The eyes of Texas were upon the ballots cast by several high-profile Texas politicians on Wednesday, after documents were leaked related to a stunning lawsuit accusing state election officials of failing to properly protect ballot secrecy. The leak included the purported ballot for the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas (RPT) — catching him in a lie about how he voted in the presidential primary.
The 77-page complaint was filed by an elections security researcher who lives in Williamson County, Texas and four other Texas voters, two of whom also live in Williamson County, one from Bell County, and one from Llano County. Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, Director of the Division of Elections Christina Adkins, and the county election administrators for Williamson, Bell, and Llano Counties are named as defendants, accused of “willful and systematic disregard of election laws” that put at risk the secrecy of potentially millions of ballots cast by Texans in recent elections.
The complaint describes the plaintiffs as all “consistent voters” who “voted in the most recent Texas elections in November 2023 and March 2024,” but either do not qualify to vote by mail under Texas law or prefer to vote in person….
The actual method used to cross-reference the unique identifier ballot numbers with the voter names and the results from individual ballots were originally filed in redacted form with the complaint (a redacted presentation by a Texas A&M University computer scientist regarding the methodology available for download here), according to our source. Rumors have been flying around Texas political circles in recent weeks about the method mentioned in the lawsuit and whether or not Texans’ ballots were really at risk of exposure.
And then on Wednesday, Texas-based website Current Revolt published documents that were produced using the methodology deployed in the investigation for the lawsuit – specifically, Rinaldi’s ballot.
Rinaldi voted in person in Dallas County for the Texas GOP presidential primary in March. He had publicly endorsed former President Donald Trump, said he voted for him, and even continued to insist earlier this week that he had cast his vote for Trump.
That’s not what the ballot and cast vote record images (below) show. Instead, Rinaldi allegedly voted for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), whose campaign collapsed in an embarrassing sputter in Iowa months earlier.
Why is FEC Commissioner Trainer even asking someone if they will be “in a #MAGA hat at” the Republican convention?
I expect we are going to hear much more about both aspects of the story, especially the potential loss of a secret ballot in Texas. If this pans out, just wow.