KHOU Broadcasts False Story about Voting in Harris County
Today, KHOU broadcast a demonstrably false story about yesterday’s long lines at polling places in Harris County. In one of their “Verify” segments, they pretended to investigate the extremely long lines for Democratic voters while Republican voters who had NO lines. The truth is that the GOP polling places had no lines because Trump had already sewn up the nomination (because the RNC declined to hold primaries), so turnout for the remaining primary races was meager.
KHOU’s conclusion from their “investigation” was that both Democrats and Republicans “agreed in advance” to hold separate primaries. In short, that conclusion is blatantly false; Harris Country Clerk Diane Trautman even tweeted about how Republicans refused to agree to hold a joint primary so both parties could share the same 
voting machines. Because of this refusal, the county was required to allocate HALF of the voting machines to the Republican primary even though Democratic primary voters outnumbered Republican voters 3 to 1. Combine that with the Republican controlled Texas government shuttering 750 Texas polling places since 2012 and you have a formula for disaster, which is exactly what happened. Democratic voters stood in line yesterday for up to 5 hours just to cast a primary vote. While this was occurring, Republican poll workers sat and twiddled their thumbs as HALF of the county’s voting machines went virtually unused. The HCRP knew that the Democratic primary was contested which would drive a large turnout. They also knew that hoarding half the machines would make lines much longer in the Democratic primary. Here’s the truth: the HCRP was perfectly happy to inconvenience hundreds of thousands of Harris County residents so they could suppress the Democratic vote and generally make life miserable for them. It was shameful. Just a little common decency would have gone a long way, but that is completely out of character for today’s GOP.
voting machines. Because of this refusal, the county was required to allocate HALF of the voting machines to the Republican primary even though Democratic primary voters outnumbered Republican voters 3 to 1. Combine that with the Republican controlled Texas government shuttering 750 Texas polling places since 2012 and you have a formula for disaster, which is exactly what happened. Democratic voters stood in line yesterday for up to 5 hours just to cast a primary vote. While this was occurring, Republican poll workers sat and twiddled their thumbs as HALF of the county’s voting machines went virtually unused. The HCRP knew that the Democratic primary was contested which would drive a large turnout. They also knew that hoarding half the machines would make lines much longer in the Democratic primary. Here’s the truth: the HCRP was perfectly happy to inconvenience hundreds of thousands of Harris County residents so they could suppress the Democratic vote and generally make life miserable for them. It was shameful. Just a little common decency would have gone a long way, but that is completely out of character for today’s GOP.The real shame here was that KHOU blew this story badly by falsely reporting that both parties agreed to the split primary when that was simply not true. There are two possibilities here: KHOU was intimidated into lying about the political practices of the HCRP, OR, the reporter here was simply incompetent. I’ll leave the conclusions to our readers.
In the meantime, I call on KHOU to correct the record and report this story accurately.
KHOU is constantly soft pedaling the conservative agenda. They will not challenge anything. KPRC is blatant and censors news terribly. Then they run heavy edited stories 1 or 2 days later than everyone else with much spin. KTRK 13 is just a pompous windbags screaming Breaking news. They don’t challenge any statements either. They all just parrot what ever comes from Power.
1As always, follow the money. Who owns the media outlets? I remember a time, long ago, when News was a separate “public service” required for any entity to hold a broadcast license back in the day when the “Fairness Doctrine” was an actual requirement of their Government granted license. The News Division was non-profit and had no connection to the Entertainment side and was required to give equal time to both, or more, sides of a News story. It has been a long hard slog for the Conservatives to take over everything. They started in the 60s with local School Boards, then Local Governments, Counties, States, and staked their Federal claim with the installation of Saint Ronnie RayGun. Thus came about the continued assault on limited ownership of media outlets, elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, consolidation of Media ownership, Murdoch, Sinclair, Comcast, … . Anyone born after 1975 probably has no idea what I’m talking about, but if they read Orwell’s “1984” they may find some enlightenment.
2Years ago, I was friendly with the producer of the 6 and 10 PM news. He took that job when the paper he wrote for folded.
He said a trained chimp could do his job. When I asked him what was the hardest part of the job he said every time he sent a reporter out to do a story he had to teach them why it was important.
I notice plenty of the national channels were reporting on lines in Houston, too. They never got to the real story. Just stared their ignorance.
3Are they a Sinclair station?
4Leave it to Khou to do . . . Really? Are you serious? These R media outlets are sanctified, didn’t you know that?
5There’s a 3rd possibility. KHOU is complicit with the Republican Party.
6Occam’s Razor says most like it’s complicit rather than incompetent.
Rather surprisingly, it’s not owned by Sinclair; it’s owned by Tegna, Inc.:
Licensee:
KHOU-TV, INC.
Licensee Address:
TEGNA INC.
8350 BROAD STREET, SUITE 2000
TYSONS, VA 22102
(703)873-6606 [phone]
From Wikipedia: “Tegna owns or operates 66 television stations in 54 markets, is the largest group owner of stations affiliated with NBC and CBS, the fourth-largest group owner of stations affiliated with ABC (after Sinclair Broadcast Group, E. W. Scripps Company, and Hearst Television), and holds properties in digital media.”
7To my knowledge Texas is the second state in which there was no presidential race on the Republicon primary ballots. NV Republicons have not voted yet, but their ballot will not have a even a line to write in a presidential preference.
Where’s Alfredo? It’s just natural to think if anyone has the total number of states on which the Republicon ballots have no presidential primary, it would be WMDBS resident man of the numbers extraordinaire Alfredo.
8Old article, 6/9/2019 “South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Kansas” and with Tx that is 5 I’ve found. Need Alfredo for the actual number!https://www.uspresidentialelectionnews.com/2019/09/gop-canceling-2020-primaries-in-four-states/
9Tio Bernie update ~
Latino voters might have saved Bernie Sanders’s campaign
Edit: He held his own in Texas and California on Super Tuesday, thanks to Latinos.
Latinos make up about a third of the electorate in Texas and California, the two states that allotted the most delegates on Wednesday night. In both states, his efforts to reach out to Latinos paid off.
Washington Post exit polls show that Sanders carried the Latino vote overwhelmingly: he had 49 percent of Latino support in California, where votes are still being counted but Sanders leading by an almost 10-point margin, and 39 percent in Texas, where he lost narrowly to Biden. By comparison, Biden won 19 percent of Latino voters in California and 26 percent in Texas.
That support wasn’t enough to secure Sanders big victories in both states. But because the Democratic Party decides on its nominee by allocating delegates, it was still crucial. States aren’t winner-take-all, so it’s possible to rack up a lot of delegates even if you lose a state.
UCLA LPPI
@UCLAlatino
New #SuperMartes analysis out of @UCLALatino shows Sanders greatest showing in Texas came from super-majority Latino geographies including El Paso, San Antonio, and almost the entire Rio Grande Valley. We’ll be posting more detailed data all day long so check back in
full article:
10https://www.vox.com/2020/3/4/21164235/latino-vote-texas-california-bernie-sanders-super-tuesday
I’ve got a better idea.
How about the elected officials who conduct the government run, tax payer funded primaries tell the 2 political parties, which are private entities, what the rules are instead of asking the parties what they want? What is best for all voters…not what the parties want.
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