Texas: Attorney General: Voter ID education documents can be withheld from public | San Antonio Express-News

Details of how Texas spent a big chunk of $2.5 million of taxpayer money for a voter ID education campaign during last November’s election will remain secret. Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Office has ruled that the Texas secretary of state’s office can withhold records from the public showing where the state bought television and radio ads to promote court-ordered changes to a controversial voter ID law. The ruling also allows for the names of an estimated 1,800 community groups that partnered with the state on the education campaign to remain hidden from public view. A voter ID lawsuit has been winding through the courts since 2013, and the U.S. Supreme Court could decide as soon as this week whether it will hear an appeal from Texas. The law was weakened for the November election by a federal judge, who also ordered the state to conduct a robust education effort, after it was found to discriminate against minorities.

Texas: Federal judge: Pasadena deliberately worked to reduce voting clout of Latinos | Houston Chronicle

A federal judge in Houston dealt a major blow Friday to the City of Pasadena in a closely watched voting rights case, ruling that officials deliberately diluted the clout of Hispanic voters by revising the system for electing City Council members. Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal ordered Pasadena to revert to its previous use of single-member districts for the upcoming May elections and ruled the city would need pre-clearance from the Department of Justice for any future changes. “In Pasadena, Texas, Latino voters … do not have the same right to vote as their Anglo neighbors,” Rosenthal concluded in the 113-page decision released late Friday. Patricia Gonzales, one of the plaintiffs who filed the federal lawsuit, said fairness can be restored to the city election system. “All right,” she said, when informed of the ruling. “Now each section will be able to vote on who they want and their voices will be heard. I’m very pleased with the outcome.”

Texas: Dithering federal judges asked to rule on Texas political maps | The Texas Tribune

Whether they meant to or not, the three federal judges overseeing the state’s redistricting litigation have already decided the maps are legal enough for three general elections. But they have never finally resolved all of the challenges initially made to Texas’ political maps back in May 2011, when lawyers who believe the maps are discriminatory and unfair went to court seeking a remedy. That’s what the courts are for, after all — to protect one party from harming another party. Or maybe that’s to protect one political party from harming another political party. The three-judge panel in charge of the case appears to be stuck; they have not acted since a hearing in 2014. And now that another election has passed, those lawyers ended 2016 with a new plea, asking the judges to wrap up their work by mid-month. In their filing last week, the lawyers wrote that they hope to get a ruling in time to finish this court fight before another federal census is done and another set of maps has been drawn by a Legislature that might have been elected using unfair political lines.

Texas: Plaintiffs in redistricting case ask federal district court to rule | Dallas Morning News

Plaintiffs in an ongoing court battle over Texas’ 2011 district maps have filed a joint motion calling for the federal judges considering the case to issue a ruling by next month. The plaintiffs — including the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, the Texas Latino Redistricting Task Force and the League of United Latin American Citizens — sued the state in 2011, claiming the maps adopted for state House, Senate and Texas congressional districts were unconstitutional and harm minority voters.

Texas: Elector says he couldn’t vote amid voter ID confusion | The Texas Tribune

Chris Suprun, a Texas Republican elector, caused a stir this year by raising the possibility that he would cast his Electoral College ballot for someone other than President-elect Donald Trump. Journalists bombarded the Dallas man with questions following his admission. Among them: For whom did he vote in November? He didn’t vote, it turns out. But he says he tried. “I would have voted for myself. I didn’t get that chance,” Suprun told The Texas Tribune. … In July, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas’ voter ID law discriminated against voters in minority groups less likely to possess one of seven accepted types of identification. The state has appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Ramos is weighing whether Texas discriminated on purpose. Ahead of the November election, Ramos ordered a temporary fix: Folks without ID could still vote if they presented an alternate form of ID and signed a form swearing a “reasonable impediment” kept them from obtaining photo ID. That’s why Suprun believed he could vote when he showed up to an early voting location in Glenn Heights on Oct. 26, even though he did not have photo ID. Suprun said his driver’s license was inside his wallet, which he had left in a family van that was away for repairs. He said he arrived at the polls carrying his city water bill, cable bill and voter registration card — documents that should have fit Ramos’ softened rules.

