May Newsletter

• Work at home, mailings, phoning, posters, clerical, cooking etc
• Work at or for a special event (but not as a guest)
• Attendance at Federation Board Meetings/Conventions as well as committee work 
• Political work while at Federation meetings
• Travel time between events, except stopping
• Volunteering at any county, state, or Federation HQ
• Running for office -all time spent campaigning
• Presenting political programs or speeches at local civic clubs
• Campaign sign preparation, distribution and removal
• Volunteering for a Republican candidate in any capacity
• Voter Registrar
• GOTV work
• Work done at club meetings (ex: timing a debate)

We are launching a new VRW ground game initiative to help get Republicans elected in 2020.  We hope to have VRW members serve as liaisons to non-federal Republican campaigns.  While we are immersed in this COVID-19 crisis, I am recruiting our VRW liaisons so that we will be ready to strike and help win Republican races in November. 

Interested in being a VRW liaison to a non-federal campaign?  Please shoot me an email ASAP with the requested information below, and I’ll get you assigned.  We’re looking for one liaison per campaign, so please rank at least three campaigns in order of preference so I can make the liaison assignments and cover as many campaigns as possible.  VRW liaison volunteers will be notified by me to confirm their liaison assignment.

May the force be with you!

Anne Trousdale

• cell: (713) 492-4334
• email:  annet9119@gmail.com
• subject: liaison

Application information:

• Village RW is my primary club?  y/n
• Name
• Best phone number
• Email
• Candidate preference (give at least 3 choices)

Even though we have not be able to have a general meeting for a while, you have been supporting our community in many ways.  Thank you for helping our local businesses, food pantries, and community projects.  Keep up the good work!  We have received notes of gratitude from West Houston Assistance Ministries and East Spring Branch Food Pantry

Another way we can all help our community is to support our restaurants. We all need to eat, and here are a few recommendations from our board: 

• Craft Pita
• The Del
• True Foods at BVLD
• Cabo Bob’s on Fountain View
• Barnaby’s
• Ginza
• Ciro's Italian Grill
• Memorial Tacos
• Carrabba's Italian Grill
• North China Restaurant
• Hunan Inn,  9443 Katy Freeway 77024, 713-722-9027
• Escalante's 
• Cazadores Mexican Restaurant
• Chavez Mexican Cafe
• Fratelli's Ristorante

What are your favorite take-out places?  You can help these businesses by sharing this information with other members and friends. 

Don't get “corona scammed,” and stay safe!

VRW has launched a 2020 election ground game that we’re calling “Village Strike Force.”  As part of that initiative, we intend to recruit members of VRW to serve as liaisons to various, non-federal campaigns, including down-ballot judicial races.  Please see our January newsletter for more details on that program, and volunteer to serve as a VRW strike force liaison if you can.  

Sometimes overlooked, these judicial elections matter in many ways.  Judges are the gatekeepers to enforce the laws that protect the integrity of our elections.  Election Security is a national issue.  So, what’s happening in our State and our County?

In wake of an April 2019 joint intelligence bulletin issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and by the Senate Intelligence Committee in July, that the Russian GRU made “extensive” efforts to hack elections systems in every state prior to the 2016 general election, states have responded with increased focus on the security of their electoral systems.

The majority of state legislatures, including Texas, will convene in 2020; however many were to have convened in early 2020 and some legislative sessions have been postponed.  The Texas Legislature, which meets every two years, will not meet again until January 2021.  The current census ordinarily would require the 2021 Legislature to address redistricting; however the Corona Virus delays may impact that. 

Many critics say that State’s efforts are not enough, particularly in the absence of coordinated oversight from the DHS and the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). Some want the federal government to mandate standards for election technology contractors to develop the systems and equipment for voter registration databases, voting machines and county election offices’ websites.  Currently there are only voluntary guidelines from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

In 2017, the federal government classified elections systems as critical infrastructure. In March 2018, Congress appropriated $380 million to states for election infrastructure and security upgrades through the 2002 Help America Vote Act. Since then, the House has approved a 2020 funding bill that includes $600 million that the EAC would allocate to the states to require backup paper ballots for all federal elections and other election infrastructure improvements. The bill stalled in the Senate and will not fund improvements in time for 2020 elections.

