A former Democrat state legislator is encouraging more voter involvement ahead of an upcoming off-year, low-turnout election.
“Voter turnout is critical to fighting back against voter fraud,” said former State Rep. Lon Burnam (D–Fort Worth) at a forum to discuss the Trinity Regional Water District, held January 26 in North Fort Worth.
Hosted by the Tarrant County Libertarian Party, Espinoza for Liberty, and Liberty Life DFW, the event brought together several speakers to talk with citizens about the taxpayer-funded boondoggle known as Panther Island. Burnam’s focus was the threat of voter fraud in local elections, particularly the upcoming elections for the TRWD board, which has long been mired in controversy.
“Because voter participation is so low in most local elections, they get away with a lot in local elections because people are just not paying attention,” Burnam said. “They are not participating. “
He believes that low voter turnout makes it easier to steal an election through voter fraud, an issue of great concern amongst Texans since Secretary of State David Whitley’s shocking announcement last week that tens of thousands of registered voters were identified in the Texas Department of Public Safety database as non-U.S. citizens.
“My loss in the Democrat primary in 2014 we contested in the courts,” Burnam said. “There have been a number of other elections that if you look at the vote by mail, vote harvesting process closely, you will realize there’s something rotten in Denmark.”
Burnam made it clear he wasn’t against voting by mail, and even worked hard to encourage it:
“But there’s quite simply a huge difference in sending out mail, encouraging people, particularly people if they’re 65 and older who are eligible to vote by mail, calling these people and — and this has happened in this community — taking the ballots out of the mailbox and not ever letting the person that it’s intended for see it, and marking the ballots for them. And, this happens a lot, throwing ballots away because the harvester does not like the way the ballots are marked.”
He cautioned that voters cannot rely solely on the Texas Attorney General’s Office to combat voter fraud.
“All of this, is like so many other things, it’s gotta be enforced by interested citizens because there’s not enough assistant attorney general staff to be in the field to make sure this next upcoming local election isn’t determined by harvested ballots,” he said.
To that end, Burnam has helped form the May 4th coalition to help increase voter participation and turnout in local elections.
“We have to work in the field to get people to turn out to vote and stop the theft of elections.”
Elections for two seats on the TRWD board and other municipal offices will be on May 4.
