Mission Statement
True the Vote is an initiative developed by citizens for citizens, meant to inspire and equip volunteers for involvement at every stage of our electoral process. We promote ideas that actively protect the rights of legitimate voters, regardless of their political party affiliation.
We are working to restore integrity to the American system of electing its leaders. With True the Vote, we have, "deconstructed the entire process, focusing on educating voters, examining the registry, recruiting, training and mobilizing election workers and poll watchers, training how to collect data all along the way, then use the data to shape government action and legislative agendas to support desperately needed election code reform."
Who is True The Vote?Source
Based in Houston, Texas and headed by Catherine Engelbrecht (President), True The Vote is staffed by volunteers all across the country. Essentially, True The Vote is you and me. Every day Americans interested in the integrity of the elections in the home district.
It's clear some people have strong feelings about the above not being a fair or honest representation of their purpose or nature as an organization. I welcome any of those to offer anything supported or otherwise solid to dispute their own Mission statement and purpose.
Failing that, the fact they have people 100% trained and authorized to stand as observers in the General Election tells me that not only the State of Texas but the U.S. Justice Department DOES recognize them as legitimate. No one who didn't meet that basic threshold would stand for long as an authorized person among the people staffing the polling place.
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*Someone else asked about the Statute, specifically, which covers what they did. The first one is electioneering under Texas State Law. Chapter and verse will have to wait...and I'm not the only one capable of researching it if anyone needs something sooner.
However, in starting to look for an easy answer, I discovered a few things. First, they violated more than one law. Electioneering is one of them....but remaining in the polling place with no status as Volunteer, Staff or voter adds another. The distribution of gifts to voters prior to their vote ...and just to add to it...while engaged in the two above activities to start with, may well add another. Where they are reported to have been in relation to the booths, machines and line......Well, you get the idea.
It's a lot more complex than I'd have imagined on first glance. Violations of law are absolutely not in question. At least 1 as a hard certainty....likely 2 and quite possibly 3 as listed here. That was before I even opened federal code.
Additionally, Section 2 of the Federal Code dealing with Voting law also may well cover this. I simply don't have time to do law research tonight, after finding this actually falls across a much broader set of different laws than I'd first imagined. It's a messy messy thing for people like them when one plays games in a place like this. It's covered by at least THREE distinct and separate jurisdictions and sets of laws that govern it.
Whatever someone does... DO NOT DO IT WITHIN 100 FEET OF THE BUILDING, AND MAKE IT PROPERTY LINE ENTIRELY, TO BE SAFE. Every state has their OWN laws on top of Federal code and some states are...draconian about how they define Electioneering. Texas isn't particularly high on the list of forgiving states.
