Voting Hypocracy
Washington County, Texas, Poll Tax Receipt No. 98, dated Jan 14, 1911, was issued to my Great Uncle Julius Neinast. The tax collected was $1.75 and is cancelled with a “voted” stamp.
During that period, there was essentially only one political party in Texas, the Democrats. What existed of the Republican party was composed mostly of Blacks.
The same political mix existed in the rest of the old Confederate States of America. If voting in those states was not controlled by poll taxes, voters had to take a test to qualify as voters. Now it is known that the test required of Blacks was more difficult and harder to pass than the one given to Caucasians.
This system produced the Republican Condoleezza Rice. When asked why she is a Republican, she replied, “When I was growing up in Birmingham, the Democrats would not let my father vote, but the Republicans would. So my father became a Republican and that’s why I am.”
The Democrats’ control of voting in Texas continued through the first half of the last century. That control launched Lyndon Johnson on his trajectory to the White House.
In the 1948 Democrat primary runoff election for one of the two Texas seats in the U.S. Senate, former Texas Governor Coke Stevenson and Lyndon Johnson were the candidates. When the returns from all but one of the boxes in the state were in, Stevenson led Johnson by 112 votes.
The unreported box was No. 13 in Jim Wells County, under the effective control of Democrat political boss, George Parr, known as the Duke of Duval. The tally from that box was that Johnson had received 99.1% of the votes, or 203 more votes than Stevenson.
When a report began to circulate that many of the votes in Box 13 were from dead Mexicans, the box was mysteriously burned and could not be audited.
Johnson was then declared the winner with an 87 vote margin and earned him the moniker of Landslide Lyndon. As winning a Democrat primary in those days was equivalent to being elected to the office, Johnson became a U.S. Senator and then President of the United States.
Landslide Lyndon’s victory was neither the first nor the last in a long list of voter frauds. Illegal voting is as vigorous today as it was a half century ago.
Consider these examples. A recent survey indicates that 28,500 dead people are registered to vote in Texas. Twelve Indiana counties have more registered voters than residents. Federal records show that 160 counties in 19 states have over 100% voter registration.
Then remember, but do not mourn, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). When the list of complaints, investigations, and criminal charges over voter registration fraud and embezzlement within the organization got too long to manage, the organization disbanded in March 2010. Google RottenAcorn for a concise history of the rotten nut.
The following change of direction in this column does not mean the subject of voter intimidation and fraud is being abandoned. All will be tied together in the perspective.
Some years ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture made monthly distributions of surplus food in Brenham. Much of the free food was cheese that was handed out at the Brenham Firemen’s Training Center. The parking lot at the center is quite large and was substantially filled on distribution days.
More recently, Goodfellows, a local non-profit organization, provided all the raw materials for Christmas dinners and a multitude of gifts for children of needy families.
On several occasions, I helped distribute the food and gifts at the Washington County Fair Grounds. I was amazed at the long line of cars waiting to be loaded and asked, “How can families too poor to afford food and gifts for themselves afford the expense of registering, maintaining, and fueling these cars?” The only answer was that some of them were being brought to the Fair Grounds by friends and neighbors.
So here’s the perspective.
History is replete with instances of voter fraud and actions to deny the vote to specific groups of individuals. Much of the voter fraud and practically all of the programs to block entire classes of people from the polls are the actions of the Democrat party.
This history makes Democrat complaints about voter ID laws taking the vote away from poor, old people who would be inconvenienced to get a proper ID a bit specious.
Those poor, old people had no complaints or trouble about getting to the Firemen’s Training Center and Washington County Fair Grounds for free food and gifts, for establishing bank accounts to receive their welfare checks by direct deposit, or to register to vote with or through organizations like ACORN. Why can they not get voter IDs through the same channel?
So the next time a Democrat complains about the unfairness of voter ID laws, clear your throat and comment, “Hey, hypocrite would you like to discuss the history of voting under Democrat control?”
enough
