Heflin wants House seat back or a new election

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Heflin, a Republican member of the House since 1983 and chairman of its Appropriations Committee, lost to Democratic businessman Hubert Vo by 32 votes earlier this month. But Heflin's campaign alleges that those election results include at least 248 irregularities that could have altered the outcome.

Taylor said he will file notice today that the Heflin campaign intends to contest the election in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. That will require that House Speaker Tom Craddick order a House committee to investigate Heflin's allegations.

After the committee reports its findings, the full House will decide whether to seat Vo or Heflin or call for a new election. The House's decision will be binding, said a spokesman for the Texas secretary of state's office.

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http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/politics/2916692

GET OVER IT!

Shut up and go home...asshole.

...they don't think they have to.

a recount of the Presidential election to prove his point! yeah right.

They are only flawed and unreliable when a Republican loses. Please, try and keep with the program.

Take note people...republicans NEVER EVER...under ANY circumstances, accept defeat.. They will DEMAND..(and get) recounts and they will investigate and squawk and fuss and fume until they get their way.. That's why they WIN.. they never expect anything else..

You watch.. before this is over, VO will be demonized as trying to STEAL Heflin's seat away, and Heflin will be lauded as a TRUE patriot for trying to single-handedly save democracy:puke:

We need to not accept defeat either. They know they can get away with it, so they do it.

who kidnapped and tried to claim custody of his housekeeper's kid because he claimed he could offer them a better life. The case was thrown out by the judge who ruled that heflin lacked legal standing wrt the child. Seems he's in the habit of trying to grab what isn;t rightfully his.

The last time this mechanism was used (unfortunately by a Democrat) it did not work. The worst that the House can do is order an new election and we will do our best to make sure that Vo wins by a larger margin. If the GOP is arrogant to try this, then we need to get behind Vo and keep the GOP from stealing this election.

and tin foil haters...

ah...
:nopity:
:eyes:

It is all Delay. Harris County is not the only county where House Rep is changing too. Another Repuke loser from South TX is also changing a Dem winner.

"Eric Opiela of Karnes City, who lost a House race to Democratic candidate Yvonne Gonzalez-Toureilles of Alice by 835 votes, reaffirmed his plans to challenge the results, based on what he says are many instances of ineligible voters casting ballots."

Must be hard losing to a Hispanic woman.

"There is no way to determine whether or not there were 835 fraudulent votes cast or 4,000 fraudulent votes cast or more," Opiela consultant Todd Smith said."

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/politics/stories/MYSA112404.3B.contestation.8817d4a8.html

So the Repukes can call fraud but us Dems can not. BASTARDS!!!!!

Let's have a new vote for All of it.The whole state, and for the pres too.

I found some problems with the numbers here in TX. The largest counties have funny numbers. Precincts are not belonging with the assigned state representative and congressional districts. The state and the county differ from each other.

The whole state and country needs to redo the election.

A friend e-mailed me that someone she knew and trusted caught a touch-screen voting machine changing her vote from Kerry to Bush on the review screen in Austin, Texas. This was during early voting, the day before Election Day. The woman complained to the pollworker, who gave her a new ballot. The same thing happened--right in front of the pollworker! The voter asked to have the voting machine removed and taken out of commission, but her request was refused. She then called the Austin Democratic Party, who told her they'd had numerous complaints of the very same thing.

Bush's phony mandate wasn't just inflated in the swing states. He must've figured nobody's question a bunch of extra votes in his own backyard.

Bev Harris should look at Austin, definitely.

First, here are a couple of facts.

One, we do not have "touch screen" machines in Travis County. We use a system called "E-Slate" which is an electronic system that uses an etch-a-sketch style selector wheel and a keypad to vote. The company which manufactures this system states that they consider the calibration of touch screens to be a problem, which is why they eschew that particular technology.

Two, no one early voted the day before Election Day. Early voting in Texas ended on Friday, October 29. Election Day was Tuesday, November 2.

