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With the Tea Partiers
One Woman, One Vote
Catherine Engelbrecht decided to get involved — True the Vote has been, for voters, the happy result.
One of the fundamental rights in our constitutional republic is the right to vote. But just as importantly, our free society is built on the idea of voter integrity: one person, one vote. When the validity of a vote, or the voting process, is called into question, both the legitimacy of the government and society as a whole suffer.
Voter integrity has always been an issue in America. If you’ve seen the movie Gangs of New York, set in the 1860s in New York City, there are scenes of the Irishmen voting, then having their hair cut to alter their appearance so that they can be sent back to vote again. In recent times, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has been charged with voter fraud. In 2008, the bipartisan Elections Board of Lake County, Indiana, actually stopped processing a stack of about 5,000 applications delivered by ACORN just before the October 6 registration deadline after the first 2,100 turned out to be phony. And of course there was the famous incident in Nevada where authorities raided ACORN headquarters on October 7, 2008, after a month-long investigation. Some of the fraudulent voter registrations seized included the Dallas Cowboys’ starting lineup.
That same year in Houston, Harris County tax assessor Paul Bettencourt found that nearly 10,000 of the 30,000 forms turned in by ACORN were invalid. All of this behavior led to questions about the integrity of our electoral process. But instead of sitting and doing nothing about it, someone did stand up, and in the true can-do spirit of what would become the Tea Party, took the bull by the horns.
That someone was Catherine Engelbrecht, the president of a high-precision oil field machine shop that she and her husband had started in the Houston area. As a mother, a small business owner, a board member of her church, and an officer of her children’s PTO, she’d had very little direct political involvement. But now her eyes were opened to a wide array of problems, not just voter fraud but the general direction of the country toward destructive statism. “I watched the gorging of our government but didn’t really process the enormity of the problem until 2008,” Engelbrecht says. “I was only one of a sea of Americans who unplugged from the matrix at about the same time.” In the spring of 2009 she attended her fist Tea Party rallies, but something about them bothered her: “I saw that the rallies were very well intentioned, but that there was no plan to move meaningfully beyond complaining. I had an overwhelming sense that we were wasting time, so I stepped away to figure out what else I could do.”
Soon enough she founded the King Street Patriots, an organization that would move beyond protesting. But the real “what-to-do” dawned on Engelbrecht in the fall of 2009. There was a need for people to work at the polls, so she and 20 others decided to volunteer as alternate judges and clerks. The experience was an eye-opener. “When we worked, we saw big problems. Not only were polls run like the typical government agency, inefficient and confusing, they were also very vulnerable to fraud, which we saw time and again,” she says. “There were people being allowed to vote without showing any identification, people who’d say ‘I don’t know who to vote for,’ at which point an election judge would jump up, escort them to the voting booth, dial in the vote, and tell the voter to ‘press here.’ ”
Engelbrecht walked away knowing something had to be done, which led the King Street Patriots to launch True the Vote. The project has one aim: to restore integrity to the American system of electing its leaders. With True the Vote, the King Street Patriots have, as she described it, “deconstructed the entire process, focusing on educating voters, examining the registry, recruiting, training and mobilizing election officials and poll workers, collecting data all along the way, then used the data to shape government action and legislative agendas to support desperately needed election code reform.”
AT THE HEART OF True the Vote is the goal of training people in everything from how to do the job of a poll watcher to how to serve as an alternate judge. Last fall, Engelbrecht says, there was such an outpouring of interest in the True the Vote program that in the weeks leading up to the elections the King Street Patriots were doing four packed trainings a week and streaming the training sessions live on the Internet. On Election Day, there were 1,000 trained and mobilized poll watchers in Harris County alone, though Engelbrecht admits that even she was not aware of the program’s scope and reach. On Election Day she received a call from a poll watcher unable to find his polling place. After he mentioned a precinct she was unaware of, she realized the gentleman was in New Jersey; he had been trained online by King Street Patriots and wanted to do his part in his state.
Since last November’s elections, True the Vote has expanded into a national program. “We currently have participation in 45 states,” Engelbrecht says. “Our goal is to equip leaders to true the vote in their own communities; examining their own processes and following the necessary steps to improve it.”
