">on a Houston television news report<\/a>, if you can imagine such a thing.<\/p>\n<p>The following details come <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fortbendnow.com\/pages\/full_story?article-Elections-Administrator-J-R--Perez-Surprises-Election-Commission-By-Resigning%20=&#038;page_label=home&#038;id=18644-Elections-Administrator-J-R--Perez-Surprises-Election-Commission-By-Resigning&#038;widget=push&#038;instance=home_news_lead_story&#038;open=&#038;\">from today&#8217;s <em>FortBendNow<\/em>&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"media\">Fort Bend County Elections Administrator J.R. Perez surprised members of the county Elections Commission by tendering his resignation on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>The board accepted his resignation during a closed meeting that the commission had called in which, one participant said, it&#8217;s possible Perez would have been asked to resign had he not done so on his own.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nAt issue had been his dislike of the county&#8217;s Hart Intercivic eSlate [DRE] voting machines, and appeared to anger some commissioners a week ago, when he told the court he favored scrapping the county&#8217;s $4 million eSlate voting system in favor of a system that would make use of paper ballots.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nPerez told FortBendNow he doesn&#8217;t believe the county will be able to handle anticipated high voter turnout during the March 4 primary. He made similar statements in KTRK-TV reports, which appeared to fuel some commissioners&#8217; angst.<\/p>\n<p>Now, Perez will not be in charge of the county&#8217;s elections during the primary.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nA reporter was barred from attending the Election Commission&#8217;s meeting at 10 a.m. Tuesday, and was presented with a Texas Attorney General&#8217;s opinion &#8220;\u201c dating from a 2005 Titus County case &#8220;\u201c stating that &#8220;because a county election commission is not a county commissioners court, a committee thereof, or a deliberative body with rulemaking or quasi-judicial power,&#8221;\u009d it need not comply with the Texas Open Meetings Act.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fort_Bend_County%2C_Texas\">Fort Bend County<\/a> is part of metropolitan Houston and includes Sugarland. It has become reliably Republican over the years, at least until Tom Delay was forced to resign and a Democrat took the local Congressional seat. The county has also previously elected both Ron Paul and Phil Gramm to Congress.<\/p>\n<p>The video report referenced above, from KTRK-TV, Houston&#8217;s ABC affiliate, where Perez warned there may be lines from to two and a half to three hours at the polling places during Texas&#8217; big upcoming Primary, can be seen <a href=\"http:\/\/abclocal.go.com\/ktrk\/media?id=5951021\">right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> (<em>Hat-tip to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.VotersUnite.org\">VotersUnite.org&#8217;s<\/a> John Gideon<\/em>)<\/p>\n<div class=\"BBTOORepost\">Please support <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=5705\"><strong>The BRAD BLOG&#8217;s Fund Drive<\/strong><\/a> and our continuing coverage of your election system, as found <em>nowhere<\/em> else. <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=5705\">Click here<\/a> for a number of cool new collector&#8217;s edition Premium products now available for new contributors!<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another Election Director with the temerity to speak out with concerns about E-voting has been done away with. This time in Texas. As Early Voting starts today in the crucial Texas Primaries, it looks like we&#8217;ve got yet another new martyr &#8212; from the rare ranks of Election Officials &#8212; who has reportedly been taken [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122,28,38,47],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-2008","category-election-reform","category-hart-intercivic","category-texas","bb-type-bradblog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5714"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=5714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}