Racist Extremist given unchecked authority over election miscount: Canvass Report shows egregious miscalculations
Racist extremist given unchecked authority over the general election count that led to take over of Christian Nationalists in Fort Worth, Texas
Tarrant County Election Miscount Cover up
By Jessica Waller
Something overheard in casual conversation at a bar in downtown Fort Worth last week kept me up all night. Precinct Election Judge Diane Symons said, “When I was a judge last November, every minority voter that came in was given a provisional ballot. I saw about a hundred people that day and about 20 of them were Black— they were all given Provisional ballots for one reason or another. The fact that most of them were minorities really stuck with me. Especially since most of the time those votes don’t count.”
Later that night while digging into public documents on the Secretary of State’s website, a massive election miscount was revealed in the Official Canvass Report. A miscount that screams election fraud in every Harris County-reflective detail. Only that county was blue, and Tarrant is the only industrious “red” county in the state. Thus, despite my endless attempts (emails, calls, Twitter tags) to call attention to this one, nobody (Abbott, Paxton, Nelson, O’Hare) in the currently Republican-dominated Texas government is responding. This is particularly odd given Abbott’s immediate battle cry for an audit in Harris County last November following similar events.
A discerning look at actions surrounding the election of O’Hare and Abbott in Tarrant County last November reveals pieces of election fraud slowly narrowing into focus. Events like: Deborah Peoples conceding so quickly on election night (Peoples told me she would do an interview but then had Covid at the last minute), Abbott trumpeting his investigation of Harris County not even a week after Nov. 8th; O’Hare posturing dramatically about Election Fraud in his leadership of the newly created “Election Integrity Unit,” Election Administrator Heider Garcia resigning shortly thereafter, sole Democrat Election Board member Alison Campolo resigning shortly thereafter, Head Democrat Election Judge Kat Cano becoming the subject of an ongoing lawsuit based on video surveillance of her throwing away “slips of paper” (according to her) on camera and resigning shortly thereafter. The list goes on.
Symons and Cano, two election supervisors confirmed the provisional votes went into “an orange bag” as opposed to a locked ballot box per the Secretary of State’s instructions for all voter ballots. Cano divulged many things to me in our two-hour conversation as she attempted to move any blame from this “messy” election to the poll workers and Ballot Board judges. She continually referred to the Reconciliation Report and mismatched voters per ballot numbers on the Secretary of State’s website as the "bonkers” election calculations that left out thousands of votes. The one issue she claimed was “off the record” was the allegations of racial and sexual harassment towards election workers by O’Hare and Lambertsen.
After my interview with Cano, Snyder seemed to shut down and become increasingly concerned about losing her job as an election worker for speaking out. She was suddenly hesitant to answer my questions and began stating verbatim the same lines Cano had told me about keeping the miscount a secret as it would “destroy the blue vote because people will think their votes don’t count anymore.” Election Administrator Heider Garcia said that any voter not shown on the list for the district was given a Statement of Residence form. However, Cano said many workers did not even know about this form or how to fill out the envelopes the Provisional Ballots must be sealed in to even count at all. A study of the undervotes of this election is quite alarming as there appears to be thousands not counted due to this problem alone. Moreover, when asked about the Statement of Residence form, Symons said voters were not given this form unless they specifically asked for it. When questioned about the bags being used in place of locked boxes Symons was elusive until she knew Cano had admitted this fact. However, as a precinct election judge (a precinct judge is appointed at every polling location), Symon’s initial response of “I don’t know”, to my question about the bags, would expose her as secreting information given that clearly a judge would have knowledge of how the provisional votes are stored. Eventually Symons admitted, “yes,” we put the provisional votes in a bag, only after learning Cano had already divulged this information. Confounding the use of bags, is an anonymous tip received from a well-seasoned election worker who claims the bags were commonly “open when they got to the central counting station.”
