@ the link. The King Street Patriots, a conservative group, began a True the Vote” campaign in 2009 to prevent voter fraud. Volunteers train to become poll watchers to ensure the election laws are obeyed at the polls. This Sunday, the Houston Chronicle’s Outlook section featured a full front page story about vote suppression. The article was written by Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of The Advancement Project and Christina Sanders, Texas State Director of The League of Young Voters. It was titled “Partisan Tactic Could Suppress Voting”. They were talking about the King Street Patriots, and True the Vote. Here is an excerpt: “To complement the voter suppression efforts, tea party-affiliated groups such as the Houston-based King Street Patriots have vowed to send individuals to observe activities at polling places, which could intimidate voters. Hundreds of volunteers have pledged their time to travel to polling stations, question the rights of fellow Texans to cast their ballots and disrupt polling-place activity if they deem it necessary. The idea of tea party volunteers storming polling places evokes strong images of Jim Crow-era voter suppression.” As someone who grew up in the middle of the civil rights movement in the 60′s in Jackson Mississippi, that last sentence made my blood boil. The Democrat’s Jim Crow laws were specifically directed at preventing African Americans to vote. To compare that to people who are simply poll watchers (most grandmothers and grandfathers, who could not care less about the color of skin), is despicable, and Judith Browne and Christina Sanders should be ashamed. To compare these good people to that time period diminishes what our great civil rights leaders fought against. It diminishes true racism. How do we teach our children what true racism is, when we point to things like this, where there is no racism? Our children start to think either everything is racist, or nothing is. And that is simply wrong. These things don’t just happen in black neighborhoods, they happen everywhere, and they need to be monitored everywhere. Not one of the King Street Patriots intimidated anyone, nor did they wish to. All they wanted and want is for the laws to be obeyed
There is a reason the King Street Patriots started True the Vote. Notwithstanding the overt corruption of ACORN and their voter registration fraud, the Patriots had seen it themselves here when they began in Houston in 2009. They saw Election Officials fail to check voters’ identification, and disregard polling documentation requirements. They saw these officials routinely accompany voters to the voting booth telling them who they should vote for, and even voting FOR THEM. All these things are against election laws. There is a reason we have poll watchers. But in so many districts, no one has volunteered to monitor, and all these violations have been ignored.