Texas: Team at Rice builds machine to transform the way we vote | Houston Chronicle

The drumbeat of election rigging and foreign hacking of voting machines have energized ongoing efforts to develop a new model of digital election equipment designed to produce instantly verifiable results and dual records for security. Election experts say this emerging system, one of three publicly funded voting machine projects across the country, shows potential to help restore confidence in the country’s election infrastructure, most of which hasn’t been updated in more than a decade. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. It’s taken years and years to get it done,” said Dana DeBeauvoir, the Travis County clerk and leader of the voting machine project. “Now that we’ve had this election, there’s renewed interest.” A prototype of the system, dubbed STAR Vote, sits in an engineering lab at Rice University, and bidding is open for manufacturers who want to produce it wholesale. Similar efforts to innovate voting systems are in the works in Los Angeles and San Francisco. “County clerks in these jurisdictions are the rock stars of running elections,” said Joe Kiniry, CEO of Free & Fair, an election systems supplier currently bidding on contracts to manufacture the designs of both Travis and Los Angeles counties. “If they have success in what they do, it will have, in my opinion, a massive impact on the whole U.S.”

Texas: Paxton formally asks Supreme Court to take up voter ID | USA Today

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday formally asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the state’s controversial voter identification law, which was ruled unconstitutional this year by a federal appeals court on grounds that it harmed the voting rights of minorities. Paxton, a first-term Republican, had signaled earlier that he would ask the high court to overrule the decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and allow Texas to resume enforcing voter ID under the law as it was passed by the Legislature in 2013. “The success of American democracy hinges on whether or not voters trust the integrity of the election process,” Paxton said in a late-afternoon news release. “Voter ID laws both prevent fraud as well as ensure that election results accurately reflect the will of Texas voters. The Legislature enacted common sense reforms, which should be respected by this nation’s courts.”

Texas: Was Trump’s Voter Fraud Claim Inspired By Gregg Phillips’ Tweet? | Austin American-Statesman

The Sunday after the presidential election, Gregg Phillips, founder of a health care analytics firm in Austin, Texas, tweeted, “We have verified more than three million votes cast by non-citizens. We are joining @truethevote to initiate legal action.” The next day, Phillips’s assertion, based solely on his tweet, was splashed across the InfoWars site – run by Austin conspiracy theorist Alex Jones – that has become an agitprop site for President-elect Donald Trump, with the headline, “Report: Three Million Votes in Presidential Election Cast by Illegal Aliens. Trump may have won popular vote.” It was quickly picked up by the Drudge Report, a premier aggregator of the web with its own pro-Trump bent, which changed “Report” to “Claim.” Phillips, a former executive with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and prolific tweeter on voting fraud, was astonished his tweet was given such prominence. No one had called him.

Texas: Wichita County is considering revising some ballot procedures after election delay | The Times Record

Wichita County is considering revising some ballot procedures after election results were delayed November 8. Wichita County Clerk Lori Bohannon presented the election canvass to the county commissioners at their regular meeting Monday morning. Bohannon said several factors contributed to the voting report that delayed a final local tally of votes by several hours. One reason was the more than 3,000 paper ballots mailed in – the most she has seen in her history with the county, Bohannon said. Usually the Monday prior to election day, an early ballot crew checks the signatures on the forms and other important information. This year, they were not able to review all of the forms on Monday.

Texas: DOJ: Texas voter ID law intentionally discriminates | USA Today

Election Day has come and gone but the court battle over Texas’ controversial voter-identification law rages on. In documents filed in federal court late last week, the U.S. Justice Department argued that not only does the 2011 law violate the voting rights of minority Texans, but that the elected leaders who pushed the measure known as Senate Bill 14 through the Legislature intended to disenfranchise those voters. “This discriminatory impact was not merely an unintended consequence of SB 14,” the Justice Department said in its filing. “It was, in part, SB 14’s purpose. Compelling evidence establishes that Texas enacted SB 14 at least in part because of its detrimental effects on African-American and Hispanic voters.”