Another source who further validated suspicion of malfeasance is Robert Trevor Buker, the Republican candidate who ran against O’Hare. When asked about the integrity of this election Buker said, “the printers were broken at the polling locations.” When asked which ones he said, “multiple locations,” as he claimed to be patrolling the election at several locations on Election Day.
To keep the Provisional votes in a bag as opposed to a locked box is against election law per the instructions on ballot-handling stated by the Secretary of State. However, to the credit of the two “Democrats,” Cano and Campolo (although they have both publicly claimed allegiance to different parties in the recent past) complicit in this cover-up: they were far outnumbered by extremist right-wing advocates from day one.
The Tarrant County Election Board, the board that chooses the Republican and the Democrat Election Judges, is made up of 4 staunch Republicans: Glenn Whitley (at the time, in this election Tim O’Hare “won” the seat), Republican Party Chair Rick Barnes, Sheriff Bill Waybourne and Election Administrator Heider Garcia and 1 Democrat. Allison Campolo was the only Democrat facing off against four Republicans when the vote on election judges was made. That vote was for racist extremist David Lambertsen as Presiding judge, and “Democrat” Cano as Alt Judge. The Presiding Judge’s party is based on the majority vote for governor in the last election: Abbott. The Alt Judge is the next most voted for party. Perhaps a staunch Democrat would have been more active in insisting on a replacement for her critical role on Election Day after calling in sick. However, Cano claims that Joscelyn Pantke, a Libertarian, was just as loyal to the left in overseeing the election as she herself would have been. This seems doesn’t seem untrue when considering her Facebook status that went from “Progressive” to “3 raccoons in a trench-coat” in the last year. A fact Cano admitted blithely on Kheri Hines’ podcast “Let’s Talk Fort Worth” in May.
As aforementioned, Republican Elections Administrator Heider Garcia and Democrat Campolo both resigned a few months after the election. Campolo claiming she didn’t want to stand in the way of better candidates who could do her job. Garcia was outspoken in the local press about resigning due to his disagreements with O’Hare but never explicitly stated what those were other than O’Hare wanting to run elections with less technology.
Cano was the only Democrat elected to supervise the election. Cano called in sick the entire last week of the election. She claims that having Libertarian Jocelyn Pantke fill in for her was good enough for the Democrats. Much like Lambertsen, Pantke has seemingly disappeared since the election and has avoided any attempts to track her down.
Ultimately, the official canvass report shows that out of 3,034 provisional votes (that we know of) cast—only 969 counted. Further, Cano said that there were “277 more check-ins than ballots cast.” Also, she kept referring to this as “weird” and “bonkers,” with indifference. Perhaps most “bonkers” is the fact that she then texted me, days after our interview to convey she was thrilled to be reassigned as the Dem judge of the next election this fall 2024 in Tarrant County. This, even though she is currently the subject of a lawsuit for Election Fraud filed by Bob Willoughby, based on the camera footage of her admittedly “taking a box of votes to the back off camera as directed to do by Lambertsen” (this confession was also recorded publicly on Hines’ podcast).The response from Campolo and Garcia wasn’t much better as Campolo sent a teenage eye roll emoji to me on Twitter after giving up defending her actions and Garcia said the missing mail-in ballots that were rejected but not accounted for were in fact accounted for. If this were true, the number would have been 7,651 rejected ballots whereas the number was 2,065. Garcia didn’t seem to understand basic math in our public Twitter exchange, when asked how he could let such a blatant injustice occur on his watch. Especially when election integrity was his only job. The resignation with which Campolo, Cano and Garcia spoke of thousands of votes not being accounted for, especially in an election as close as the general in a county that was blue last time, was shocking to say the least. These people were chosen to run a fair and accurate election in Tarrant County. They all ran away from their duties with cowardice and apathy.
