DA To Investigate Texans Who Voted Twice

Voter fraud or voter confusion? Or dirty tricks? We heard a lot about the Texas “two-step” primary + caucus, and the opposition “strategy” urging Republicans to choose the Democratic ballot in the TX primary. Now the Elections Clerk for Harris County (Houston area) has turned over 1,167 names of voters suspected of voting in more than one primary to the District Attorney, according to local Houston TV report.

Some voted in both the Democratic and Republican primaries. Others voted twice in the same primary, said Elections Clerk, Beverly Kaufman. “I’m convinced that there are some instances where people had strong feeling on both sides of the aisle where they wanted to vote for a candidate on both ballots thinking they wouldn’t get caught,” Kaufman said.

The DA will investigate. In the end, Sen. Obama carried the Houston area and also gained delegates in the later caucus events, though a large number of Republicans who chose the Democratic primary ballot statewide and voted for Sen Clinton, gave Clinton a slender margin of victory in the popular vote part of the 2-step process.

The Wall Street Journal had earlier reported stories of the “Rush Limbaugh effect” on Texas voting:

[S]ome locals are convinced it was a false win bolstered by dirty politics. Laura Jean Kreissl, an accounting professor at West Texas A&M University, served as an election official in Canyon, Texas on Tuesday. She contacted the Wall Street Journal to report the hijinks she observed at the four precincts that voted at her polling location.

Of the 181 voters she personally dealt with, 70 offered that they were “Rush Limbaugh voters” who were there to cast ballots for Clinton. “I’m here to vote for Hillary Clinton, I want to see the Democratic Party implode,” one voter told Kreissl, she recounted in an interview. “I was just stunned,” she said. “As an election official we can’t say anything. We just jot them down and let them vote.”

.