Texas: In latest voter ID filing, feds argue Texas discriminated on purpose | The Texas Tribune

Months after a federal appeals court ruled that Texas lawmakers discriminated against African-American and Latino voters in passing a strict voter identification law, the Obama administration and civil rights groups are asking a judge to go a step further — by finding that the lawmakers did it on purpose. “The discriminatory impact was not merely an unintended consequence” of the 2011 law, known as Senate Bill 14, Justice Department lawyers wrote in a brief filed late Friday. “It was, in part, SB 14’s purpose.” The 45-page brief was part of the latest back-and-forth in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas — one of two legal fronts in a convoluted battle over identification requirements that were temporarily softened during November’s presidential election.

Texas: Both in court and under Trump, Texas Voter ID law faces uncertain future | The Texas Tribune

Five years ago, Texas passed one of the strictest Voter ID laws in the country. The legal fight began immediately and has continued through this day, with critics of the law getting some assistance from the Obama administration’s Justice Department. Now, with Republican Donald Trump set to ascend to the Oval Office, the law’s future is more uncertain than ever. Among the questions up in the air: Whom will Trump nominate to the U.S. Supreme Court seat left vacant by Antonin Scalia’s death, and how will a Trump-led Justice Department operate compared to the current administration? “We’re not going to stand idle when a law is discriminatory,” said Leah Aden, senior counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “The strategy may be different depending on who is in office, but we’ll fight it regardless of who’s in power.”

Texas: Pasadena voting rights case opens in federal court | Houston Chronicle

On the north side of Pasadena, mostly Latino residents live amid broken sidewalks, faulty drainage and pockmarked streets. On the south side of Spencer Highway, where most residents are white, municipal parks are manicured and the streets and sidewalks are better maintained. The disparity in infrastructure is at the heart of a voting rights case that opened in federal court Thursday in which a group of Latino residents is challenging the city’s newly revised system of government, saying it discriminates against minority voters and intentionally dilutes their power. By creating two at-large council seats and eliminating two of the eight district seats, the suit says, the city violated the federal Voting Rights Act, making it harder for Latino-backed candidates to get elected and leading to unfair allocation of resources.

Texas: Pasadena trial to begin amid uncertainty about voting rights under Trump | Houston Chronicle

The Houston City Council in 1979 consisted of eight men – seven Anglos and one African-American – including real estate developers, lawyers and a former major league baseball catcher. All were elected citywide, although five nominally represented geographic districts in which they lived. A year later the council had grown to 14 members, nine of them elected from single-member districts. The revamped body included three African-American men, one Latino man and two women, both Anglo. Some of the members elected under the new system would have a lasting impact on their city. Anthony Hall would serve as chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority board and as a top mayoral aide. Eleanor Tinsley would establish a legacy as a champion of parks and beautification efforts. Ben Reyes would become a leader of local Latino politics before serving time in federal prison for bribery. All of this happened because of lawsuits filed under the federal Voting Rights Act. Next week in a Houston federal courtroom, this landmark law will again be invoked in a challenge to an allegedly discriminatory council system, this time in a suburban city that’s undergone a dramatic demographic transformation.

Texas: Researchers Develop Hard-to-Hack Voting Machine | VoA News

National security experts say hackers backed by foreign governments are trying to influence the U.S. election, and the nation’s voting infrastructure is dangerously vulnerable. Time for an overhaul, they say. But when county officials in Austin, the capital of Texas, wanted to replace their voting equipment in 2012, they didn’t like what they saw. Electronic machines on the market had security problems. Voter-marked paper ballots can leave room for interpretation. So County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir called Rice University computer science professor Dan Wallach, who has been poking holes in voting-machine security for years. He’s testified before Congress on the subject. Now DeBeauvoir wanted him to design a new one. “Wow,” he says. “That doesn’t happen very often.”

Texas: After early voting glitches, officials hope new voter ID rules clear | The Texas Tribune

Two weeks of early voting revealed strains and missteps as Texas tried to comply with a court order reining in its voter ID law. When Election Day dawns, civil rights advocates, along with state and county officials, hope that most wrinkles have been ironed out for the ultimate test. “I think there’s been a needed pressure on the counties, as well as a public awareness,” Marisa Bono, southwest regional counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense Educational Fund (MALDEF), said Friday — Texans’ last day to vote early before Tuesday’s anticipated poll rush. “We’ve certainly had less complaints this week than we did last week.” Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State Carlos Cascos, said her office was also fielding fewer calls from confused or concerned voters, making her optimistic Election Day will go smoothly.

