TDP Files Suit Against Leo Vasquez

Leo Vasquez’s showboating in front of his Teabagger friends and working with a right-wing voter suppression group has earned him a lawsuit for violating a settlement with the Texas Democratic Party for his office’s past shenanigans.

Today, the Texas Democratic Party filed suit infederal court against Leo Vasquez, in his capacity as Voter Registrar in the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector’s office. TDP Chairman Boyd Richie issued the following statement:

“In 2008, the Texas Democratic Party was forced to take legal action in Federal Court to protect Harris County voters from the inappropriate, partisan actions of former Voter Registrar Paul Bettencourt, whose office rejected tens of thousands of legitimate voter registration applications.

“When Leo Vasquez took office following Bettencourt’s sudden resignation after the 2008 election, he defended his predecessor’s actions.  However, when the Texas Democratic Party presented the Court evidence of the serious misdeeds in the Harris County voter registration office, Vasquez ultimately agreed to a settlement, providing hope that those inappropriate practices had come to an end.

“Unfortunately, we believe Leo Vasquez violated the terms of our agreement last week, based on statements and information he distributed at a press conference that resembled a political pep rally. At that event, Vasquez made reckless accusations against a non-partisan organization based on a “review” of voter registration applications conducted by a group called “True the Vote.” In order to conduct such a review, Vasquez apparently provided the group access to the same applications he refused to provide the Texas Democratic Party last year, when he argued in Federal Court that such documents contained confidential information such as date of birth.

“All Harris County residents should be deeply disturbed by how easily this office disregards election law and federal court orders and by how casually they distribute voters’ confidential information.  Just last year, well-documented reports revealed that deputy voter registrar Ed Johnson was selling driver’s license information to Republican candidates as part of an illicit side-business with Republican state representative Dwayne Bohac [1] [2].

“Given Mr. Vasquez’ actions last week, we have been forced to take legal action to make sure his office does not repeat the same kind of practices that denied almost 70,000 Harris County citizens the right to register and vote in 2008.”

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[1] Associate registrar moonlights by selling voter data

Houston Chronicle 6/10/2009 http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6469960.html

[2] Where’d that driver’s license data come from? Off the Kuff 7/31/2009 http://offthekuff.com/wp/?p=20445