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Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Wednesday, January 5, 2022
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A.G. Paxton Fights National Guard Vax Mandate

• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden to stop him from forcing the Texas Army National Guard and the Texas Air National Guard to get injected with COVID vaccinations. Jacob Asmussen has the story.
      
• “Neither the President nor federal military officials can order the Governor of Texas and non-federalized National Guardsmen to comply with a vaccination mandate or to direct a particular disciplinary action for failure to comply,” said Paxton in a press release. “President Biden is not those troops’ commander-in-chief; Governor Abbott is.”
      

• Last month, Texas Scorecard reported service members in both the Texas Army and Air National Guards were being forced to get injected or face loss of pay and discharge from their duties.

Abbott Orders Texas To Honor Late Nevada Democrat

• Flags in Texas will be lowered to half-staff on Saturday in memory of former Nevada U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D), according to an announcement from the office of Gov. Greg Abbott. Brandon Waltens has the details, including the thoughts of Abbott’s GOP primary opponents.
   
• “With this action of ordering flags to fly half-mast, Abbott has shown more respect for other career politicians than for Conservative Texans. Harry Reid is not an individual Texans should look up to, and I am calling on Greg Abbott to rescind his order,” said Dallas businessman Don Huffines.
   
• “Since November, we have had four Texas Army National Guard soldiers commit suicide, another attempted suicide, and a potential suicide under investigation,” retired Lt. Col. Allen West told Texas Scorecard. “Instead of lowering flags for someone who did nothing for Texas, we should be focusing on ending the scourge of Texas troops feeling Operation Lone Star is such a failure that they’re taking their own lives.”
   
• Humorist and media personality Chad Prather, took a different perspective, saying, “Human compassion should never be lost in the quagmire that is American politics.” He added, “Those who know history realize that even our Founding Fathers—Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams come to mind—traded regular barbs and acerbic exchanges but, in the end, died friends. In this day of political polarizations, it’s not wrong to honor the lives of those who have given themselves to public service.”

School Exits Texas Association Of School Boards

• A North Texas charter school has become the first to leave the state’s tax-funded lobbying group for school boards. Erin Anderson reports the school isn’t leaving for its part in asking federal authorities to target outspoken parents as domestic terrorists, but rather because Texans don’t want their money going to groups that actively lobby against them.
   
• Life School of Dallas announced this week it would not be renewing its 2022 membership in the Texas Association of School Boards. The public charter school said it didn’t want to keep funding TASB’s “strong adversarial position” lobbying the Texas Legislature “against charter schools and school choice in general.”

Residency Questioned In HD 93 Race

• The three-way House District 93 open Republican primary has two candidates looking to disqualify the third for allegedly failing to establish a permanent residence in the district. Sydnie Henry has the story from Tarrant County.
   
• Candidates Cary Moon and Nate Schatzline released a joint statement alleging that the apartment Laura Hill maintains in HD 93 is not her residence. A Schatzline canvasser left a mailer on the apartment door and returned for 10 successive days to find the mailer was never removed. Moon and Schatzline allege that Hill is merely maintaining an address and not a residency in the district.
   
• Texas legislators are required by law to maintain a residence in the district they run in for a year prior to the election. However, candidates often skirt this law by buying a house or renting an apartment a year out from the election. 

Scandal At Round Rock ISD Continues

• Jacob Asmussen offers an update on the troubling, months-long saga plaguing the “safe and suburban” Round Rock Independent School District in Republican Williamson County. The district was featured in the EXPOSED podcast series this winter.
     
• On Monday, the RRISD board of trustees met behind closed doors to discuss the state government’s investigation into superintendent Dr. Hafedh Azaiez, who has been accused of domestic violence. Aziaez’s tenure has been marked by controversy, beginning with his hiring last summer. 
     
• Azaiez allegedly demanded his pregnant mistress get an abortion and threatened her with violence when she refused. After she approached RRISD trustees in July, Azaiez allegedly assaulted her.
     
• Finally, after more than five tumultuous months, the board met on Monday to “review the TEA monitor’s letter” on the situation. District parents packed the lecture hall for the public comment time to testify again to the trustees—and Azaiez—on the troubling saga.
     
• At the end of Monday’s meeting, the board decided to postpone any action relating to the superintendent until Thursday. The board will at that time “consider” the TEA’s recommendations and “discuss and consider the appointment of a temporary Acting Superintendent pending a search for an Interim Superintendent.”