Texas: Report: Texas has closed most polling places since court ruling | The Texas Tribune

Five Texas counties rank among the top 10 nationwide for closing the greatest percentage of their polling places since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, according to a new report released less than a week before Election Day. And taken together, Texas counties have closed more polling places than any other state, the report found. According to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a civil rights advocacy group, since the high court found Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional — ruling that Texas and other states with history of racial discrimination no longer needed federal pre-clearance when changing election laws — Texas counties have closed at least 403 polling places. This will be the first election in 50 years conducted without the full force of the Voting Rights Act. Fisher, Medina, Aransas and Coke and Irion counties ranked the highest in polling place reductions, closing more than half of their voting locations. In terms of total polling places closed, Texas is followed by Arizona, which closed 202 polling places. Louisiana holds third place, with 103 poll closures.

Texas: Someone in Texas lined a Trump sign with razor blades, then left it at a polling place | The Washington Post

Let’s just come out and say it: 2016 has been a slow-burning dumpster fire, and the presidential election is largely responsible. But in the weeks leading up to Nov. 8, the doomsday aura surrounding American politics seems to have most overwhelmed one state in particular — Texas. Some counties there are using paper ballots; voters have blamed electronic glitches on nefarious, and unfounded, ballot-swapping schemes; and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has made unsubstantiated conspiracy theories of voter fraud in Texas a talking point during some of his recent stump speeches. Now, there’s this: Somebody in the Dallas metropolitan area glued razor blades to the bottom of a Trump campaign sign this week and plunged it into the ground outside an early-voting polling place. It was left in front of the official polling site sign, according to a statement obtained by ABC affiliate WFAA-TV, blocking “vote here” directions, so a do-gooder decided to relocate it at about 6:15 a.m. Tuesday.

Texas: Harris County early voters greeted with incomplete ID instructions | Houston Chronicle

A day after election officials were reminded to tell voters they could cast ballots if they do not have photo identification, poll workers across Harris County on Tuesday still were giving incomplete instructions to voters waiting in line. A federal judge ordered the state to dilute Texas’ stringent voter ID law to offer citizens without government-issued identifications – about 600,000 people, many of them minorities – the chance to cast ballots using alternative forms of identification. The judge’s order followed a ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year that Texas’ voter ID law violated federal ballot-box protections for minorities. Under the watered-down provisions – implemented for the November election only – a voter may cast a ballot after signing a declaration explaining the “reasonable impediment” that prevented him from getting a photo ID, such as a lack of transportation, disability or work schedule. The “declaration” voters must present an supporting identifying document, such as a birth certificate, bank statement or utility bill.

Texas: Lawmakers mull paper backups for electronic voting machines | KGBT

Following repeated allegations by Republican Donald Trump that the election may be rigged to ensure a win for Democrat Hillary Clinton, Texas lawmakers are actively considering ways to boost confidence in the state’s elections during next year’s legislative session. Among the ideas drawing interest: adding paper trail backups to thousands of electronic voting machines. The idea was brought up in a tweet Saturday by Gov. Greg Abbott. “That’s a great idea & we are considering it as an election reform measure. Election integrity is essential,” Abbott tweeted in response to a voter who tweeted that he wanted printed proof of how he cast his ballot. Over the last decade, several Texas lawmakers have filed bills to require paper trails on electronic voting machine. The proposals often include adding a printer in a sealed case to the state’s electronic voting machines so voters could check their votes against the receipt. The paper trail could be consulted in the event of a recount.

Texas: Flouting Federal Courts On Voter ID Isn’t Helping Texas’ Legal Defense | TPM

There is, perhaps, never a good time for local elections administrators to be undermining federal court orders, ignoring state officials and providing voters with false information about what is required to cast a ballot. But for poll workers in Texas who have been caught spreading inaccurate information about the state’s voter ID law, the timing is particularly unfortunate, given the legal scrutiny the law already is under and is continuing to the attract. The same civil rights groups and voting advocates who have been engaged in a lengthy legal battle over the law — which has been deemed discriminatory by multiple courts — are now reporting that some county officials are failing to educate voters about the alternatives available to those without the required ID. At least one county faces a lawsuit for posting inaccurate information about the law, while the Texas secretary of state has been alerted to numerous other polling places misinforming votes. The on-the-ground confusion comes as Texas is seeking to have the major ruling against the law — a 5th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals decision that deemed it discriminatory in its effect — overturned by the Supreme Court.

