Trouble for Houston in the November vote

Trouble for Houston in the November vote

A suspicious fire destroyed all 10,000 e-slate voting machines early Friday. This follow news on Tuesday that the group called Houston Votes filed thousands of fraudulent voter applications.
Harris County Voter Registrar Leo Vasquez reported “Houston Votes is the voter registration machine of the ‘Texans Together Education Fund.’ Houston Votes and Texans Together have effectively emerged as our area’s new ‘ACORN’ organization.”
The fraudulent applications were brought to light due to the efforts of King Street Patriots, who volunteered to review them for the Voters Registrar’s office. Without their efforts a full investigation could not have been conducted, allowing voters registration cards to be issued.
There were almost 1,600 multiple applications received. This means from two to six applications were received from each applicant. This includes small variation in addresses, birth dates & the spelling of names.
Over 1,000 applications were received that exactly match currently registered votes, but the signatures don’t match the ones on file.
Over 1,100 applications stated they did not have a Texas driver’s license, Texas ID card or a social security number. A small investigation showed this to be false.
325 applications for teenagers too young to register; and, 25 applications were even submitted for applicants who checked they were not U.S. Citizens.
In all over 5,000 applications were reported as fraudulent in one or more category. An additional 3,531 were returned that failed the verification of TDL or SSN matching the State’s records
It’s interesting that only a few days later the election process is thrown into jeopardy with the destruction of all the voting machines. A meeting is planed for Monday to decide what the options might be.
It will be hard to borrow machines from other counties since they will be voting on the same day. With only six weeks before early voting begins, it is doubtful the manufacturer can supply replacements in time. Harris County may have to get permission from the Secretary of State for Texas to use paper ballots.
http://biggovernment.com/publius/2010/08/27/houston-election-headquarters-warehouse-d
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news%2Flocal&id=7634029