Despite attacks from the left, Engelbrecht and the King Street Patriots keep marching on. As she explains, “The True the Vote story confounds the left because it is simple and true. Simple and true presents a problem, because no one gets to manipulate it.” She adds, “True the Vote shouldn’t be something we take sides on. It should just be. The rules are the same no matter party or color. It’s not about politics, it’s about principle. If our elections aren’t truly fair, we are not truly free.”
People across the country are beginning to notice Catherine Engelbrecht and the King Street Patriots’ work. They recently won the Ronald Reagan Award at the CPAC event in Washington, D.C., and are working on trainings and summits across the country in preparation for 2012. It’s been an amazing journey for Engelbrecht, from small business owner to Tea Party organizer to recipient of national attention. But I have a feeling there’s a lot, lot more to come.
About the Author
Ned Ryun is the founder and president of American Majority, a political training institution. His “With the Tea Partiers” column run each month in the The American Spectator’s print edition. You can follow him on Twitter @nedryun.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (19) | Leave a comment
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joedoc| 4.6.11 @ 6:49AM
The democrats must hate her with a passion. Voting should be so simple really. First be registered. Second go to your polling place and your polling place only. Third show a valid picture ID. Vote. Why do the democrats have a problem with this? Oh, fewer election wins without the fraud they depend on. More people like Catherine Engelbrecht would make this a much better country to live in.
saleboter| 4.6.11 @ 7:28AM
Hmmm doing not just b*tching what a concept.
WRTolkas| 4.6.11 @ 8:03AM
Wow, beauty, bravery, and brains. A rare combination.
aposematic| 4.6.11 @ 8:13AM
Voting is the most important thing a person can do to preserve individual freedom instilled by our Founders in our Founding Documents. Watching at the pols is good; but, the only thing that will truly help stop voter fraud is to make it a capital offense punishable the same as treason since that is exactly what voter fraud is. How less simple could it be to go to the polls and vote without having to wonder if something isn't right. How far down the rat hole this country has gone just so some Politician can secure their place at the money trough that is now our Government.
David W| 4.6.11 @ 8:52AM
I'm very thankful for someone like President Obama who will do what is right and honest and inte.... oh wait. Sorry, got my wires crossed. Whooo. I'm very thank for for Ms. Engelbrecht. If we had more people like her we wouldn't have the current pinhead in the Oval office nor would we have to deal with union thugs in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Drunken Sailor| 4.6.11 @ 10:44AM
Obviousley she will not be on the christmas card list of Al Franken, Barrack Obama, most if not all Democrat politicians and definitely Chicago politicians. We owe here a debt of gratitude and should stand behind her.
Pelligrino| 4.6.11 @ 11:03AM
Which of us does not believe that 5-8% of vote counts in most elections with national-level attention (ex. Harry Reid in Nevada) are pure fraud?
Thank you. We need about 25,000 such King Street Patriots groups NOW.
Having first gone to college out of state (my first times voting) and then serving in the military and work assignments overseas, I have only voted a few times in person in the US.
So...it was an eye opener to work a poll station as a volunteer this past November.
Guess what, voter fraud is ALIVE and WELL.
No picture ID means fraud. Virginia and Texas require no picture ID?
In Virigina one may "self identify" oneself with no ID presented at all.
A 50-55 year old man tried to just present his NetFlix card as his alleged only form of ID. YES, he voted -- in Virginia.
Folks, this is laughable and pitiful. We have kids dying and geting maimed for life to try to establish honest voting in places like Iraq and Afghanistan; yet our voting here is fully corrupt.
The center of the corruption: False names/addresses in the voter registration databases.
fwb| 4.6.11 @ 12:21PM
Voting is a fundamental privilege. It is not a Right as the Framers envisioned Rights. Rights come from God. Privileges and immunities come from government, that is from man to man.
CalMark| 4.6.11 @ 2:33PM
FINALLY, someone has been able to get people going on this. Years of seeing rampant voter fraud, and no one would listen to me or join me in trying to do something.
In Chicago, I saw a "voting aid" screaming at an elderly lady to vote for John Kerry--no one said anything. I didn't either, dissuaded by the union skull-busters outside, who had been running in and out of the polling place before it opened.