Texas: Voting complaints in Texas include confusion over ID requirements | Houston Chronicle

Marked by record turnout, Texas’ first week of early voting has been plagued by widespread confusion about controversial photo ID requirements with cases of people being turned away at the polls, civil rights groups monitoring state activity said Friday. A coalition of civil rights groups manning a hotline says it has received around 325 reports from Texas since early voting started Monday, most of which involved disorder, inaccurate information and intimidation tactics by election officials and poll workers surrounding the state’s voter ID law. Other complaints involved long lines, malfunctioning machines and an armed person in North Texas talking politics to voters in line. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund on Friday filed a lawsuit against Bexar County for having outdated voter ID information, including posters, website materials and a recorded message. The county agreed to a temporary restraining order.

Texas: Amid early voting rush, Texas sees voter ID hiccups | The Texas Tribune

This much is clear after two days of early voting in Texas: Legal wrangling over the state’s voter identification law is stirring confusion at the polls. Amid Texans’ mad dash to polling places this week, the front end of 12 days of voting before Election Day, civil rights groups and some voters are questioning how some county election officials are portraying the state’s voter identification requirements, which a federal judge softened in August. Among the complaints in pockets of Texas: years-old posters inaccurately describing the rules — more than a dozen instances in Bexar County — and poll workers who were reluctant to tell voters that some could cast ballots without photo identification. Though it’s not clear that anyone walked away from the polls because of misinformation or partial information, civil rights advocates called the sporadic reports troubling.

Texas: Trump suggests voter fraud is rampant in Texas – where his party oversees the system | McClatchy DC

Donald Trump is worried about “vote flipping” in Texas, a state where Republicans control every statewide elected office, oversee county elections supervisors and maintain the voter registration system. “A lot of call-ins about vote flipping at the voting booths in Texas,” Trump tweeted. “People are not happy. BIG lines. What is going on?” A Tarrant County woman said her vote switched from Republican to Democrat when she cast her ballot at an electronic voting machine earlier this week, but an investigation determined she did not follow the proper instructions. “Our investigations have indicated that the voter did not follow the directions for straight-party voting when they inadvertently click the ‘enter’ button or turn the wheel, causing the change in votes,” Tarrant County elections administrator Frank Phillips said in a statement. “Further, in each incident where we could actually speak to a voter, they tell us that they discovered the changed vote on the summary screen display. This shows that the machine is working exactly as it should.” Phillips said on Thursday his office investigated six first-hand cases of voters claiming their votes were not tallied correctly since the start of early voting on Monday. None of the investigations showed a machine tallying votes incorrectly.

Texas: Voter ID ad dollars do not go far | Houston Chronicle

Texas is not taking part in a discount offered by broadcasters that could have allowed it to air up to four times more television and radio ads to educate the public about changes to the state’s voter ID law. The Texas Secretary of State’s office has been running a 30-second voter ID television and radio spot in English and Spanish for almost two weeks, and has estimated that it will spend at least $1.3 million on a paid media campaign through Election Day to fulfill a court order. Experts, though, have said the TV and radio spend is not nearly enough to spread a message on airwaves in a state the size of Texas, which has 20 total television markets and two of the most expensive in the country in Houston and the Dallas/Fort Worth area. The Texas Association of Broadcasters, which represents the state’s over-the-air television and radio industry, offers a discount program that guarantees to triple or quadruple the ad buying power of a strapped-for-cash government agency or nonprofit seeking to get out a general education message. However, state broadcasters, who use public airwaves to disseminate their programming, said Texas’ voter outreach program did not qualify for the TAB discount.

