Voter fraud in TX--complaint formally made. Will DOJ act?

[DFW]

I give it a 50-50 chance of being SERIOUSLY acted upon, and Holder will be dragged kicking and screaming into it if he does. Not because he disagrees necessarily, but because if DOJ finally acts on one of these cases with any earnest effort, the DOJ will probably be flooded with demands for action in, oh, maybe 30 or more other states? But whether or not anything comes of it, we in Texas know that this has been formally sent. Matt Angle is a dedicated worker for Texas Democrats and their legal rights. He argued against Delay's gerrymandering before the Supreme Court. He is involved with this, too, with his Lone Star Project (run out of DC, but representing TX Democratic interests in Washington with his wife, Dolly).

This is a long read, and I tried to break it up somewhat to make it easier on the eye. But Hebert lays out this stuff in detail, and it will be difficult for Holder to ignore--I hope!


LAW OFFICES OF J. Gerald Hebert
J. Gerald Hebert, P.C. Attorney at Law
5019 Waple Lane - Alexandria, VA 22304 - [phone] - e-mail: [e-mail]

April 15, 2009

The Honorable Eric Holder, Jr. Attorney General
u.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear Attorney General Holder:

I am writing to request that the Department of Justice investigate the activities of Mr. Rusty Hicks of Texarkana, Texas. Mr. Hicks, who is white, has been harassing and attempting to intimidate political activists in the African-American community in Texarkana for years. In particular, Mr. Hicks is obsessed with the activities of Ms. Willie Ray, a 72-year old African-American city councilwoman in Texarkana, who has served on the city council for 12 years. I have represented Ms. Ray in several legal proceedings in Texas and I am writing this letter on her behalf.

Ms. Ray represents Ward 2 on the Texarkana City Council, and lives at

, as reflected on the attached property tax form of the City of Texarkana. Ms. Ray's residential address is also reflected on Ms. Ray's voter registration card (also attached), where Ms. Ray has been registered to vote for the last 29 years. Her residential address is located within Ward 2.

Recently, Mr. Hicks, or a person acting at his direction or in coordination with rum, visited a property that Ms. Ray owns outside the city limits of Texarkana, and posing as a census taker, asked her the address there. In addition, Mr. Hicks has followed Ms. Ray for the last several years and has admitted taking "video surveillance" of Ms. Ray in order to attempt to prove that she resides outside the city. Using his video surveillance tapes and the information he gathered under false pretenses, Mr. Hicks then filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General's office earlier this year claiming Ms. Ray does not live in Ward 2. Because public records show Ms. Ray lives at 1617 Gatling Street, Mr. Hicks and those who submitted sworn statements in making this claim against Ms. Ray knowingly filed a baseless and false complaint with the Texas Attorney General.

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To make matters worse, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott did not sumn1arily reject Hicks' complaint as baseless based on the public record, as he should have. Instead, his office referred Mr. Hicks' complaint to the local district attorney in Texarkana. Mr. Abbott, as you may know, has engaged in racially selective law enforcement activities in connection with prosecutions of the Texas Election Code. His office has pursued criminal charges against nearly twenty Texas voters for the hypertechnical election code violation of failing to sign an absentee ballot envelope. All of those charged were minorities except for one, and all were Democrats.

Attorney General Abbott claimed these prosecutions were to stop voter fraud, even though all of the defendants had done nothing more than simply mail the absentee ballot for a friend or neighbor, usually elderly disabled voters unable to physically mail ballots themselves. Mr. Abbott also used racially charged training materials that suggested AfricanAmericans are prone to commit voter fraud. As a result of his racially selective enforcement of the election code, Mr. Abbott was sued in federal court charging him with violations of the Voting Rights Act. See Willie Ray v. State a/Texas, Case No. 06-cv-385 (E.D. Tex.). The Ray case was eventually settled with Mr. Abbott agreeing to change his prosecution practices such that he would not pursue individual cases against those who assist elderly disabled voters for failing to sign a ballot envelope unless there was evidence of voter fraud. Mr. Abbott's recent forwarding of Mr. Hicks' baseless complaint concerning Ms. Ray to the Texarkana district attorney is inconsistent with Mr. Abbott's pledge in the settlement agreement in the Ray case and demonstrates that, despite the Ray litigation, Mr. Abbott's office is continuing to this day to pursue improper and racially targeted "voter fraud" investigations and prosecutions.

In addition to targeting minorities on charges of "voter fraud," Mr. Abbott has refused to take any action against Anglos who engage in apparent voter fraud. Last year, for example, his office declined to act in a matter involving an Anglo office-holder who does not actually live at his voting address. Specifically, Mr. Abbott refused to take or encourage any enforcement action against Anglo Republican State Legislator, Frank Corte, who claims a vacant lot, with no domicile or physical structure of any type, as his voting residence. Representative Corte actually lives in an apartment located several blocks outside the State Legislative District he represents. Details of the Frank Corte "vacant lot legislator" episode were widely reported by Texas news outlets. See also the attached letter to Attorney General Abbott in October 2008.

Yet when an Anglo files a complaint alleging that Ms. Ray, an African-American, does not live in the City of Texarkana, Mr. Abbott's office does not even take the time to review the public record (which disproves the complaint) and to dismiss the complaint as frivolous, but instead refers the matter to the local District Attorney for criminal prosecution. Mr. Abbott's failure to act regarding Representative Corte -despite strong indicia of improper conduct -stands in stark contrast to Mr. Abbott's facilitation of Mr. Hicks' harassment and intimidation of African-Americans like Ms. Ray.


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Previous attempts under the Bush Administration to get the Department of Justice to investigate Mr. Hicks' acts of intimidation and to protect minority voting rights in Texarkana fell on deaf ears." Indeed, with respect to the attached letter to the Department of Justice in 2007, the Department not only failed to take any action on the matter, it did not even respond to the complaint.

We urge the Department to immediately investigate Mr. Hicks' acts of harassment and intimidation, as well as the Texas Attorney General's racially selective law enforcement practices, and to take action as appropriate. I have additional documentation of this matter and would be happy to share additional information with Departmental prosecutors and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Sincerely,
J. Gerald Herbert

cc:
David W. Ogden, Deputy Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, Associate Attorney General Rita M. Glavin, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division Loretta King, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division

[Why Syzygy]

1. PLEASE edit out the personal address!

Probably not a good idea, given our lurkers. May even be against the rules. Is this a publicly printed article?

[DFW]

3. Ms. Ray's address has been removed

This was an open letter, not some private correspondence I was copied on.

[Why Syzygy]

4. Thanks.

I get queasy thinking about some of the nuts out there.
(However, you inserted the italic bracket when you edited :blush: )

[DFW]

5. Remind me not to apply for a job as an editor

As for the nuts out there, Ms. Ray's address is well enough known to the locals, as she is a
public figure in a small town, and the letter was, as I said, an open one, but it certainly
did not distract from the issue to remove it, so no sweat.

[Why Syzygy]

7. :thumbsup:

:thumbsup: Thanks for posting. Let's see where this goes...

[NMDemDist2]

2. so she has a rural farm she owns or what?

where does she live?

but I do hope the USAG looks into it, sounds like harassment

[DFW]

6. She does have a street address

For whatever that is worth in a rural area like that.

It is pure harassment--Don Siegelman on a petty small scale. As long as they have nothing to
fear srom Rick Perry's TX state goons, the DOJ in DC is the only hope. I was hoping for a
somewhat more activist AG to go after stuff like this. Holder hasn't said no (yet), so I'm
reserving comment until I hear what DOJ's reply was.

[tammywammy]

8. kick