There have been a couple of new, very positive developments with respect to election integrity. First, on August 28th, the Republican National Committee (RNC) issued a resolution urging a return to excellence in American voting and elections. The RNC recognized that ensuring the integrity of our voting and election administration is critical and foundational to maintaining a civil and decent society decentralized from a federal government as the Founders intended and have resolved to support the rights of counties and states that are willing and able to competently and efficiently implement voting procedures that do not require the use of machines and those that implement hand counting procedures that are fully auditable. The RNC also calls on state legislatures, county, and municipal governments to pass laws and municipal codes and rules that allow for full transparent hand-counting procedures that are planned, timely and fully observable by the public and the registered parties for geographically defined audits and recounts. I have attached a copy of the resolution for your review as it covers much more. I hope that the DNC will also issue a similar statement of support for election integrity. They were very concerned about the electronic voting machines prior to 2020.
I remind you all that election integrity was the number one priority coming out of the Statewide Republican Convention last year in Houston. Unfortunately, little has been accomplished this year in our Texas legislative sessions with respect to enhancing election integrity other than restoring the felony offense charge for election fraud which had been reduced to a misdemeanor thanks to Representative Murr’s HB6 that passed during the 2021 legislative session.
The second piece of good news is that on August 29th the Gillespie County Republican Party Executive Committee passed a resolution to hand count paper ballots and use paper poll books in their upcoming 2024 Republican primary elections. I’m glad to see that other counties are waking up to the vulnerabilities of our electronic voting systems and the need to restore confidence in the results of our elections. My congratulations to all who were involved.
I believe we need to keep paper ballots and also we need to show idenity also. That way we will have a legal election.