Even if adopted, the Brennan Center for Justice estimates it would cost at least $2 billion to secure states’ electoral systems to safeguard them from trespass and manipulation. The Brennan Center and the Stanford Cyber Policy Center maintain that 8,000 election jurisdictions across the country do not have the IT support to ward off cyber intrusion.

Which States have backup paper ballots? Pennsylvania, Georgia, and South Carolina will replace all paperless voting machines by 2020, while Arkansas, Virginia, and Delaware did so in 2019. However, voters in eight states – Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kansas, Indiana, Kentucky, and New Jersey – will continue to use some form of paperless voting in 2020. According to a 2018 analysis by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), 38 states now require voluntary federal testing and certification of election systems, although eight states do not require any sort of testing or certification.

In June, all 88 Ohio counties underwent a risk and vulnerability assessment by the DOH. In August, Oregon election officials underwent a mock attack in which election websites were hacked, disinformation spread on social media, and electrical power and communications went down in a tabletop exercise orchestrated with the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Connecticut did so in June, New Jersey in September, and Oklahoma, Michigan, and Vermont, among others, are also planning to go through similar exercises. Should we ask our Texas Legislature to test our system?  

By August 2019, 36 states had installed the ALBERT system at the “elections infrastructure level,”.  Texas installed ALBERT using federal funds from the 2018 Help America Vote Act. According to the DOH. ALBERT is a “virtualized network-intrusion system” that is a result of collaboration between elections technology vendor Election Systems & Software (ESS), which produces the voter registration system first used by Nebraska, the federal Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, and the DOH.

Texas’ Director of Elections, Keith Ingram, testified on Texas’ election security during a Texas Senate Select Committee on Election Security hearing on February 22, 2018.Watch the video HERE.

On November 30, 2018, the Texas Secretary of State’s office submitted a Report to the Texas Legislature on Election Cybersecurity Preparedness. Read the public summary report HERE.

HB 1421 (86th Legislative Session) added Chapter 279 “Cybersecurity of Elections Systems” to the Texas Election Code. This legislation implemented many of the recommendations in the SOS report Election Cybersecurity Preparedness. This new chapter has resulted in the following:

• Secretary of State has issued an Election Security Best Practices Guide (PDF), Available HERE.
• All individuals that access our Statewide Voter Registration and Election Management System are required to complete annual security training to maintain access to the system.
• Any breach of cybersecurity that impacts election data is to be reported to the Secretary of State and to the standing committee of each house of the legislature with jurisdiction over elections.
• All County Election Offices are required to undergo an Election Security Assessment (ESA).
• HB 4130 (86th Legislative Session) requires the Secretary of State to create a certification program related to electronic pollbooks.  

Although many Texas counties participate in cooperative programs to develop and improve election security, at this point, there is no Statewide mandate requiring counties to do so.  Texas has informed and encouraged Texas counties to take advantage of free cybersecurity services and physical security assessments available from DHS, MS-ISAC, and EI-ISAC.  

In March 2020, Harris County settled a lawsuit with a conservative voting rights group, Public Interest  Legal Foundation, agreeing to disclose records of foreign nationals who voted in Texas elections, and records documenting their attempts to register. Adams’ group PILF targeted Harris County in a March 2018 voting-rights lawsuit based on testimony from former voter registrar Mike Sullivan, a Republican, before the Texas House of Representatives alleging that for nearly two decades, officials had refused to comply with the federal law mandating inspection.

Pursuant to the settlement, the county agreed to provide records of people taken off the voter roll due to ineligibility and names of those who received “notices of examination” where their eligibility was questioned by election officials. The county also agreed to provide records dating back to 2013, including copies of voter registration applications with blank or negative responses to questions about their citizenship. The county also said it would provide lists of registrants who were stricken from rolls after they were disqualified from jury service due to their non-citizenship as well as all communications between the registrar’s office and law-enforcement entities regarding registrants who were ineligible to vote. What the county refused to provide were responses to jury summons from people who said they weren’t citizens. Instead, the county would provide the conclusions of its own findings about who shouldn’t be on the rolls.

See now why these judicial races are so important?  Vote for our Republican judges!  Elections matter! 

If you’d like to serve as a VRW liaison to a judicial campaign, please reach out to our Campaign Activities Chair Anne Trousdale at annet9119@gmail.com.