Is the SEIU Connected to Voter Fraud in Harris County, Texas?

In a story on Saturday, Fox News introduced us to possible voter fraud in Harris County Texas (Houston). It all started so innocently: a group of citizens decided that they should not just talk about politics and government, but actually get involved. So they did, by volunteering at the polls. But a civic duty turned into a nightmare.

"What we saw shocked us," Catherine Engelbrecht, the group's leader, said. "There was no one checking IDs, judges would vote for people that asked for help. It was fraud, and we watched like deer in the headlights."

She lead the charge to create "True the Vote," a citizen-based grassroots organization that began collecting publicly available voting data to prove and root out voter fraud wherever they could find it.

What ensued is almost like a John Grisham novel: a tragic fire, a possible SEIU connection, and a county left scrambling before the November election. RedState lays out the story [emphasis added by RS]:

1. In 2008, a group of  citizens in Harris County, Texas saw what appeared to be a massive attack on the integrity of the election process.

2. Last month, a mysterious fire broke out that destroyed most of the voting machines for Harris County, Texas. [Houston is in Harris County.]

3. The fire occurred three days after Harris County voter registrar Leo Vasquez issued a press release stating:

"The integrity of the voting rolls in Harris County, Texas, appears to be under an organized and systematic attack by the group operating under the name Houston Votes," Vasquez said at a 2 p.m. press conference at his office, where he also released copies of applications in some of the most egregious cases.

Houston Votes is the get-out-the-vote arm of the Texans Together Education Fund.

Evidence shows that the Houston Votes and Texans Together organization are conspiring on a pattern of falsification of government documents, supporting perjury in a deliberate effort to overburden our processing system, he said.

4. As arson investigators continue looking into the blaze, their focus seems to be less centered on arson than on what may have been the building’s electrical system:

The Houston Fire Department has not yet ruled out arson as the cause of a massive fire last month that destroyed most of the county’s voting machines. But arson investigators are working on the theory that it was accidentally fire that started in the building’s electrical system.

[snip]

The fire destroyed almost 10,000 voting machines — the county’s entire stock.

Immediately, there were questions about the cause and about the possibility that it was deliberately set to disrupt the Nov. 2 election.

For the last month, fire investigators have been combing the debris.

On Thursday, Arson Chief Gabe Cortez said they have found no evidence an accelerant, such as gasoline, was used in the fire.

5. On September 2nd, the Texas Democratic Party sued  Harris County registrar for "what it says are violations of voter registration laws, political favoritism and violations of voter privacy."

6. When the aforementioned concerned citizens (who later formed a group called True the Vote) found questionable registrations, it appeared to be concentrated to one group:

Most of the findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Steve [Sean] Caddle, who also works for the Service Employees International Union. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid. The other registrations included one of a woman who registered six times in the same day; registrations of non-citizens; so many applications from one Houston Voters collector in one day that it was deemed to be beyond human capability; and 1,597 registrations that named the same person multiple times, often with different signatures.

[snip]

“The integrity of the voting rolls in Harris County, Texas, appears to be under an organized and systematic attack by the group operating under the name Houston Votes,” the Harris voter registrar, Leo Vasquez, charged as he passed on the documentation to the district attorney. A spokesman for the DA’s office declined to discuss the case. And a spokesman for Vasquez said that the DA has asked them to refrain from commenting on the case.

The Sean Caddle mentioned above appears to be the same Sean Caddle from New Jersey who settled in Colorado for a time and ran for the position of Finance Director of the Colorado Young Democrats. Info here.

7. One candidate running as a Democrat in District 133 in Harris County, is Kristi Thebaut, formerly affiliated with ACORN [h/t Anita MonCrief]

RS notes: "Of course, between the fire, the fraud, the SEIU and ACORN connections, they could be just mere coincidences…"

View the entire story on RedState.