Texas: Officials deny complaints of election machine malfunctions in Texas | UPI

Early voters in several Texas counties have taken to social media to complain touch screen voting machines switched their straight party Republican votes to ballots for Hillary Clinton, though election monitors said no instances of faulty machines have been verified. The problem, officials said, was probably user error by voters who are unfamiliar with touch screen technology. The Dallas Morning News reports voters from at least four counties complained on social media the electronic machine that produces their ballot switched their vote from a straight line Republican ticket to a vote for Hillary Clinton. Other down-ballot races were not affected, voters said. Elections officials in all but one of the affected counties said no voters had registered official complaints. In a handful of instances, voters took the ballot to poll workers, saying their ballot reflected something other than what they had intended. In those instances, officials said the poll workers voided the ballot and moved the voter to a different machine where they were able to correct the problem.

Texas: How Secure Is Electronic Voting In Texas? | Houston Public Media

Joan Cunningham grew up in Canada and remembers watching people vote the old fashioned way: Fill out a paper ballot, drop it in a box. She understands electronic voting machines can be more efficient. “But my professional life was spent as an epidemiologist. I used, and still do, computers a lot for everything I do. And I have some practical insights into the things that can go wrong, data that can get corrupted or changed or lost,” Cunningham says. She wonders how vote recording errors and even fraud, can be prevented when such machines generate no paper records for backup. Pamela Smith says Cunningham’s concerns are legitimate. Smith is president of Verified Voting, a nonprofit, non-partisan group that examines the role of technology in elections. “People sometimes think software is infallible,” Smith says, “but in fact it’s programmed by humans, and humans are not infallible. So you can have errors in programming. There have been actual errors in programming in past elections that have been uncovered by doing audits and recounts.”

Texas: Officials prepare for uncertainty, confusion as early voting begins Monday | Houston Chronicle

Harris County politicos are bracing for uncertainty with Monday’s start to early balloting, as many voters remain confused about Texas’ voter identification requirements and Donald Trump continues to warn – without proof – of a “rigged election.” … Amid the tumult, local Democrats eager to keep tabs on balloting have rushed to train as poll watchers. “Why are the Democrats gearing up? Well it’s because the Republican presidential nominee is saying he’s not going to abide by the results. He’s saying the election is rigged,” said Harris County Democratic Party Chair Lane Lewis, projecting that roughly 180 people will complete one of the party’s poll watching courses. The Democratic Party certified just 20-30 poll watchers for the 2012 general election, Lewis said.

Texas: Worries of ‘rigged election’ shouldn’t change voting security in Texas polling places, officials say | Dallas Morning News

The Texas elections office isn’t calling for increases in voter security throughout the state, despite widespread concern over Donald Trump’s claims of a “rigged election.” Secretary of State spokeswoman Alicia Pearce said the office isn’t advising precincts to ramp up security past the usual protocol because Texas’ voting system doesn’t lend itself easily to organized voter fraud.
The Texas elections office isn’t calling for increases in voter security throughout the state, despite widespread concern over Donald Trump’s claims of a “rigged election.” Secretary of State spokeswoman Alicia Pearce said the office isn’t advising precincts to ramp up security past the usual protocol because Texas’ voting system doesn’t lend itself easily to organized voter fraud. “It is incredibly decentralized. That’s 254 entities across the state using a variety of voting equipment,” Pearce said. “That sort of decentralization coupled with our cross-checks would make predetermining election night results nearly impossible.” The Republican presidential nominee set off a flurry of anxiety among voters this week with his comments. His running mate, Mike Pence, explained that they were in reference to biased coverage, but Trump tweeted Sunday that he was also speaking about fraud in polling locations.

Texas: Voter fraud being investigated by state in Tarrant County | The Star-Telegram

Less than a month before the Nov. 8 election, allegations of voter fraud in Tarrant County are under investigation by the state, prompting concern that the timing may intimidate some voters — and possibly lay groundwork for the Legislature to enact more restrictions on voting next year. The complaints focus on mail-in ballots, which allow people to vote from their homes without any ID or verification of identity. Supporters have long said mail-in balloting is crucial for overseas residents, the military and senior citizens. Critics maintain that such voting is ripe for abuse and raises concerns about “vote harvesting,” in which people could fill out and return other people’s ballots. Some say the investigation is politically motivated; others say it’s addressing a practice that has been a problem for years. “The Republicans have been looking for a blockbuster case to demonstrate that voter fraud isn’t just a series of small mistakes,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “If some of these allegations turn out to be true, they may finally have their white whale.