The only name on the Official Count (Reconciliation) Report is Presiding Election Judge David Lambersten. On his LinkedIn page, Lambertsen states that he is Director of the 912 Project, an AstroTurf alt-right group that shows pictures of President Obama with a Hitler mustache on their propaganda signs, and says, “DEPORT Pedro, Muhammad/Mujadeen, [and] Mandingo.” Lambertsen was described as sexually harassing women during the election by several anonymous women I spoke to, and Cano said her comments on that were the only thing “off the record.” According to Campolo however, complaints against him were documented in writing. Further, Cano was vocal about her health problems throughout the campaign and never once replaced. This is an emergency not unprecedented and does have instructions to follow in the SOS guidebook for election processes. However, Campolo never stepped in to replace Cano, nor found another Democrat—opting instead to use Cano’s recommendation of Libertarian Pantke in her place.
Ultimately, racist extremist and “close friend of Cano”, Lambertsen, had unchecked power over the General Election’s Official Canvass count. Subsequently, an overwhelming majority of Republicans won. When asked how she can defend a racist as her “close friend,” Cano said, “I’ve told him I’m not ok with the ugly things he says.” Republicans in Tarrant County, or Christian Nationalists as they are often called nowadays as they are often lobbying for candidates in church sermons and supporting Anti-LGBTQ regulations as well as book-banning in schools, have been notorious for avoiding accountability in recent local and national news. Thus, it was unexpected to see a clear target in Lambertsen that the bulk of this fraud could be undeniably traced to. Although, traced to is a bit of a stretch as this man is a private investigator that has painstakingly avoided interviews, pictures or any semblance of a public presence. Clearly, Lambertsen was chosen as the fall-guy of this election and with unfettered control over the count: hijacked it for Republicans. Lambertsen admittedly wants to “DEPORT” minorities from this country and used this highly underpaid position of power to steal their voices.
Will the voters of Tarrant County demand an audit of this election? Or be passive as those who failed us while newly “elected” Christian Nationalist County Commissioner Judge Tim O’Hare continues ignoring the malfeasance that put him in office? O’Hare also was also extremely vocal in the news earlier this year about his dedication to election integrity alongside other staunch Conservatives recruited to his new project the Election Integrity Unit. At least until I tagged him on Twitter with his own Election Report full of miscalculations (readily available on the SOS website), to which he replied, “I have never seen this document in my life.” O’Hare’s Election Integrity Unit, according to Cano, was only created by Abbott in response to the dire need for Republicans to round out an equal number of blue and red voters on the Ballot Board. Cano stated that, “We were getting really concerned about not having an equal number as required and so reached out to the governor. Somehow Abbott turned this cry for help about the lack of Republican volunteers willing to represent their party at the polls into a call to action against Democrats trying to steal the election.
Campolo and Cano continue using fear tactics to secret the list of Ballot Board members overseen by Lambertsen. Ballot Board members who would be culpable in election fraud as well, as they are taxed with approving or rejecting Provisional Ballots. In a likely illegal twist Lambertsen was appointed as head of the Ballot Board, or Head of the Signature Verification Board as well as Presiding Election Judge. In this way, he had final say on approval of all Provisional Votes. Every single one. This is an abject affront to the process given that Lambertsen’s own signature on the Official count (rife with glaring inaccuracies) is entirely illegible. Cano even chuckled, “we all made of fun of him about his signature looking like a Jackson Pollock.” Yet, he had unchecked authority over the legibility of Provisional Voter’s signatures as Head of The Signature Verification Board? Campolo said, “If the Ballot Board members—a whopping 89 in all, compare this to Dallas County that had 12 in the last election, a known fact because they are all listed publicly as they should be per Texas election law—names are revealed they will be “in danger.” Campolo and Cano are justifying secreting public docs that will incriminate those who aided Lambertsen’s rejection of who knows how many Provisional votes. The are justifying secreting this public document by claiming that terrorists are violently threatening these people. Yet when asked publicly on Twitter Campolo also said, “nobodies’ life is in danger.”
Using lies and scare tactics to secret what should be public knowledge is the beginning of fascism. If we let this go on: where will it end? But most importantly—why were Lambertsen and Cano chosen to judge the results of the Tarrant County elections again this November??