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Electronic counting? Hand-marked ballots? Today’s One Click Survey asks if you were in charge how balloting would be handled. 

Here is the Texas Minute!

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Tuesday, January 4, 2022
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BUT FIRST… Have you or someone you know in Texas lost a job due to the vaccine mandates? We’d like to chat with anyone who has been affected, either on the record or anonymously on background.

Paxton To Court: Reconsider Your Ruling

• Last month the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals – the state’s highest criminal court – ruled that the Office of the Attorney General did not have the authority to prosecute election fraud cases. This week, Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking that they reconsider the decision.
    
• “The Court’s decision to suddenly remove our authority to prosecute election fraud can only empower dishonest campaigns to silence voters across the state,” said Attorney General Paxton. “This decision is not only wrong on legal grounds, but it has the effect of giving district and county attorneys virtually unlimited discretion to not bring election law prosecutions. Last year’s election cycle shows us that officials in our most problematic counties will simply let election fraud run rampant.”
       
• The nine justices on the Court of Criminal Appeals include: Sharon Keller, Barbara Hervey, Bert Richardson, Kevin Yeary, David Newell, Mary Lou Keel, Scott Walker, Michelle Slaughter, and Jesse F. McClure, III.  All nine are Republicans. 
      
• On the 2022 ballot? Keel, McClure, and Walker. Only Walker has a primary challenger, Clint Morgan.

Schools Rush To Enact Mask mandates

• While most families were well into their Christmas holiday, Houston-area school officials were busy calling a special meeting to force masks on students. From large districts to small, a renewed last-minute push for masking kids is in full force.
     
• Sydnie Henry reports on Royal Independent School District’s emergency meeting held two days after Christmas.
        
• “Why would we mandate something that has been demonstrated to not stop the spread of COVID?” Waller County father Josh Posey asked the school board, quoting multiple scientific studies on the issue. “We’re halfway through the school year. Why propose this now? And why vote for something that hasn’t worked in the last two years and expect it to be different?”
        
• Royal ISD’s COVID Dashboard shows the district has had 218 total cases of COVID-19 since August. Currently, there is one active case; the individuals in the other 217 cases are listed as recovered.

Secretary of State Releases First Election Audit Report

• Late Friday afternoon, New Year’s Eve, Texas Secretary of State John Scott released a progress report on Phase 1 of the state’s “full forensic audit” of the November 2020 presidential election. As Erin Anderson reports, the report had no real surprises.
     
• The audit, announced in September, covers four large counties: Collin, Dallas, Harris, and Tarrant. According to the report, the audit has found “more than 11,000 possible non-citizen records” and that 278 “have been confirmed.”

2021: Year Of The Unborn Sanctuary

• With 22 Texas cities outlawing abortion and the Texas Heartbeat Act going into effect, Mark Lee Dickson writes in a new commentary that 2021 was a great year for pro-life efforts.
   
• “While the Texas Heartbeat Act outlaws abortion from the point of a detectable heartbeat, the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn ordinances outlaw abortion from the moment of conception.” – Mark Lee Dickson

Potter County GOP Drops Paper-Ballot Plan

• Backtracking on a previous plan, the Potter County Republican Party will be using electronic voting machines in the 2022 primary rather than paper-only ballots. The party had previously announced a paper-only, hand-marked primary but, as Thomas Warren reports, that plan fell apart after a meeting with the Potter County Commissioners.
   
• “Clearly, some of our elected officials and candidates distrust the members of the community who would work the election and distrust original authenticated hand-marked ballots, instead placing their trust in coders over voters,” said Potter County GOP Chairman Dan Rogers. “Our commitment to hand-marked ballots will continue. Our position stands that an electronic vote is merely evidence of a vote, whereas; an actual hand-marked, tangible, original paper ballot submitted by the voter at the polling place is self-authenticated.”

Today In History

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