Now, an observation. If Bush's minions tried to inflate his vote total in Austin, they really, really sucked at it. John Kerry carried Travis County with 56 percent of the vote. His total was 71,000 more than Al Gore got when he lost Travis County in 2000. Bush's total vote was up by only 6,000 over 2000---not much when you consider all the Republicans who've been moving to the western part of the county. By the way, our county clerk (who oversees elections) Dana DeBeauvoir, is a Democrat.

I bring all of this up not because I am a fan of electronic voting (I'm not) nor because I don't think there were instances of fraud and denial of the right to vote (I think there were). But I believe that the circulation of vague, unsubstantiated horror stories about e-voting do nothing to help our cause and actually do harm.

Now in fact there was a problem with e-voting in Travis County, having to do with casting a straight ticket vote for the Democratic ticket. The first I heard of it came in this email, which was first posted to the Austin$Kerry Yahoo Group on October 21:

>
> > Yesterday a friend voted early at a polling
> > location in Austin. She voted straight Democratic. When she did the
> final check, lo and behold every vote was for the Democratic candidates
> except that it showed that she had voted for Bush/Cheney for
president/vice
> pres.
> >
> > She immediately got a poll official. On her vote, it was corrected. She
> called the Travis County Democratic headquarters. They took all her
> information. They told her that she wasn't the first to report a similar
> incident and that they are looking into it.
> >
> > So, check before you leave the polling booth, and if anything is wrong,
> get it corrected immediately.
> > Report any irregularities to your local Democratic headquarters.
> >

The person who first posted that later said that it was an email received from a friend of a friend. On October 22, the Travis County Democratic Party emailed this statement:

It has come to the attention of the Travis County Democratic Party and to the attention of Dana DeBeauvoir, our Travis County Clerk, that an e-mail is circulating stating that a Travis County voter cast a straight Democratic ballot and when proofing their ballot, saw a vote marked for Bush.


To dispel the rumor: This appeared to have happened and was corrected before the ballot was cast. This was not a machine malfunction.
However, user-error can cause ballot casting errors.


The TCDP has been working closely with Travis County Elections Division and here are some facts:


-- As of Thursday evening, over 63,000 had placed their vote in Travis
County
-- This total will more than likely exceed 75,000 by Friday night
-- Travis County Elections Division has received only a handful of problems/complaints and after thoroughly checking into each one, have determined that these resulted from user-error and were not machine problems.


The County held a voting machine demonstration with the press earlier today. We have complete faith in their system in that this has been an isolated case or two and is not some sort of conspiracy as is being indicated by the e-mail.


As conscientious voters, I am sure you did or will thoroughly review your ballot before hitting the 'cast' button. If you have any questions while placing your vote, please do not hesitate to let the Election Judge on duty know BEFORE hitting the send button.


*** What happened in the case stated in the e-mail was voter error and not a machine malfunction. ***


When pressing ENTER after marking Straight Democrat, some voters inadvertently turned the SELECT wheel one click through the ballot while meaning to go to the final "PROOF" page. If you hit ENTER at that point, your cursor is over the first candidate on the ballot: Bush/Cheney.


So, the answer to this problem is this:
TELL EVERYONE TO PROOF THEIR BALLOT. If there is an error, page back and fix it and/or ask for assistance in doing so. You must fix these things BEFORE you hit CAST BALLOT.


We thank everyone who has written or called in with their concerns. We understand these concerns considering what happened in Florida in 2000. But here in Travis County, Texas in 2004 there is nothing to worry about.


Again, I do not deny that there are problems with E-voting. But in order to fight it we need to keep the level of hysteria down to a manageable level.

really people. think about this. they are just stealing this seat from the voters. if i were this vo guy, i would just show up and say "you either give me my duly elected seat or kill me." this guy apparently came from vietnam for christ's sake. these phony patriots, waving their flags, behaving just like the despots and dictators they profess to despise.