As a military resident of Bexar County, Texas, every general election ballot I received was spoiled. One time I received an incorrect ballot; the County Clerk's office hung up on me every time I called about it. None other than the County Clerk, herself, laughed nastily to inform me I would not be allowed to vote in 2002: "All military Republican registrations were cancelled on January 22, 2001." I finally got a ballot (marked up and spoiled) after threatening a lawsuit.
True the Vote has just found itself a new recruit!
Clint Lovell| 4.6.11 @ 6:23PM
It's hell here in Houston. You would not believe it unless you could see it for yourself. The only thing worse than the vote rigging is the apathy of people to actually do something. I've never seen such a hotbed of cold feet.
BWilhm| 4.6.11 @ 9:40PM
I worked the polls in Houston in 2010. I found that election fraud exists and that I could stop or limit it just by my presence. The election process we have today is what we, the American people, have allowed. Commit today to change our election process back to what our founders intended. Contact True the Vote to volunteer.
Pelligrino| 4.7.11 @ 1:06AM
I now add, gasp, the 12th comment following this article.
This tells me everything I need to know about how our country is headed for the abyss.
CalMark, Clint L. and BWilhm, it is too bad. You understand, as do a handful (just a handful) of others.
This was the most vital story/topic of April 6th, frankly of the whole week. I expected to see dozens of comments beneath this article about the King Street Patriots.
I have written this here before: It matters not one wit how much you blather & blog about overspending, union thugs, corrupt pols like Chuckie Schumer, gay marriages, nuances on $61 billion vs. $72 billion....and it matters not what fundraising or grassroots work you might do for a Tea Party conservative candidate.
All your work is nullified months prior at your city's or county's voter registration office.
And by the corrupt bureaucrats entrenched in the system who "yea" or "nay" those who apply to volunteer to work at the polls on election days.
We've lost. True voting lost; we just lost again in Wisconsin's judgeship election. The margin of the vote is so close as to demand close inspection of ALL balloting. But it won't happen. Just like in Alaska's November US Senate race.
Thank God for Catherine Engelbrecht and those like her. She IS doing saint-like work, but even the denizens of political punditry here really don't care.
Until you've worked a full 16 hour shift (all day) at an inner city polling station, you just think this a non issue. You think it is hyperbole; just a handful of illegal and fraudulent voters that won't sway any real important results. And you're a fool.
This article should have had 99 comments by now. This is our national crisis.
Our voting everywhere is corrupt.
You sluggards bring ruin to my country and that of my children and grandchildren.
CAROL | 4.7.11 @ 3:46AM
Democrats stealing another election...
This time in Wisconsin...
What else is new?
It's what they do.
Annie| 4.8.11 @ 7:26PM
A commentator recently stated, in the US, 1% of the people are pushing the changes, 9% are watching them do it, and the other 90% have no clue. I am working on the last two groups. Join me. Not be loud, don't name-call. Craft a short
compelling warning, and share it around. See how it flies. I find alot of supporters I didn't know about. But calm is the way to present it.
shipley130| 4.11.11 @ 2:03PM
This is called the "getting the right candidate in office, so we can destroy America" plan.
Steelbutterfly| 4.14.11 @ 7:44PM
I volunteered (and continue to do so) with King Street Patriots during the last election cycle. The amount of fraud is unbelievable! However, if you want to make a difference, go to the True the Vote website and CONTRIBUTE! www.truethevote.org Annie is correct about the overall attitude of most voters. We MUST ALL talk about this with as many people as possible in order to increase awareness and get enough volunteers to stop the assault on our republic. And volunteer to be an election judge or clerk on election day! Having people who know what should be happening is a big help to deter what should not be happening!
Janice Fuller| 5.5.11 @ 7:36PM
We have a similar group fighting voter fraud in Cincinnati, Ohio called "The Fraud Squad". We are training tea party members to be actual election judges - poll workers. Would love to hook up with Catherine to coordinate our efforts nationwide! Janice Fuller
Christian Louboutin | 6.23.11 @ 4:10AM
One of the fundamental rights in our constitutional republic is the right to vote. But just as importantly, our free society is built on the idea of voter integrity: one person, one vote. When the validity of a vote, or the voting process, is called into question, both the legitimacy of the government and society as a whole suffer.
Creative Recreation | 8.10.11 @ 10:48PM
is good