Y’All Answered

Yesterday we asked if you were in charge of Texas’ elections, would voting involve ballots that are “Hand-Marked & Hand Counted” (57.30 percent), “Hand-Marked & Machine Counted” (29.80 percent), or “Machine-Marked & Machine Counted” (12.90 percent).

Here’s a sampling of replies from the ol’ inbox…

• “Electronic balloting has proven to be a major enabler of election fraud! I'd be surprised any real ‘Republican’ would support and trust machine voting.” – Collin Farrell
      

• “It’s a disheartening situation, but we need election systems that anticipate fraud.” – Mark Aiken
      

• “Your vote no longer matters. It only matters who counts.” – Brett Holman
      

• “I’ve served as an Election Judge in Kerr County and think paper ballots are the most secure.” – Helen Herd
      

• “In the recent vote on constitutional amendments, we found in our precinct in Fannin County new electronic machines that, after voting electronically, produced a paper printout of the vote for the record, which the voter then put into a slotted box for safe keeping in case of a future recount.  I thought it was a good system and was impressed with it.” – Philip Johnson
       

• “I prefer the machine marked with a paper ballot that you personally carry to another machine to be counted.” – David Leese
      

• “I selected hand mark, hand count, but even that process will not stop fraud.  Mandatory audits with maximum jail time may deter election workers and voters from committing fraud.” – Debbie Faunce
     

• “I chose machines for all ballots. I guess tech would be the lesser evil. Paper ballots have been shown to be manipulated heavily by dishonest handlers. Too easily stuffing ballot boxes to help the opponent's outcome. At least a computerized ballot can be slowly watched by the user before pushing ‘send.’” – Jennifer Herr
       

• “I voted hand-marked and machine counted.  However, the best method would be hand-marked, machine counted and hand verified.  We need a speedy way of counting, thus the machine counting.  However, there needs to be a double-check, which requires human review and testing of the vote-count by machine--this was not presented in your choices.” – Arthur Potter
      

• “In Leander, the voting machines have machine marked (human readable) paper ballots, and they use a tabulating machine to count the votes.  I think this is a reasonably good system.” – Thomas Williams
      

• “While I understand the distrust of electronic voting, the electronic voting machine is not the problem. That is not to say there have not been problems with the machines.  It is very clear that there have been, especially with the Dominion machines.  But paper hand marked mail ballots demonstrated as much or more fraud in 2020. … There are things that need to be worked out with electronic voting to further improve security but the bigger problem is an illegal voter can cast a vote on a machine or paper.” – Roger Taylor
      

• “It might take all night to hand count paper ballots, but at this point it is worth it to save the United States.” – Eleanor Edmondson
      

• “The enormity of ballots pretty much necessitates machine counting. Hand-marked ballots reflect voters’ true intentions. Hard copies are the manna from which auditors assure voter intent.” – Jack Boteler
      

• “Hand-marked, machine counted, with a full audit after every election.” – Mark Grano
      

• “With any one of these options the cheaters can cheat. I believe the most accurate method is hand filled and hand counted. Ballots should be counted and recounted and witnessed by equal party overseers. Strict voting cut off times and no after hours ballot drops.” – Steve Crevier
      

• “I don’t trust machines to count anything of importance.” – Jimmy Lane
      

• “I have worked at the county central counting facility and have seen the condition of mailed-in hand marked ballots. The standard used is for election officials to 'ascertain the intent of the voter' which introduces too much uncertainty in the process. Manual processes are good for checking accuracy of an electronic count but not good for initial counts.” – Thomas Camardo
      

• “My preference is to have a hand marked ballot that’s counted by machine and then double checked by some human beings of integrity. Nothing is flawless but with honesty and integrity our chances of liberty are greatly increased.” – Bathsheba Campbell
      

• “I voted for machine marked and machine counted. But the machines should have the same level of security as banks use for online cash transactions. It's that important. If our monetary system can run safely why can't the same technology be used to ensure election integrity?” – Dennis Hill
     

• “As a former computer programmer, I would never trust machine based voting because it is time consuming and difficult to authenticate that the code is bug free and provides reliable results. Paper ballots counted by machine could be trusted only if rigorous test protocols were established and executed. Paper ballots that are hand counted with representatives from all parties are the most trustworthy.” – Duaine Goulding
      

• “I would like to see a single election day with absentee voting by application only. No early or late voting. Don't complain about dead people voting if you support early voting.” – Larry Burson
     

• “I'm fine with a machine marking and counting.  I check the ballot every time after it prints.  As long as we have a physical paper ballot to back it up, I'm ok with that.” – Adam Sanford

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